Outlast Review

The horror...the horror... 

I can safely say that Outlast made me jump out of my chair more often in its four-hour descent into Hell than any other game ever has. It's a tense, brutal trek that strips you of any power to defend yourself as you try to avoid the deranged mental patients that roam the halls of this horrifyingly gorgeous world.You'll run, hide, and just generally be terrified as you discover the horrors that reside within Mount Massive Asylum. But in between the wealth of scares and beautiful environments, Outlast has a tendency to bog down via uninspired mission objectives and a few disappointing design choices.

From the get-go, Outlast is one of the best-looking and sounding survival horror games to date. Everything from the dynamic lighting to a fantastic soundscape work together to keep you on edge every second of the experience. I dreaded entering any new areas or opening any closed doors for fear of what lurked in the dark unknown. Little details that are often forgotten in games, like leaving a trail of bloody footprints after stepping through a pool of blood, really help sell the illusion that Mount Massive is an actual place.

But for as great as the world looks, the character models are represented with a bit less fidelity. They're not bad per se, but certain enemies that appear terrifying from a distance lose quite a bit of their terror when viewed up-close. You'll also notice quite a bit of enemy repetition during the latter half of the campaign. That being said, you'll probably be too busy running away like a maniac to notice most of the time.

You're ostensibly powerless in Outlast, meaning that your main tools for survival are running and hiding. Barreling down a hallway with a beast right on your heels, bursting through a

series of doors when you have no idea what's on the other side, and eventually finding a closet to hide in and evade your pursuer provides a fantastic and terrifying thrill. And once enemies begin tearing apart rooms and opening closets in search of you – yep, you can imagine just how nerve-wracking this game gets.

Your guardian angel in Outlast comes in the form of a camera with a night-vision setting. Much of the asylum is bathed in darkness, so you'll be viewing a lot of the world through a bright-green lens. This helps create a great sense of tension, which is heightened by the fact that the camera runs on batteries that need to be found throughout the environment. Outlast forces you to be conservative with your resources, as running out of juice in a particularly dark area forced me to have to reload a prior save file and replay a good chunk of a level. This punishment seemed severe at the time, but ultimately acted as a lesson in how careful planning was essential in order to survive in this world.

Where Outlast bogs down a bit is when it tries to shoehorn typical game design elements into the horror experience. Slowly making your way through a dank basement crawling with enemies is great – but having to activate three generators in order to restore power to the area? Not so much. While I'm not against the "find three things" structure of many games, its place in Outlast had a tendency to momentarily pull me out of the experience and squash tension.

Also, the fact that your character has no way of defending himself means that if you're discovered and cornered by one of your pursuers, you're probably going to have to restart that section. I found myself dying in specific encounters multiple times until I memorized the level layout and enemy patterns. That's not terribly out of the ordinary for a stealth game, but Outlast's strength is in its well-paced horror, and repetition dulls that power. Instead of being terrified, I was simply annoyed that I had to keep dying in order to figure out how to solve certain environmental puzzles.
Thankfully these moments were far outnumbered by long stretches of tense, satisfying exploration which rewards you with a well-written and unsettling story. Diligent searching reveals numerous notes and diaries that help flesh out tragic tales of mental patients tortured by villainous scientists, and that provides a surprising bit of heart to this bloody tale.