Hoooo boy. Ok, so as you should all know if you've followed this blog for any specific length of time, I've got a bone stuck in my craw about the state of horror video games. A lot of the big mainstays like Silent Hill, Dead Space, and Resident Evil have lost their edge. Some can startle, but they don't really scare. Many of them seem to be falling prey to the monster that makes them all bland and homogeneous 3rd person shooters that takes no risks and pushes no boundaries.
And then I played Slender. That game gave me a lot of hope that out there, hidden beneath mountain of triple-A game development lies a bed of developers who understand. Who GET it. People who know what it is that makes a game scary and by proxy, fun. Before, indie games seemed to really thrive more on the PC, and that's really where horror games have found their home, but the PS4 has been striving to bring indie to their console, and now their PS+ freebie for February I get to sit down with a trailer that I've been pretty stoked about.
OUTLAST
The story as I understand it here. You play freelance journalist Miles Upshur, who receives an anonymous tip that there is something seriously not right happening at Mount Massive, an asylum owned and run by the Murkoff corporation (A company with a bit of a history of shady background as is). So night vision camcorder in hand, Miles pulls up to the asylum to see if he can blow this case wide open. Upon breaking into the asylum, shit immediately gets upended as he greeted by blood splatter, scattered gore and limbs, and bodies of the staff and security littering the floors.
While exploring one of the first rooms, Miles comes across the body of what appears to be a SWAT officer who is spit through chest on a large stake. He rattles to life just long enough to gurgle that Miles needs to get the fuck out of there, and now. Advice that should have been heeded, because shortly after Miles leaves that room, he's attacked by an ogre of an inmate and flung out the window into the atrium of the asylum.
This is one of those games that has rather unclear narrative. Not in the regard that it has bad storytelling, but one that when you pick up files and paper, you really want to read it. Each one of them give context to the seedy underbelly of the asylum. Each little note and scratch paper you find gives a creepy backstory about how things happen at Mount Massive. They don't appear necessary to continue along with the game, but they paint a very interesting picture if you follow along with them.
In addition to that, The main character also takes notes in a journal as you play through the game to sort of keep a backtrack of the events that are taken place. But these are written from the perspective of the character, so naturally as you progress along and more and more shit goes wrong, the writing in the journal gets much more panicked and aggressive. It even uses the occasional *gasp* naughty word.
This is one of those games a-la Slender or Amnesia: The Dark Descent where your only defense is to hightail your ass from danger. When you are being pursued, hiding spots are scarce and darkness is your ally (but you merely adopt the dark). So when somethings on you, the music will crescendo and you will need to hoof it out of wherever you are. You will want to find a dark spot, and duck behind something, get in a locker, or get under a bed.
Light is very scarce in this game, so you will need to bring up your camcorder for a lot of portions of the map. You can record things as normal, but I don't really see a point to it without using the night vision. The night vision lens is almost mandatory to navigate a large section of areas, many of them completely pitch black otherwise sans a scant glimmer of light in one part of the room. You also have a limited battery life for your camera, so you'll want to keep an eye out for when you need to replace the battery. So far the only thing that happens when it runs out is you lose range on the night vision, but every inch helps so make sure you grab batteries when you see them.
I have yet to figure out if having the camera up alerts enemies to your presence, so I am constantly picking up and dropping it to avoid detection. This leads to enemies just popping up in my field of view out of nowhere and scaring the absolute shit out of me. In hindsight the batteries appear to be for the light on the camera, because if they run out the night vision still works, you just can't see as far. So its probably just safer to assume that you can be seen if you have your camera up in the dark.
And the enemies... Ohhhhh the enemies.. Grotesquely deformed insane asylum inmates running free, screaming crazy, groaning in agony, and attacking at random. I haven't played far enough to see why everyone is so fucked up looking, and quite frankly I don't care. I can't take it. Everything about this setting is horrifying. There will be moments you walk through and area and inmates will just be walking around, groaning, crying, asking to go home, asking to be killed, screaming unintelligible nonsense, or in some cases even talk normal to you. It's fucking frightening.
