Full Review: Outlast (PC)

Whew!  This post has been a decent time coming, but that is the way things work sometimes.

Outlast comes to us from Red Barrels Games located in Montréal, Quebec and was released on multiple platforms in September of last year (2013).  Apparently a number of people who worked on this game had previously worked on other AAA titles such as Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell and Army of Two.  With the exception of having to occasionally climb up the side of a building and leaping across gaps across boards on multi-story-high scaffolding, I do not see much of the aforementioned games in Outlast, and honestly, that is perfectly fine with me.  As previously stated, I see a lot of Penumbra and Amnesia in Outlast, which I just read is pretty accurate.

STORY

The initial story is pretty straight forward and is told through text just as you start the game.  You are told who you are as well as your motivation, somewhat cleverly inserted into the usual horror game disclaimer.

The story holds up pretty well throughout the entire game.  One thing though that story and character development kind of hinge on is that the player is going to find and read the various documents scattered around the asylum/hospital.  As was the case with Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, if you do not find/read any of the documents, then there is a very real chance the player will be lost in the story or just not interested.  It is nice to know though that game developers (maybe not all) have enough faith in their players that they will read while playing a video game as opposed to watching exposition heavy cut scenes.

One thing that I really liked and appreciated was that not every inmate in the hospital/asylum was out to kill me.  There were really maybe 10 in the entire game, but god damn when one of those ten came at me, I was high tailing it out of whatever room I was in.  Or in some cases, under a desk.

Yes, even a grown man will hide under a desk.  Especially when being chased by that guy!

*Bit of a Spoiler*

I will say though that I was happy that aliens or the supernatural did come into factor into the story, although their inclusion would have fit in with the world that was created.  Everything that happened was explained as well as could be and that I appreciated.

GAMEPLAY

Outlast is a semi-surprisingly simple game when in comes to game play.  Being only equipped with a video camera, there are not a lot of options for the control scheme; at least for me as I was using the mouse/keyboard combination in lieu of controller support.  Moving is standard WASD with Q and E for peering around corners and R for reloading the battery required for the night vision on the video camera.  Left Control is for ducking while  Spacebar is for jumping either vertical when you are standing still or horizontal while moving.  Left Mouse is for opening/closing doors and the Right Mouse is for raising/lowering the video camera.  Lastly and most importantly, F turns the night vision off and on.

I did have some issues with closing doors although I got beyond Miles slamming the door when I felt he should be trying to be quiet while being pursued.  My problem was that while frantically running away from whatever it was that was chasing me, I would sometimes be on the wrong side while trying to close the door.  Eventually I had to kind of over correct by running backwards through a door frame then going forward to close the door behind me.

Hiding was also a nice touch considering you were unarmed throughout the entire game and weapons simply did not exist for you to pick up.  Be it under beds, under desks, in lockers, up in air ducts and even around corners.  If you could cram your body into it and were out of eye line, there was a  pretty decent chance of momentarily escaping the pursuer.  However, there were times where I was dragged out from whatever hiding spot I had chosen so I did like any grown man in that position would do.  I either ran or was brutally killed.

GRAPHICS

I thought that the graphics were great, considering 80% of the game was spent looking through a video camera display and about 40% of that 80% was spent looking at a black, green and white screen.  I should also say that I only had the graphical settings set at Medium where as they went up to High and Very High.  I just did not want to run the risk of the game skipping or momentarily freezing while an enemy/sound bite/music cue began only to come back a second later to find a rather disturbed inmate with a butchers cleaver embedded in my cranium.

Maybe not the best representation of the games graphics, but you get the picture. . . eh!?

In the end, I did not experience any lag in gameplay due to hardware limitations and honestly, the game looks great even at "Medium" graphical settings, so if your computer can run at a higher setting, it will look even better (at least it should).

SOUND & MUSIC

The music for Outlast was composed by Samuel Laflamme.  Both Conklederp and I commented on the quality of the score before I even entered the haunted house/asylum.  There was a very movie feel to how the music was used, both as background atmosphere and in the use of scare chords.  There were even times when I could have sworn the music cut out all together, which is never a good thing in a horror setting.

The soundtrack is even available for purchase through Red Barrels for less than $10.  The one thing about horror game scores is that they tend to be atmospheric and unless something oddly heroic happens, there probably will not be an exciting song in a major key.  Still though, a great score that fit perfectly within the game and the world.

