A new smash hit has arrived in stores, but how does this really deliver?
Outlast is a survival horror game to the point where combat is unavailable, navigation is non-linear and you are being chased by mad men. Your character reacts towards an inside source at an insane asylum long thought to be abandoned.
What makes this an unique playthrough is that your character is equipped with a video camera that can record curious events and it can function with a night vision feature, to show your way around the colorless darkness that this asylum provides at many spots.
The unsettling story slowly opens up to you, as the mad men found are merely instruments towards a greater goal of something that involves both science and religion. The environments are filled with deadends, blood trails and corpses.
Gameplay focuses on searching for your next objective, while you must keep your main item running by collecting batteries around. The mad men usually operate individually, and at first, from a distance, they looked intimidating.
Once you got up close and personal with them, you will undoubtly notice the poor character models that Outcast relies on. The locations and the framerate of moving around are interesting, but this was a dissapointing discovery, lowering the horror naturally.
The same goes for the repetitive nature of switching on 3 specific objects in order to unlock a fourth device while getting around "patrolling" mad men. Your ability to hide is almost with zero reward, so you better run sideways from them, instead of wasting time.
Unless Outcast has it's spell around you. Make no mistake, this game had the potential of becoming a truly effective and memorable game, but once you got used to what is required of you, with your available options, things got easier and more relaxed as I got further.
The graphical effects of the night vision, the darkness and shadows are great, and the story was intriguing enough to listen and read about. But don't listen to the hype that boosted Outlast. It is not diversive or unexpected enough to be considered a horror classic.
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