![]() Outlast is a strong entry in a woefully underpopulated genre. The game has moments of sheer brilliance-moments where you’re creeping through rotting corridors, your hands scrabbling across the warped floorboards, camera telling you just how long you’ve been trapped in this god-forsaken place, in fear of the slightest noise, curious whether that figure at the end of the hallway is friend or foe-punctuated by eye-rolling, “I bet I know what’s on the other side of this door” cringe, and it’s frustrating. These long stretches of Hitchcockian mystery are the best parts of Outlast, and they don’t happen enough. The most horrible things in Outcast happen in your mind, conjured up by clues in the environment. Fifteen minutes? My nerves are completely frayed. Five minutes? Adrenaline starts to rise again, because I know something bad has to happen soon. A minute of peace and quiet? My heart starts to settle down from the last encounter. Outlast is at its best when nothing happens. It’s the creeping horror that gets you: Slipping through rotting corridors at your own pace, convinced you’re making entirely too much noise and everyone for miles around can hear your labored breathing. What’s most fear-inducing in real life (getting chased by a murderous mental patient) is only tangentially terrifying in games because you can recognize the artifice. Outlast is full of terrifying scenes, but they’re often just that-staged scenes that lack any real threat. When I’m getting chased, I know there’s somewhere to hide. ![]() When the game requires me to watch some scene, I know on a subconscious level I’m safe until the scene ends. They’re not, because they’re so recognizably game systems. It wants the imagery and the “Oh no, I’m being chased through this asylum!” bits to be just as scary as simply walking around, afraid for your life. Problem is, the game tries to ascribe the same importance to the first two as it does the last one. Outlast cycles through three modes of gameplay: one where you’re being forced to watch some horrific event, one where you’re being chased by a monster, and one where you’re simply walking around. Still, congratulations to the developers for having the guts to make a game for adults.īut it’s definitely a game. The game also suffers from how often it repeats imagery that’s supposed to be disturbing: The first time you see blood smeared across the walls it’s a bit intimidating, but by five hours in it’s the equivalent of a Backstreet Boys poster. We’re still butting up against the far side of the uncanny valley, so a number of moments that would be grotesque in a film are a little slapstick here. While films have been pushing those boundaries for years, games tend to shy away from Saw-style imagery. Even so, Outlast managed to stun me a few times with how far it was willing to go to disgust me. It doesn’t scare me, it just bores me or (occasionally) makes me giggle. I’m not big on the gore/torture porn genre of horror. Outlast doesn’t skimp on unsettling/horrifying imagery, but it lasts long enough that eventually even the most grotesque stuff starts to feel predictable.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |