REVIEW: Outlast

How’s your heart? Good? Good. It won’t be for long. I hope you’ve got some old drawers on, you’ll be soiling them over and over again.

It seems about time that indie games made their way to the fore of the Xbox One game store. Still dominated with mainstream titles, trickles of indies are now slipping into the Xbox One fold, mostly unannounced. Lacking the pomp and circumstance of bigger titles, many indie games may continue to go over-looked, but this is why I’m here. To tell you about this belter of a game.

For the uninitiated, Outlast was originally released on PC in September 2013, making it’s way onto the new generation of consoles this year. Touted as a first-person survival horror, you play as Miles Upshur, a freelance investigative journalist who has been given an anonymous tip off to some potentially inhuman experiments being conducted at Mount Massive Asylum.

A shady tip off, an eager journalist, armed with nothing but a night vision camera, what could possibly go wrong?

Apart from everything.

After a quick lesson in movement, you find your way into the asylum where horrors await at every turn. Whatever made Miles think it couldn’t wait till morning, I’ll never know.

Inside the asylum it’s dark. Not just murky, or gloomy, but pretty much pitch black. Thank god for your camera, although in true survival horror fashion, it’s run on batteries which deplete when you use the night-vision function. The night-vision will become absolutely necessary and you’ll be relying on it more than you think, making you consider carefully on its usage. Thankfully, you can find more batteries lying around, but they are can be few and far between.

Replacing them and keeping your battery topped up is essential, as you’ll be needing it to record footage, making notes which develop the plot. The higher the difficulty, the less batteries you will have in reserve; so if you want to soak up some of the more rewarding achievements, try a playthough on Insane difficulty!

Raising the camera is done with the right bumper, and turning on the night vision is via clicking in the right stick. Personally, I found this to not be the most intuitive way to control it, and found it slightly confusing in a bind under pressure, such as being chased down a dark corridor.

The use of atmosphere is perfect though. There’s no music as such, what little there is is used to add real depth to the experience, building tension and keeps it escalating. When you’re encountering a section which requires you to hide or escape from pursuers, the music builds and doesn’t let up when you think you’re safe, keeping you on the edge of your seat the entire time.

Naturally, sound plays a really big part in the game, whether it’s footfalls, doors opening, or Miles’ own fearful breathing. Every little noise adds to the tension, whether it’s wondering if an enemy can hear you, or unconsciously matching your own breathing to Miles’.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, Outlast employs the use of jump-scares, so you’re never within your comfort zone, you never feel safe. It’s a game that really plays on the psychological fear of not being able to see, or know what lies ahead, to the point I was literally sweating my dress through with real fear.

The Asylum is peppered with a menagerie of crazies, many of whom have been experimented on, many of them friendly. You’ll find yourself walking into various rooms to find inmates, or patients strapped to gurneys, standing facing the wall, or even in some cases, walking around unfettered and free (and naked). The real question is whether any of these guys are going to attack you. While the majority of these beings are harmless, there are some pretty nasty enemies who will hunt you down and chase you on sight. If you’re quick enough, you can outrun them to a safe area and hide under a bed or in a locker. However, you have absolutely no weapon of your own, the game itself advises you to not stand and try to fight. Don’t expect enemies to be entirely nonplussed though; the higher the difficulty, the more places they will check to see if you’re hiding.

You’ll also find body-parts discarded, littering the entire Asylum. Dead bodies lie about as though resting, and a small part of you wonders whether they’re likely to jump up and bite your lips off. Eerily, when looking at these corpses with night-vision, their eyes shine with an almost supernatural sheen.

At some points, the night vision is actually completely useless. During one part, you’ll find yourself outside in the pouring rain, and your only hope of actually seeing anything is via the sporadic flashes of lightning. It’s these deviations from what you had become used to, that really emphasise the care the developers went to when crafting the game. Keeping you firmly locked out of any sort of comfort zone is something Outlast does almost effortlessly.

As you play through the game, you’re expected to solve issues that hinder your progress, whether it’s turning valves to empty sewers, provide power to turn lights back on or solve a water shortage issue. Toward the end of the game however, this formula gets a little tedious, and the fear of being chased and caught tends to wear off, meaning that you’ll find yourself shirking off the shroud of caution to keep throwing yourself down the gauntlet time and time again until you get it right.

Whether you’re hiding in a locker, or running down blood-splattered halls hurdling over discarded beds and tables, you’ll find yourself hurtling through the game in record time; as it’s only about five hours long. Perhaps even five hours is too long toward the end though. Without giving too much away, the story takes a weird turn, leaving the generic behind. It seems to veer the entire game completely upside down, and the upheaval comes across as a tad clumsy.

Despite this, Outlast is a genuinely terrifying experience, and only toward very near the end did I feel it becoming tedious. You will most certainly find yourself screaming at the TV, or shouting at yourself, pushing your bowels to the very limit. Expect jump scares, visceral scenes likely to make you squeal like a baby, and some weirdness toward the end. It’s a decent horror game in a genre heavily neglected, and well worth the £15.99 tag.