FINAL THOUGHTS
A lot like the lantern oil in Amnesia: The Dark Descent, I became very aware of how many batteries I had left and I would not use either source of light when I did not have to.  And as was the case with A:TDD, once I realized that dying was not as bad as I thought due to the game semi-aut0-saving and bringing me back a short time before I had died kind of killed the sense that dying was the worst possible thing that could happen and became more of an annoyance, which could be perceived as the swan song for a horror game.  Outcast however excelled at jump scares, even when I was sure that there was going to be something coming around the next corner.  The game also did a great job with the feeling of dread when you would see a pair of inmates behind a set of bars talking shit to/about you then walk away with a determined, "Let's go!"

The motivation of Miles Upshur is to get the hell out of Mount Massive Asylum, and really that was all the motivation I needed to keep playing.  I could not in good conscious leave him (myself) in there and you can be sure that there was an overwhelming sense of relief (in-a-way) upon completing the story.  The 8 hours I spent with/as Mr. Upshur were well spent indeed and he will not be forgotten.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
They Hide In The Dark So You Can't See Their Fears

First Impressions: Outlast (PC)

Outlast is a game that came out last September (2013) and that I purchased, I think, around December during a Steam Winter sale.  A while back after watching a fairly decent (not great, but not bad either) film on Netflix, I developed the odd urge to start this game up.  Conklederp also asked me if there was a game that I wanted to play, so there was that too. 

Outlast reminds me a lot of the Penumbra and Amnesia series in that the game is in first person, you are a man going into an unfamiliar location where there are things that can kill you and since you are unarmed, your only option is to run and hide when said aggressors decide that your death would make their day so much better.  The manipulation of objects is not as detailed as it is in either of the prior mentioned series as objects are immediately picked up and doors/drawers are either opened or closed, no slowly opening them just a little.  Either doors are slightly open, open all the way or slammed shut.  Yes, your only option while in a psychiatric hospital filled with a lot of murderous minds is to slam doors, even when you know you are supposed to be quiet or are attempting to hide from your pursuer.

The story so far, is that you are a reporter who was tipped off about all sorts of things going wrong/bad at this building that is/was a psychiatric hospital.  So being the wanna-be Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, you head to said hospital in your jeep armed with nothing but a video camera with night vision and two extra batteries that power said night vision.  Your one choice for when you run into hostiles is to run and hide and hope that the baddies were not close enough behind you to figure out that you happen to be hiding in either a storage locker or under a desk.  Thankfully said antagonists are not too bright (although they do seem to have reflective retinas) so when running into a room with say, two lockers, they might check one, grumble something then walk out of the room.  Or they will scour the room, eventually find you then start wailing away on your squishy body with a not-so-squishy crowbar.

One aspect of the game that is a bit odd is the video camera.  When it is up and you are filming, you have the chance of making observations in written form, but when the camera is not up, no notes will be taken.  This I did not find out for the first hour into the game, during which if there was enough light, I did not use the camera.  The main purpose of the camera is to use the night vision in dark areas, of which there are a lot.  The night vision is powered by a separate battery (as opposed to the infinite main battery of the camera) that has a life of two and-a-half minutes before you have to change the battery.  If the battery runs out, you have a limited night vision, only being able to see a couple of feet in front of you, as opposed to the, say, 15 to 20 feet with the night vision activated.  

The visual quality between having the camera up and not using the camera is very negligible.  And you are able to zoom in with the camera up, which is a nice added bonus when you do not want to be killed by whatever that thing way over on the other side of the room.  Why then is there the option to have the video camera down if there is no added benefit?  Just a thought.

Presently I am about 4 1/2 hours into the game and I am in an area where I have to avoid at least two violent inmates at either end of a building.  Both areas are dark (ie: pitch black without the night vision function activated) and I have six batteries in reserve, so I am not doing too poorly.  

I will say that about two hours into the game, the protagonist, one Mr. Miles Upsur finally came to the conclusion that I had within the first 30 minutes.

That.  Exactly that.  Mr. Miles decided to scribe this note shortly after being chased by two very large men who wanted to do all sorts of unspeakable things to his body and then having run into a guy strapped into a wheel chair yelling about something-or-other.

I am getting the feeling that I am about halfway through the game and there are maybe five more hours of gameplay left, which would be perfectly fine with me.  I do not know how long the game would be able to keep up its sense of fear and dread without becoming old and frustrating, what with the being killed every so often and all.  But in the meantime, I am having a lot of fun playing Outlast and there is the DLC Whistleblower which was released back in May of this year, so I will have that to look forward to once I finish the main campaign.

Here is to surviving that long.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Only The Good Die Young