4/5 ★ – MPT's review of Outlast.

one of the most notorious, successful and influential horror games of all time, and also (thankfully) one of the best, Outlast is an absolute juggernaut of the genre. most of its genuine effectiveness comes from the passiveness of the protagonist, frequent and intense scares, and a story that flips classic asylum horror on its head. while it isn’t perfect, it deserves its reputation. being defenceless is Outlast’s dictating feature. it shapes just about every other aspect of gameplay so that, instead of the classic RE type survival horror the genre is most familiar with, in every dangerous situation you can either a) run or b) hide and absolutely nothing else. it obviously isn’t the first game to do this (Amnesia: The Dark Descent type shit) but arguably makes you feel the most uncomfortable in its approach. the tight corridors, basements, wards and sewers of Mount Massive Asylum just never seem to end and are always populated with mutilated patients (or “variants”) smashing their heads against walls, blabbering nonsense or waiting to jump you. it’s always busy and chaotic, and the harder you try to escape, the deeper into the shit you seem to go. running from one location to another trying to find an exit taking 1 step forward and 2 steps back makes you feel so hopeless and claustrophobic. your goal is to get the fuck out of there legit 2 minutes after entering the asylum so when you spend another 5 hours in there you start to feel like you should just be admitted as a patient at that point. Miles Upshur, despite being silent, is also a great protagonist. dude’s absolutely hilarious. reading his notes makes him feel like the template for Ethan Winters in RE8. resource management is also a crucial contributor to Outlast’s identity. instead of bullets or heals, the only thing you need to worry about conserving is camera batteries, the things that allow you to use night vision and therefore see in the dark. this is a dark ass game, so not only being able to see the enemies trying to extinguish you but seeing the physical layouts of the levels so you can simply get through them relies on you having some spare. it’s a simple but effective darkness mechanic that’s (again) been done before, but i’d argue in terms of pure terror it’s done the most effectively here. flicking the night vision on and off to try and conserve charge or leaving it on to get around an insanely dark room, moving through levels quickly or tiptoeing to reduce risk of running into an enemy, reloading the camera and using up a battery or keeping it low with reduced visibility - all of these are decisions you regularly have to make. it adds a bit of strategy to the horror. there’s all of this then there’s the fact the green night vision tint is just so iconic that Outlast is the first thing a lot of people think of when they see it in any other media. its grainy texture and the white glow of enemies’ eyes through your lens adds so much to the atmosphere that Red Barrels should just copyright it at this point. the variants roaming the halls are a key reason the game is so horrifying. there’s plenty that have been driven violently insane to the point they just want a piece of you, and these nameless enemies are spread through both the stellar chase sequences and less linear encounters the game throws at you. the former are an absolute standout feature of the game, and only start to wear out by the final section of the story. but for 95% of the game, the scripted chases are insanely chaotic, fast-paced and genuinely scary. the best, most white knuckled ones you always escape by the skin of your teeth. the Male Ward chase, being hunted by Trager, a few Chris Walker chases and being ambushed after getting your camera back are the standouts of the game. the more methodical encounters are where the intensity comes from your ability to stay silent and patiently manoeuvre around enemies to make a dash to safety, and these can be just as alarming as the chases, if not more. the absolute best example is in the Sewers: walking into a huge, dark, open room full of waist-high water, with the only source of light shining from a hole in the roof in the centre that has a ladder extending down, accessible by jumping from a nearby walkway. also in this room is the main stalker enemy of the game, and this is the point you realise he’s actively hunting you. hearing quiet splashes then seeing a glimpse of him as he walks under the light, knowing he’s in this huge room with you where you can’t see 5ft in front of you and can’t sprint feels like the Mona Lisa of horror game moments. another similar situation, this time in the asylum’s Courtyard in a pitch black thunderstorm in the dead of night, has this same enemy tracking you round an open courtyard even darker than the sewer with oppressive, loud rain pouring and lightning occasionally flashing to light up the area. the helpless vulnerability hanging in the atmosphere of all these encounters through the game is pitch perfect. Dr Trager, whose expressive voice lines give him so much personality (bro really shouts “Hey buddy!” as he chases you), the naked twins who talk