Well, we love Outlast. It’s one of the best horrors from the time of original Silent Hill. Outlast offers first-person vision, an atmosphere of constant suspense, scary music that becomes louder in the most dramatic moments, dozens of psychopaths inside the neglected asylum and more, and more. You are inside of this chaos without weapons at all! Grab the camera with the option of night vision and try to survive here. So yes, it’s scary.
But we want to go deeper and review specific features of the game. The 1st paragraph with scary moments and mechanics is followed by the 2nd one where we describe not scary features. At all, it depends on your attitude to the game. Imagine yourself inside Mount Massive Asylum, turn into Miles Upshur, get into character and then the game will be very, very scared. But think about it as another visual story on your screen and it will be even boring.
As you see, it’s up to you. Read about features of the game, play it and then decide whether it is scary or not.
Scary things
Developers from Red Barrels did well. They explored the best horrors and, especially, horror games to add cool things to Outlast. Thereby, the game is like a child of Silent Hill, Amnesia and Five Nights at Freddy’s. Some ideas of H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe can be detected during the story. Fans of true horrors may be upset after the end as it’s less scary but still intriguing. Anyway, let’s review main scary things in Outlast:
- Limited hero’s actions.
That’s the main feature of the game. You cannot fight. You cannot block attacks. You even cannot use any items except your camera. The only things you can do here are run and hide. The big smiling maniac is running right to you? Runaway, look for locker or bed and pray for his low IQ. The psycho with giant scissors wants to cut off your fingers? Run… Oh, stop, watch the cutscene at first. Then run, hide and repeat these actions! This helplessness is really scary.
- Eerie atmosphere.
Horrors are not only about graphics, they are about music as well. Outlast combines visual and sound effects almost ideally. Dark corners with web and broken halls with brutally murdered humans are everywhere. Randomly flashing lights and strange shadows caught by lateral vision turn the game into a literal suspense. Music and sounds are quiet, but they become louder at scary moments. Play alone without lights and with sound for the best experience!
- Really scary encounters.
Yeah, there are a lot of NPCs. Surprisingly, not all of them will try to kill you. Some patients and inmates of the asylum are calm, but they are spooky as hell. Other characters are wild and violent, they can appear suddenly and start to chase you. The most notable foes are well-designed: large former guard, maniac-surgeon with scissors, silent naked brothers. And even neutral or friendly guys in Outlast are creepy and surely crazy as hell.
Not so scary things
Outlast is wonderful for all who love such type of games. But it can be a little boring if you are not a big fan. Players love the game but notice some cons as well. These problems become essential in Outlast: Whistleblower, an additional content for the original game. It explains the story but doesn’t add new gameplay features. That’s why we suggest trying the original game at first. You should know what features await in Outlast:
- Repeating chases.
That’s the main problem of almost every horror game or film. It becomes predictable and boring when you are near the middle of the story. Start tricks become usual, chases repeat again and again, you die, die, die. Finally, the game ceases to be scary at all. Outlast is not a very diverse game as it features a few notable enemies and locations. Different decorations cannot compensate lack of gameplay options. And this makes the game not so scary.
- Complicated routes.
Here is another problem of Outlast. It is too difficult sometimes. Probably, too easy missions would be boring even more, but now we see twisted corridors without any hints. That leads to constant deaths of the hero which is really bad for horror project. As you get used to deaths, chases and complex hallways the game turns into a gloomy quest, but not horror. It’s obvious as even the scariest thing becomes a common one after hundreds of repeats.
- A little strange ending.
That feature may be scary for some players, but we didn’t get it before Outlast: Whistleblower was released. Spoilers here! In the end of Outlast, your hero enters the underground lab where cruel experiments were conducted. There he meets a former Nazi scientist, a patient in a coma and the Walrider, a deadly swarm of nanoparticles. The ending shows us that this swarm chooses the protagonist as his new host… Sci-fi, really?
Anyway, Outlast is a very cool horror. Create a correct atmosphere to make it scarier. We suggest playing it alone in the dark room with the maximum level of sound. Try to feel the game deeply, look at the Mount Massive Asylum with eyes of your hero. Then even repeating corridors with common screamers will be scary until the end of the game!