But what makes it even worse is 80% of the time, you don't really know who is a threat and who isn't until its far too late. Some of them keep to themselves as you walk by, some of them will lash out of the cell at you, some will spot you and flip their shit and come at you with a pipe or a knife and then the chase is on. To make matters worse many of them you can't even see, so you have to bring up the night vision in the camera which causes all their eyes to glow white over a grim, darkened, and deformed looking face. NOPE, I'm good.
Even the really obvious scares still manage to fucking get me. There is a scene early on where you pass a guy in a wheel chair. He's clearly not dead and whimpering. If you crouch in front of him and then zoom the camera in close, you will see that his eye sockets are completely covered in seamless skin. He is loosely restrained to the chair. I see this and think "this fucker is going to jump at me". So I approach it and tread closely and nothing, I try to antagonize and nothing. So I move past and complete what I need to in the next room.
Now I know that asshole is going to jump at me. I know he is. But he hasn't twice before so I just barrel through and sure enough, this douche screams and lunges at me, getting in my face and screaming crazy. I was playing it live on twitch.tv, so my friend got a priceless reaction of me jumping like a 5 year old girl and smashing my knuckle into the dual shock controller. Fuck this game.
This is a type of game that doesn't really have a musical score to it. Actually, now that I am thinking about it I am fairly sure this game doesn't have music at all. It uses the horror movie mechanic like you would see in a game like the original Silent Hill where instead of music you have horrible droning noise, that will gradually increase as moments start to get more tense. Or when they aren't tense. Or just whenever at all. It really does a good job of keeping you on your toes.
Is the game perfect? No, of course not. I'd say one of my biggest hang-ups is one that is pretty common for games like this, and that is that the movement speed is practically a crawl. If you are being chased by some hideously grotesque sub-human with the intent to murder you, the relaxed jog you seem to go on would not be the speed you would use. You would be blasting full sprint until your heart.
Another thing is what is the point of the batteries? If the whole camera went down when the batteries died, that would leave you with potential situations to be completely screwed by the environment. It would force you to explore more carefully, and use your camera more sparingly. Instead, all it does is slightly reduce the range you can see in the dark, which just makes it a momentary annoyance than an actual handicap. I suppose this stops you from being completely fucked in a dark room, but I think that the batteries should have more impact than they do.
And seriously, tons of people in this game are wielding a knife, or a hammer, or something. There are sticks, boards, and rocks all over the place. I'm not saying throw in a combat mechanic, but you could at least give some momentary way to stun a pursuer for you to run and hide in safety. The game has a real shitty habit of putting the game's most dangerous enemy in a position where have virtually nowhere to run if he spots you. it has left me frustrated and constantly dying in more than one situation throughout the course of the game.
It's pretty short too. If you are not anal retentive about exploring every nook and cranny of the asylum, and are fairly good at this type of game you can probably rip through the thing within a few hours if you really committed to doing it. I played it at a fairly causal pace (as casual as terror will allow, mind you) and I was able to complete the entire game in about three or four sessions total. I got it on PS+ for free, but its only 15 bucks, so I suppose for the value its set at, that's probably an appropriate length.
I also have a minor issue with the ending of the game as well. I don't want to say that the end of the game is predictable, but I certainly wasn't shocking. It could have gone any number of ways at the end, and I don't think any of them really would have shocked me. Like a number of horror games, it kinda loses steam after the first few stages. So when it got the big finish of the game and the credits started roll, it left me with a resounding "Eh... yeah that happened."
All that being said, it absolutely delivered on what it was supposed to. I played the game in the dark, effectively had the shit scared out of me on a number of occasions, and managed to keep a tense and oppressive atmosphere and real sense that I was in danger the entire time. Its not going to redefine the horror genre, and some of the subtly goes the wayside in the back half. But in comparison to a number of horror franchises that have been released in the past 10 years or so, this provides an excellent example of how to do a horror game properly. Definitely worth a sit through.
While exploring one of the first rooms, Miles comes across the body of what appears to be a SWAT officer who is spit through chest on a large stake. He rattles to life just long enough to gurgle that Miles needs to get the fuck out of there, and now. Advice that should have been heeded, because shortly after Miles leaves that room, he's attacked by an ogre of an inmate and flung out the window into the atrium of the asylum.
