2/5 ★ – TheCriticalPandaBoi's review of Outlast II.

So I really thought that I would like this game, I heard people talking about the game being on the same level as the first game and some friends even told me that it was better and scarier than the first game, so after playing it, it was somehow underwhelming and overwhelming at the same time. There’s definitely some things it does better to improve upon the first game and I actually do like the changes. I like how the setting isn’t just blatantly a carbon copy of the asylum from the first game, it feels different and I do appreciate the concept even if it does feel a tiny bit like Resident Evil 4 with it’s setting, I’d probably argue more that it’s more like Resident Evil Village even though this one released before that game. The gameplay here is also improved which I wasn’t expecting to have to compliment an Outlast game on anything more than the camera mechanic, but not only does it make the most sense for Blake to have a camera unlike Miles or certainly Waylon. The camera here is also more important to use this time around because not only is it pretty dark very often which makes you need to use it a lot more, but there’s also a microphone feature that is able to detect the sounds of the bad guys coming for you and let you know which direction they are coming from, which is a very great way to enhance the gameplay from the original. There are also some collectibles that you obtain with the camera, whether you need to take pictures of the documents or you just record unusual activities from the lost Discord bot designers so the camera feels like it has more of a use and a purpose in this game. This is also more of a survival horror experience where you need to find bandages and heal up and while that’s nothing groundbreaking, it does help add more stakes to the gameplay since you know you don’t regenerate health automatically. Obviously you still need to find batteries for the camera but if I’m honest, it feels like you don’t need to worry too much about that. I do personally think that both sides of the story, one being in the religious village and the other being in the school both have they’re scary moments and jump scares that genuinely had me screaming, one instance being the scariest sequence in every Outlast game. But the game as a whole? Nah, it’s not scary, it is honestly trying too hard to be scary to where it comes across as obnoxious or just lazy. This game also takes the approach of being fucked up = scary, and while that can work to a certain degree, in this, it just comes off as more discomforting which is nothing new for Outlast but there’s certain themes and undertones here that are heavily hinted at that steps way over the line. The story in this school feels so tonally inconsistent from the rest of the game, you can argue and tell me that it’s apart of Blake’s trauma and his character but if that’s the case then why is it so often shoved into my face? I kid you not that the school shit was half of this games runtime and it just feels like a completely different game, you can have your game be a darker and more fucked up approach to Resident Evil 4 or you can have a mystery game about what happened to your childhood sweetheart but you have to pick one of them, and if you can’t pick one then find a way to blend the two tones together. The first Outlast game managed to nail the atmosphere because it felt very consistent and immersive because it was a self contained and isolated area but because we jump around to this forest/village area and this school, it just makes it feel disjointed and messy. There was also multiple sequences where I genuinely got lost in where I was going in both these areas because for some reason, the game assumes that you are a genius and know the exact area you are supposed to go, but I kid you not when I tell you that there’s specific areas that where you’ll genuinely get lost multiple times. Specifically in the village area, the layout of this whole area is so crap to where it made me really frustrated with where on earth I was supposed to be going, and sometimes I will admit it was my fault for not knowing but then there’s very specific moments that I really expressed frustration about not understanding any directions I should be going, You’d think that the objective would be enough to tell you where to go, but I swear, I wish this was a joke because looking at the objective will be the most bleak wording I have seen in a long time, there was an objective that told me to grab an item to open chicken wire or something along those lines and I couldn’t for the life of me find where the chicken wire even was, and it doesn’t even give you a waypoint or an objective marker or even a radar or map to tell you where your supposed to go, so I was struggling for 20 odd minutes trying to figure out where to go. This game is very gorgeous looking, for an independent game studio, besides the character designs looking too shiny, Red Barrel should be very proud of themselves, I just wish I could fucking see the good looking graphics because I’d honestly like to compliment them, but this game is way too dark at some points, I was screen sharing this with my friend and she couldn’t really see anything going on and neither could I but I could see enough to navigate, but once I turned up the gamma for my friend, I swear on my life that nothing changed, it was still too dark to where I even question the point and the significance of a gamma option when it doesn’t do anything. This game is also too long, it took me about 5 hours to beat the game which granted doesn’t seem that long in the grand scheme of things but it’s 1. Two hours longer than the first game and 2. It overstays it’s welcome by being extra long when in reality, you should’ve just cut out the school plot and do a different game with a school setting if you seem to be THAT desperate to do a horror game in a religious school, because by having your game go on for longer, if you can’t grip your audience for that long then you’ll have a very repetitive feeling game on your hands. The main protagonists aren’t really all that interesting if I’m honest, Blake feels like he gets forced character defying moments and stuff that I think you could genuinely remove from the game and not only would it make the runtime shorter and smoother but it’s also getting rid of unnecessary development that really only let’s you know what he went through as a child instead of helping develop him in a proper way. Blake’s voice actor is also not too good, a lot of it is expedition dumps and I’m sure Shawn Biachoo is doing his best with what was given to him. Lynn is easily the worst character in Outlast, not because of her performance, I actually think that Erika Rosenbaum gives off more emotions with her vocal range but her character just feels so shallow and there’s nothing really to her to make me care about her fate by the end of the game, they featured Jessica more in this game and focused more on her than the protagonists actual fucking wife???? That’s why I personally feel like you should’ve focused the school stuff on Blake and Lynn as children since the game confirmed they knew each other and just use that to develop what they’re relationship means to each other, it doesn’t always have to be a horror game 24/7, your allowed to flesh out your character without everything being miserable all the time. I will say, the best voice performance in the game was Claudia Besso as Val, that truly unsettled me and it was the only true vibe that i got that made me believe that this was an Outlast sequel. And that brings me to my point, this just doesn’t feel like Outlast to me, it’s got zero connections to the first game that I noticed anyways, I’m not sure if there was a document somewhere describing anything in the first game but I wasn’t able to pick up on any, it just feels entirely different and while it’s nice to evolve and all that but besides the camera, this feels like a random horror game that has the Outlast IP slapped over it. The ending is just… confusing? I’m not sure what happened in the ending but whatever happened then it clearly prevented us from getting Outlast III or something, and no, The Outlast Trials isn’t “Outlast III” because it is a prequel game. Anyways, overall, Outlast II is a very disappointing game that I could see what they were going for in concept but fails in execution, it’s not the worst game in the world but I can’t tell you confidently that you should play this after the first game or even the Whistleblower DLC.