Outlast: Scarier Than Amnesia?!

INTRODUCTION:

• Developer: Red Barrels
• Game: Outlast
• Price: £14.99 on Steam (at time of review)

Outlast is a first person survival horror game that is made in the style of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, but with a little added oomph with the added camera that also has night-vision!  Let’s get straight to the point where you probably wonder “is this better than Amnesia?”.  My honest answer to this is HELL YEAH!  Don’t get me wrong, Amensia has fun puzzles, interesting characters and scenes to chill your bones, but Outlast has all that and more, think of it like this, NOBODY in this asylum is to be trusted.

GAMEPLAY

Going into this game you’ll find it plays quite a lot like Amnesia, with the only thing now really in it being the function of opening and closing doors.  You can only really slam open or shut, which I will say is quite an annoying thing about this game at times, but one thing added to this game that is fantastic is the camera, dear lord the camera!  You can use the camera to go into night vision in dark rooms which is super helpful when evading guys, you can also use it to zoom in and out too so that you can see if someone is approaching you or not.

The game is set in just the one place, and it is in the place called Mount Massive Asylum (much originality!) apart from the unoriginal name, a survival horror game based in an asylum is truly terrifying.  You know that around every corner, there is the potential for a terrifying attack by one of the scary disfigured inmates that seem to be left abandoned.  There is also the potential for a much worse inmate also…. He doesn’t have an official name other than a “Variant” I prefer though to call him the pigman, he is a massive man who’s sole goal is to catch and murder you horribly, so that’s fun!

This is one of the games that is thankfully keeping the survival horror genre alive and kicking, and now that it was ported over to console, it only makes things better!  This is the first AAA survival horror game to actually be terrifying to me since Silent Hill 2, so when it FINALLY released the glee I had was that of a teenage anime girl even though horror games terrify me.  With indie dominating the genre at the minute, it gave Red Barrels the motivation to make a high quality horror game with Outlast, and I personally hope that this will pave the way for more developers and publishers to release more like this in the genre!

An addition I’ve never seen to a game of this genre is DLC, and needless to say the DLC in this is nothing short of amazing!  It’s just as terrifying in its craziness, you’re constantly being chased down by one crazed psychopath or another that is looking to murder you in some horrible way (genital mutilation), and the payoff when you finish that DLC is great!  You will also run into characters that are part of the main storyline to the game, so if you find yourself playing this game and wanting more while waiting for Outlast 2 (which has been announced) pick up the DLC and give yourself even more nightmares!

AUDIO AND GRAPHICS

The audio in this game from a new developer/publisher is of the highest quality, and you will find yourself paranoid of any sound you hear when you’re about to open a door or turn a corner.  Personally though I did get a little confused sometimes when I turned a corner hearing a certain noise, then seeing nothing, I’m not 100% it’s part of the game or not, but I guess I got a little annoyed there was no scare there!

Graphics wise this game is superb apart from some textures on a few characters, but that isn’t something I can’t get over.  The night vision is used amazingly and it genuinely looks like actual night vision in real life, general lighting in this game is used very well and really helps the aesthetics of the game overall.  A lot of work has clearly went into the character designs, even for the NPC characters that don’t do anything within the game, which makes for a generally scary game when it comes to walking around…

CONCLUSION

Anybody who is looking for The Godfather of the survival horror genre, you’ve found it right here!  I would recommend this before Amnesia and I would recommend that to everyone!  I had only a few gripes with the game, one was story wise, the other was a few graphical things that happened, but apart from that this is easily the best horror experience you’ll have with a game for quite a while.  If you have this game and want some quality horror to play after, why not pick up the DLC?!  It is £5.99 and is essentially it’s own standalone story, and to some it’s an even better story, I personally rate them evenly however.