In addition to that, The main character also takes notes in a journal as you play through the game to sort of keep a backtrack of the events that are taken place. But these are written from the perspective of the character, so naturally as you progress along and more and more shit goes wrong, the writing in the journal gets much more panicked and aggressive. It even uses the occasional *gasp* naughty word.
This is one of those games a-la Slender or Amnesia: The Dark Descent where your only defense is to hightail your ass from danger. When you are being pursued, hiding spots are scarce and darkness is your ally (but you merely adopt the dark). So when somethings on you, the music will crescendo and you will need to hoof it out of wherever you are. You will want to find a dark spot, and duck behind something, get in a locker, or get under a bed.
Light is very scarce in this game, so you will need to bring up your camcorder for a lot of portions of the map. You can record things as normal, but I don't really see a point to it without using the night vision. The night vision lens is almost mandatory to navigate a large section of areas, many of them completely pitch black otherwise sans a scant glimmer of light in one part of the room. You also have a limited battery life for your camera, so you'll want to keep an eye out for when you need to replace the battery. So far the only thing that happens when it runs out is you lose range on the night vision, but every inch helps so make sure you grab batteries when you see them.
And the enemies... Ohhhhh the enemies.. Grotesquely deformed insane asylum inmates running free, screaming crazy, groaning in agony, and attacking at random. I haven't played far enough to see why everyone is so fucked up looking, and quite frankly I don't care. I can't take it. Everything about this setting is horrifying. There will be moments you walk through and area and inmates will just be walking around, groaning, crying, asking to go home, asking to be killed, screaming unintelligible nonsense, or in some cases even talk normal to you. It's fucking frightening.
 |
| Reminds me of a particularly bad Raspberry jam incident I had once. ..... I don't like to talk about it. |
Even the really obvious scares still manage to fucking get me. There is a scene early on where you pass a guy in a wheel chair. He's clearly not dead and whimpering. If you crouch in front of him and then zoom the camera in close, you will see that his eye sockets are completely covered in seamless skin. He is loosely restrained to the chair. I see this and think "this fucker is going to jump at me". So I approach it and tread closely and nothing, I try to antagonize and nothing. So I move past and complete what I need to in the next room.
Now I know that asshole is going to jump at me. I know he is. But he hasn't twice before so I just barrel through and sure enough, this douche screams and lunges at me, getting in my face and screaming crazy. I was playing it live on twitch.tv, so my friend got a priceless reaction of me jumping like a 5 year old girl and smashing my knuckle into the dual shock controller. Fuck this game.
 |
| Dr. Satan here (Trager) is easily one of the most terrifying. Not because of his looks, but what he says. |
Is the game perfect? No, of course not. I'd say one of my biggest hang-ups is one that is pretty common for games like this, and that is that the movement speed is practically a crawl. If you are being chased by some hideously grotesque sub-human with the intent to murder you, the relaxed jog you seem to go on would not be the speed you would use. You would be blasting full sprint until your heart.
 |
| If you catch sight of Walker, its time to Leave..... And FAST. |
And seriously, tons of people in this game are wielding a knife, or a hammer, or something. There are sticks, boards, and rocks all over the place. I'm not saying throw in a combat mechanic, but you could at least give some momentary way to stun a pursuer for you to run and hide in safety. The game has a real shitty habit of putting the game's most dangerous enemy in a position where have virtually nowhere to run if he spots you. it has left me frustrated and constantly dying in more than one situation throughout the course of the game.
 |
| This guy.... This FUCK'N guy.... |
I also have a minor issue with the ending of the game as well. I don't want to say that the end of the game is predictable, but I certainly wasn't shocking. It could have gone any number of ways at the end, and I don't think any of them really would have shocked me. Like a number of horror games, it kinda loses steam after the first few stages. So when it got the big finish of the game and the credits started roll, it left me with a resounding "Eh... yeah that happened."
All that being said, it absolutely delivered on what it was supposed to. I played the game in the dark, effectively had the shit scared out of me on a number of occasions, and managed to keep a tense and oppressive atmosphere and real sense that I was in danger the entire time. Its not going to redefine the horror genre, and some of the subtly goes the wayside in the back half. But in comparison to a number of horror franchises that have been released in the past 10 years or so, this provides an excellent example of how to do a horror game properly. Definitely worth a sit through.
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