I'm making some real progress with my Steam backlog, as I've got another finished game to talk about right here. BACKGROUND:
Outlast was one of those horror games that a lot of Let's Play channels played at the time, but strangely enough, I never watched a playthrough of it. I was able to capitalize on a Humble Bundle promotion that gave me this game for free, but I never got around to play it until now. A fun thing I did for my playthrough of this is that I streamed it to my friends on our private Discord server. I had been toying around with the idea of streaming again this year, and I wanted to try out Discord's Go Live function, so I thought a game that would scare my friends would be the perfect thing to have them watch. It was a really fun experience that reminded me of the old days (when friends would huddle up around the guy with the laptop and watch the game), and I'm planning to do more of these streams soon. And with the really rough year I've been having (which I'm sure is a sentiment many can relate to), getting to hang out with friends virtually is something I really need for my shattered psyche. PLOT: The game follows Miles Upshur, an investigative journalist, who's just gotten a tip about strange goings-on at Mount Massive Asylum. The tip alleges that the people running the place, Murkoff Corporation, have been conducting unethical experiments on the patients within the asylum. Seeking to take the corporation down, Miles heads to the asylum, but finds the place in utter ruins. To make things more unsettling, there are dead bodies everywhere, and the things that left those dead bodies are 100% still in there with Miles. As you go through the game, you will learn more of the exact nature of the experiments, and how they made the patients completely homicidal. Some of the details are relayed to you in scripted scenes with lots of dialogue, but a lot of it must be pieced together by finding various text documents scattered about in the game. Overall, I thought the story was interesting, because while it's grounded for the most part (dealing with criminally insane patients and all), it goes in a sort of sci-fi/supernatural direction that I wasn't quite expecting. I wouldn't say it's particularly innovative, but I was sufficiently engaged. Miles is a silent protagonist, so you won't get much personality out of him, but you'll also encounter a small assortment of characters throughout the story. Majority of them have unfortunately gone off the deep end, so you don't get much out of them other than how events have completely warped their minds. Learning more about these characters requires reading the aforementioned documents, and if you're not a fan of storytelling that involves piecing things together yourself, or lots of reading, you may not enjoy the story as much. I personally find some enjoyment with this method of storytelling, but I understand that it's not for everyone. PRESENTATION: I'd say this game looks pretty good in terms of visuals, but it's nothing insanely impressive. The 3D models and textures are all pretty decent for the most part. The environments aren't all that remarkable, though to be fair, there's only so much you can do to make an asylum look interesting. There are a lot of gory visuals (like mutilated corpses, disfigured patients, pools of blood, and scattered viscera) and violent moments in the game, so fair warning to the squeamish. Both the strongest and weakest point of this game is its lighting. As this is a horror game, you would naturally expect little lighting, and that is true for Outlast. Most rooms are poorly lit for one reason or another, and it's done in a way that adds to the creepy atmosphere. It really makes you want to be cautious when moving across areas. However, the game sometimes takes this too far, with some places being so dark as shit, it's difficult to figure out where to go or to find what you need. That said, there is night vision, so it's only really a pain if you decide not to use it. On that note, the game in night vision mode looks damn good, and it adds to the dreadful atmosphere, too. The game excels in terms of audio. The music is suspenseful, and the tracks fit the mood of the current situation to a tee (e.g. eerie music when exploring, panic-inducing music for chase sequences). The sound design is where the audio really shines, with pretty good stereo sound (I can usually tell in which direction footsteps are coming from), and terrifying sound effects. One particular sound effect we all agreed was well done was the heavy breathing of the player character. If something frightening happens in the game, Miles would start hyperventilating, and I thought this was a brilliant attention to detail. Plus, this adds to the sense of dread the player feels; I was honestly more unnerved by the panicked breathing than the actual scares in the game. GAMEPLAY: Outlast is a first-person survival horror game. The idea is to explore the various areas of the museum, find items and interact with objects to unlock new areas, and to run the fuck away from danger. Unlike other survival horror games, which give you some sort of offensive capability (like a gun), you are utterly defenseless here. Your options are, as the game itself tells you: run, hide, or die. The fact that this is all you can do in the face of danger certainly adds to the sense of dread. All you have on you is a video camera, which you can toggle on and off at any time. It has two functions: first, turning it on during key moments records a Note, which you can view in a menu to help piece together the story. Second, and more importantly, the camera has a night vision feature, which is the key to navigating the seemingly infinite dark areas of the asylum. Using night vision drains the camera's battery, and you'll need to look around for spare batteries to keep it alive. I thought the implementation of the camera as a mechanic was neat; it serves a story purpose and a gameplay purpose at the same time. The night vision is an interesting take on resource management; you almost always need to use it for most of the areas, but you can't use it forever, so you have to pick and choose your spots to turn it on. In my playthrough, I