In fact, by the end of the game, the night vision seemed to become less critical to progress, as the final level or two of the game are very well lit. The dark courtyard perhaps the most tense and frightening (and battery-consuming) level. But it didn't take long to get my battery reserves back up to a comfortable level. I came out the other side of the courtyard with like 2 or 3 spare batteries, which made me nervous whenever I saw a dark hallway or room in the ensuing level. I thought I was seeing ghosts all over the place, but could never really be sure that it wasn't just a trick of the light. The blowing wind and lightning creates lots of visual and auditory tricks that kept me tense throughout the entire time. The courtyard itself is a pain in the ass to navigate, but it looks really cool. The only exception was going through the courtyard and female ward, which is basically just a resource sink. I thought I was using the night vision fairly liberally throughout the game, yet still had 6 or 7 spare batteries on me at almost all times throughout the game, without ever feeling like I was going too far out of my way to search for them. Just like how Resident Evil provides more than enough Ink Ribbons to let you save whenever you come across a typewriter, and Silent Hill gives enough ammo and healing supplies to let players stand your ground against most enemies, Outlast provides plenty of batteries. Like with most good survival horror games, Outlast sets up an expectation of scarcity that makes players anxious about using supplies that are actually in fairly generous supply. Thankfully, there's a few other shocks and surprises in store for the player that helped keep me from becoming too comfortable with what's going on around me. By less than halfway through the game, the mutilated bodies of inmates and guards just wasn't scary anymore. Sadly, the over-the-top violence did turn out to be desensitizing. I was never quite sure what I was going to find on the other side of a door or at the end of a hallway.
But once the horrors start coming, it's a barrage of shockingly horrific violence and inhumanity. The game starts off with a slow, ominous build that helps create an atmosphere of tension and uncertainty. In many regards, it's very successful at this endeavor, and it holds up pretty well in the 8 or so years since it released. A haunted house permeated with uncertainty and surpriseĪt a very fundamental level, Outlast wanted to be a game that shocked and horrified players. But then I played other games, and Outlast sat around on my desktop this entire past year until I finally got around to playing it last month. I bought it years ago, and it ended up sitting in my unplayed Steam backlog until I installed it about a year ago, with the intent of playing it during the pandemic. I liked Amnesia, and was interested in playing Outlast back around its release. That game is the 2013 first-person horror game, Outlast, which (along with Amnesia: The Dark Descent) was instrumental in popularizing the "hide-and-seek" brand of horror gaming that became very popular in indie and low-budget horror games over the ensuing decade.
I have one more game in my spring "walking sim" research. ( < indicates platform I played for review)Ħ hours (8 hours with Whistleblower expansion) XBox One (via retail disc or XBox Live digital download). PlayStation 4 (via retail disc or PSN digital download),
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