Outlast - Don't Turn Off the Lights

Wow, just wow I'd like to say this is one of the best games I've played in a long time, I loved every thrilling second of it.

The game is scary, finished it all alone (crazy isn't it) and only played it at night with headphones on and what an awesome experience this game was, absolutely brutal.

I found the game got better as time went on and I loved the thought provoking ending, as confusing as it was.

To sum things up I got this game free on PS4 but if I had to do it all again I'd pay full price for it all day everyday. Yes I may be late to the party but hey can you blame me?

What did you guys think about this masterpiece of a game?

I still haven't got around to playing this, but nearly every week somebody I know is talking about it. Even at work. I'll try to get around to it soon.

Needs Co-op

I though Outlast was extremely lame. The setting is as generic as it gets, and the plot has so many dumb clichés it's nauseating. The game doesn't seem to have any actual horror going for it either. The enemy designs look like the kind of try-hard campy garbage you find in a store selling Halloween props or a hokey haunted house ride. Without any scary enemies or an unsettling story going for it the game just resorts to assaulting you with noise and jump scares.

The protagonist is also a complete moron who absolutely refuses to find himself a weapon to fight off the enemies he could easily fight off. The juvenile treatment of mental illness was also somewhat offensive.

The game makes me think of an incompetent version of Siren: Blood Curse, a game that manages to be genuinely terrifying and interesting.

God I hope this whole fad of first person horror games where you can't do anything but run away and hide dies off soon. Third person survival horror games can't come back soon enough.

I really enjoyed. Playing it with the lights off is mandatory. I did have some jump out of your seat moments.

Really wasn't expecting the game to be that good. Modern day horror games should learn from it.

I hope to see more games like Outlast.

@Pffrbt: I had overall mixed feeling on Outlast as well. Miles should at least be able to shove. They also could have had him able to defeat enemies by catching them in traps of some kind. (think of what happened to Dr. Trager, except in real time) Siren: Blood Curse was the single best thing to happen to survival horror last generation. I'd almost go as far to say it's the single game that kept the genre alive as Nintendo took Fatal Frame and sat on it, (and still is) Resident Evil became Shenmue with guns, and Silent Hill was westernized to death.

Outlast was ok, as an experience. As a game, it is extremely lacking.

Still got to check it out.

I don't mind that the game had no combat, because I think that works with the horror genre a hell of a lot better than too much combat. My gripe with Outlast was that it was way too reliant on "jump scares" and (like pffrbt said) an insane asylum is a pretty generic setting for a horror game. Still, it had excellent production values for an indie game, very well polished graphics and lighting effects, and it even played well in 3D, but for me it doesn't come anywhere near the "classic" horror games in my library like Silent Hill 1 through 3 or the first Amnesia game.

-Byshop

It's a good horror game and an obvious labor of love.

I think it would have been among the horror greats if it incorporated a sanity meter and took more chances in general; it lacks dark ambiance and there could have been more environmental scares rather than focusing on the patients. It's nice for what it is, but doesn't quite reach the heights of Amnesia: The Dark Descent or early 3D horrors

I think its overrated and not scary at all , afterall its a game and its not like something suddenly will jump out of the screen.

Yeah, in retrospect there were a couple things that sort of killed this game for me. The simplicity of the core gameplay along with the setting itself. The game's environment wasn't very interactive and the progression was pretty linear. These two elements remind me I'm playing a video game, which breaks immersion and in turn makes the game less scary. Amnesia 1 also had no combat, but the environment was awesome to explore. You could open every drawer and cabinet, even though the vast majority of them had nothing of use. The light mechanic and the sanity elements also added a lot to the gameplay. The camera mechanic in Outlast was interesting but they could have done so much more with it.

The other thing was the asylum. In order for horror to work, you need a mix of scary and mundane. Hammering the player with constant scary re-establishes the player's baseline for normal so it ceases to be scary. Silent Hill understood this, with it's mix of what seemed like a normal town but that was just off and unsettling, versus the hell dimension that you would get pulled in and out of. When the hell dimension would wear out its welcome, the game put you back into the "normal" setting for a while. This ebb and flow keeps you from getting too used to anything and keeps the scary parts effective. Outlast's asylum didn't really have that balance. It was just creepy all the time punctated by a steady stream of jump scares, which started to lose their impact pretty quickly as a result. The game "showed" too much and didn't rely on the player's imagination enough, and what you can imagine will always be scarier than what someone can show you. Amnesia's sanity effect also worked out great for this, too, since it was difficult to even get a good look at the things chasing you since looking directly at them had a negative effect on your character's sanity.

I'm not saying that Outlast is a bad game. It's one of the better horror games to have come out in a long time, especially in an era where most developers just clone CoD, replace the soldiers with monsters and call it a "horror" game.

-Byshop

Yeah but how come movies can still scare us? Unless you feel the same way towards films. Anyways sorry to hear you can't be scared by games, I jumped out of my chair many times in Outlast, one time I even had to press pause just to catch my breath again, haha I loved it.

Sounds like a cool game.. downloading it now for pc :)

Obviously you have to try to meet it halfway. Of course any piece of horror fiction, be it a game, movie, tv show, etc cannot cause you physical harm. The point is to try to lose yourself in the story, to achieve that level of immersion where you start to forget that you're playing a game, etc. For good horror games, this is something that works well. For bad horror games, they have elements that pull you out of the experience. Outlast had a number of elements that pulled me out of feeling like it was a real experience. The constant string of jump scare setpieces in a relatively linear progression through a non-interactive environment made it feel more like a "haunted house amusement park" than a real scary place.

-Byshop

You are right Byshop and for me Outlast just doesnt offer anything, its a bland bad experiences that tries hard but fails in each level.

The first moment when you open a door and enter a dark room in asylum almost gave me a heart attack . After that , I didn't find the game scary anymore . I was in my senses all the time and kept thinking "nothing can surprise me , nothing can surprise me , be alert man , you are brave" . Then I finished the game without breaking a sweat and nothing scared me in that game . I think this was due to Amnesia : The Dark Decent that I played few days ago before the release of Outlast . After experiencing all those nightmarish moments in Amnesia TDD , I didn't find Outlast as scary as people say it is . Amnesia AMFP on other hand wasn't even a horror game for me but I still liked it due to excellent story line . The real horror of that game was in its dark story line and amazing main character . The biggest disappointment I had with Outlast was its ending , it wasn't rewarding at all . I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't played it yet but it is not satisfying as Amnesia TDD's ending .

@Cloud_imperium:

Same here, but for me Amnesia Dark Descent (P.S: i'm a coward:P) wasn't THAT scary either, 'twas stressing, you fear you die from these stupid monsters and run like a monkey when you 'em but probably it was really scary in the last few walkthroughs...

I will download to see how it, although I am not one to get scared so easily.

Overall I was enjoying Outlast, but there were a couple of little annoying things that ruined it for me. But I will probably go back and play it again soon.

I thought it was crapola.

I play Outlast like a badass when nobody is at home,I turn off the lights,deattach my headphone and play it.I am 14 years old and this game still failed to scare me like Dead Space did.