about killing you like they’re talking about what colour to paint their living room, and the central monstrous stalker enemy, Chris Walker, are the most important reasons for this vulnerability. Chris in particular is a hulking brute who hunts you through the entire game, his disfigured face, huge build, grunts and rattling chains constantly remind you you’re absolutely cooked if he touches you. every chase or encounter with him is filled with tension. the fact his intentions paint him in a whole new light makes him even better. it’s not like he’s a good person (at all), but the shenanigans at the asylum has turned him into what you see, and the revelation that he’s not trying to kill you for sadistic fun but as a last ditch effort to prevent catastrophe proves Outlast has an intellect that plays with your expectations of classic asylum horror and pulls the rug from under you. as you read the interesting files and delve deeper into the game’s story, you realise nothing is as straightforward as it seems, and the evil of the Murkoff Corporation, who’ve been using the asylum’s inhabitants as test subjects to create an entity called the Walrider, is what’s caused all the chaos. while the final section of the game is the weakest gameplay wise, the transition from asylum horror to corporate horror is masterfully done. the lore of Outlast becomes something that gives the series so much longevity. you see the pure insanity and destruction Murkoff have caused not just in the violent variants but the others too, totally innocent victims of extremely evil whacko shit going on behind the scenes. everywhere you go there’s these broken men. 3 patients stare blankly at a static TV, one leaps out a wheelchair begging you for help, another sets fire to a room and waits inside for it to burn down with him inside, others sit or stand or wander round blankly, some mutilated and scarred physically, and all of them mentally. learning more as you progress changes these people from just set dressing to shock and scare you to horribly maimed casualties of thoughtless experiments by a callous corporate entity. seriously, when combined with Outlast 2 and Trials, Murkoff might be the no.1 most evil fictional company ever. these guys make Umbrella tremble in their boots. in terms of issues, the thing is that hiding is pretty useless for a feature that seems to have so much importance. the very manageable speed of the enemies in more open encounters means that, when given the option, running outclasses it every time. it’s a lot easier (and faster) to get an enemy’s attention, loop them around a room and run to the exit than hide in a locker, wait for them to look around and walk away slowly, and try and sneak past them. some encounters, like the Female Ward, suffer because of this; the regular variants are a downgrade from Trager or Chris Walker anyway, but baiting and looping them is just too easy. the chases are undoubtedly an amazingly executed feature, but problems also come with how on-rails and rigid some of them are towards the end of the game. like i said, running is always the best strategy because the speed of enemies is very manageable. all of them seem to sprint at your speed or slower, so in the big encounters/ chases, you just follow a linear route, maybe press A to vault something and you’re pretty much totally safe. this isn’t always a bad thing at all - some of the absolute best chases (and moments in general) are these intense linear chases like the Male Ward chase, where you always feel like your pursuers are a chest hair away from you. but when going against the Walrider in the Labs, the final area of the game, it works less well. there’s a few extremely linear chases, where you just hear the dramatic music, follow a straight linear path, and you’ve beaten the game. it’s pretty anticlimactic. combined with the the sheer speed and strength of the Walrider in cutscenes vs actual gameplay where you can just outrun it this easily, they fall short of practically every other chase in the game. as a nitpick, there’s also the fact you can’t skip cutscenes, but this is nowhere near as obnoxious as Outlast 2 - this game’s length is almost perfect, and it’s paced just as well. it’s a shame the hiding mechanic so often plays second place to simply running, isn’t that well implemented and becomes redundant basically from the get go, and the climactic section of the game is a letdown gameplay wise, but Outlast deserves its place as an essential horror experience. the tools it uses to build terror - Miles’ defencelessness, the constricted, chaotic corridors of Mount Massive, an iconic night vision system, a horrible set of varied stalker enemies - all blow up in moments of brutal violence, white knuckle encounters, and intense chase sequences. it’s nonstop, and makes you feel as consistently horrified as a horror game should. the insane lore that flips the game’s concept on its head secures its own and its sequels’ places as games that are actually interesting story wise and give them so much longevity. as a bonus, it also has one of the most well balanced permadeath difficulty modes ever with Insane. give it a shot.