didn't really have any issues managing battery power, but I can't imagine this game being that pleasant to play without the night vision. Something about how the environment is laid out makes it somewhat confusing to navigate, and I got lost or turned around a fair amount of times. I'd wager that I would have found it infuriating without night vision. Speaking of navigation, the game is mostly linear, but there are a good number of instances where you have to explore branching paths or backtrack. It's generally easy to find your way around thanks to straightforward paths or helpful signs, but in some areas, it can be difficult to notice the way to go. There are also areas that loop back around on each other, which can get confusing at times. The few extra rooms there are usually lead to documents or batteries. Although most of your movement is just running around, there are also instances where you have to vault over obstacles, squeeze through tight spaces, shimmy across ledges, pull yourself up to vents, and jump across gaps (we joked during streams that this was "some Nathan Drake shit", in reference to the Uncharted games). Though it's generally simple to execute these (just walk up to the designated area and you'll do it automatically), it's sometimes not immediately noticeable that you can perform these actions in a given area. There are certainly moments where I wandered around like an idiot for several minutes because I didn't look up and see an open vent, or didn't realize that I could climb onto those stack of boxes. Also, the jump is practically useless apart from small gaps; you can't jump over or onto anything that isn't explicitly an object meant to be vaulted over or climbed. Most of the puzzles are pretty tame, and they're either a variation of "interact with a number of switches and then hit this main switch after" or "find the key somewhere". The trouble is mostly in actually finding the places, or surviving long enough to get everything done. There are also moments when you can push obstacles in front of/away from doors (either to open up a path or to block enemies), but those aren't complex either. If you're looking for something engaging in this aspect of gameplay, this is not really the game for you. Of course, because this is a horror game, there are a bunch of deranged motherfuckers out to kill you. As stated before, all you can do is run or hide, so avoiding these assholes involves plenty of running around. In some areas, all you have to do is outrun the bastards (and that will usually involve well-timed jumps or something of the sort), or you have to lure them into an area, run circles around them, and make a mad dash out of the way. In terms of hiding, you can interact with lockers and hide under beds, but these hiding spots only work if you aren't spotted going into them, and if there's more than one hiding spot in an area. You have to do a lot of running and hiding, and it's easy to lose one's sense of direction when doing so. Having people watch me play and assist me when I get turned around definitely mitigated the frustration I felt in such moments. Since I am usually terrible at stealth, a lot of what I did was running, but hiding and sneaking around is definitely effective if done right. Waiting for the enemy to walk past your hiding spot and sneaking away is a completely viable strategy, and not running or opening doors quietly makes you less likely to be noticed. I found that there were a fair amount of jump scares in the game, so if you hate shit like that, you will probably have an unpleasant time even just watching this game. As somebody who doesn't really get fazed by horror and has seen a lot of the common setups for scares, the most I could muster for a lot of these jump scares is a mild startled reaction. What I found more stressful were situations in which you actually know danger is present; the game usually gives you audio cues or presents the danger at a somewhat safe distance (which is often enough to prepare). Shit gets a little intense when you lose track of where the danger is, get lost/turned around/get stuck in a dead end, or do something too slow and let the enemy catch up to you. For those reasons, I found the numerous chase sequences to be the most thrilling moments of the entire game. The game is lenient when it comes to dealing with enemies (at least at the difficulty I played), as it takes three or four good hits from the assholes chasing you to actually kill you. The checkpoints are also generous, saving when you make it past a given area. Trial and error is actually a viable approach because of this. On the subject of difficulty, there are four settings: Normal, Hard, Nightmare, and Insane. I played on Normal for the sake of just beating the game, and I didn't really find it troublesome at all. If I had to guess, the harder difficulties probably adjust things such as enemy AI and the abundance of batteries. Perhaps they even become less generous with checkpoints or HP. I'll have to explore this in the future. VERDICT: Outlast does a lot to provide a solid horror experience: uncomfortable setting, "monsters" that are (sort of) grounded in reality, excellent atmosphere (especially with the audio), and the fact that you are defenseless. Apart from a few minor issues, I enjoyed playing through this game, and I thought it did a lot well to make things scary. I can't really say I was scared at any point (because I honestly didn't feel anything beyond mild surprise and nervousness), but some of my friends who watched along were definitely unsettled (that, or they were unsettled by how poorly I played the game, which is probably justified). If you've got the stomach for horror games, this is definitely one to check out. If not, you may want to spare yourself the nightmares. Special thanks to Jed, Sheela, Adi, and Moses for humoring me and watching the Discord stream; it was the most fun I've had in a while, and I plan to do more. Their insights also helped in putting together this blog entry. Here's Outlast's Steam page: Outlast on Steam (steampowered.com) - end -
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June 2024
Derryck
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