Justin Counts Down To Halloween Day Fourteen: Trying To Outlast
Today’s game really skates that line of indie or big developers. When the first game in the series came out, it was the team’s first game, while having worked on previous AAA games under Ubisoft and some work on Uncharted. But when it came out, it surprised many people, helped turn heads, and started paying a lot of attention to indie development in video games…
Outlast!
Outlast was developed by Canadian-based Red Barrels and took the world by storm really when it came out. Outlast follows investigative journalist Miles after he receives an anonymous email about crazy experiments happening at Mount Massive Asylum. So he decides to check it out. With mutilated bodies all over the place, we get a warning from a military guy that there are inmates on the loose, and very quickly after, we meet one, and the game of hide and seek begins.
Outlast has got to be other than Amnesia: Dark Descent, the game many people think of when they think of these hide-and-seek horse games where you have no means of offense, so your best bet is to sneak around and hide under beds and in lockers. What’s interesting here is we get face-to-face interactions really with each inmate that will be chasing us. So, for example, one of the first is the twins who talk to you through a door, and you can get a sense of just how messed up these guys are before they become a real problem.
The gameplay in Outlast is very much sneaking around while you listen to footsteps and remarks made by the images while they search for you. Once they find you, it’s time to run, do not let them catch you, or it is instantaneous death. The fundamental gameplay element that stood out in Outlast was using your camera’s night vision to be able to see in the dark because, just like The Suffering, this game is dark as hell. But it also makes the genuinely desolate and disturbing environments even scarier. Nothing beats seeing two shining marbles coming your way only to realize it is an inmate coming to ruin your day.
There is a much-loved sequel and some DLC that I haven’t tried yet, with another game coming soon that has multiplayer built into it. Outlast is a unique, horrifying game that’s perfect as we come closer to Halloween, and I can’t wait to dive into the rest of the series.
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