I finished Outlast about 3 weeks ago, and finally decided to write a review. I didn’t do it before because this game was so… so… (/me is speechless) It was the kind of survival horror I love and I haven’t seen in years. Even though I’m more into ghost/spirit stories because intangible enemies are the ones that scare me the most, this game had the same effect on me. You see, Outlast “monsters” are as bad to encounter as any _Fatal Frame _ghost.

The things you’ll find in Outlast are the things real survival horror is made of.

In _Outlast _you play as “a freelance journalist, (who) receives a tip-off from an anonymous source about Mount Massive Asylum” (source) and decides to check the place. And yes, he decides to do it when it’s getting dark, as it’s always supposed to happen in horror movies and games. But by the time he finds out the place is as bad as the tip-off described, it’s too late for him to leave. And therefore your desperate attempt to flee from the asylum starts.

This is the first thing I liked about the game. You arrived to the place, found out you shouldn’t be there, and just f*** things up when you decide to leave. It sounds pretty realistic for this kind of game. There’s no “I’m an awesome journalist and this is my job” or “This story could make me famous, I need to investigate further to tell the world about this”. Nah, f*** that s***, you just want to get your ass out of that place ASAP. This is also why Outlast really deserves the title of survival horror: the game story is quite meh. You find a little about the events that took place in that asylum through documents and notes you find in your way, but still at the end everything is pretty unclear… But you don’t give a s***!!! You just want the protagonist to get the f*** out of that freaking place alive!!!… Or at least, that’s the feeling I got.

Yeah, why not? That always goes smoothly.

Outlast has almost everything: cool graphics, crazy good music, the atmosphere… Damn, its atmosphere is creepy as f***. This game has a lot of Amnesia-like settings (Amnesia: The Dark Descent, I mean, not that easy senseless predictable Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs they released recently), combined with that Fatal Frame-like creepy as hell way to play looking through a camera. And if you played Amnesia before, you sure remember that feeling of closing your eyes while crouching in the dark wondering if you’re gonna get raped right now… or in about a couple of minutes.

You never feel safe in Outlast, there is no room nor hiding place that can guarantee no maniac will get from behind you any second. And even if you are not afraid of a close encounter because the bad guys are not that bad looking (like Amnesia’s monsters), the tension will keep you stressing out every time you walk towards a corridor corner.

I am a very jumpy person, and psychological horror games always get me, and I couldn’t play Outlast for more than 3 hours straight because the stress was hard to handle. But even if you are not as jumpy, Outlast is a must-play if you like survival horror. Really. It is awesome.

Comment on the ending (MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT!!!)

I could put Outlast’s ending in my top 10 most frustrating game endings. It is probably because I went through hell with the protagonist, “we” worked so hard, “we” suffered so much to get out of that place… that I really really really didn’t want all of that to be in vain. However, the idea of surviving got more and more unrealistic as I got close to the end, and someone in the Steam forums pointed out the car the journalist arrived in at the beginning of the game was almost out of fuel, so he wouldn’t have made it to the hospital anyway. And guess what, even Outlast’s description in Steam spoils the ending (“Hell is an experiment you can’t survive in Outlast”…).

My first thought when I finished the game was “WHAT?!?! WTF?!?! NO. NO, NO, YOU HAVE TO BE F***ING KIDDING ME, F*** THIS GAME, F*** IT, F*** EVERYTHING” but on a second thought I realized it was not that bad. It was not great, but it was definitely not bad. I am now able to say I enjoyed everything about this game.