The Haunted Hoard: Outlast (Xbox One)
Insane asylums may seem like a bit of a played out location for horror stories, and when it comes to horror games released after titles like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, having the protagonist unable to fight back against whatever creatures and characters they encounter might also feel like a rather run of the mill game concept. There is a reason both concepts caught on though, and while using either one on their own doesn’t guarantee anything successful or interesting, Outlast shows there is still potential in both ideas.
Outlast takes place entirely in the Mount Massive Asylum, the player taking control of a reporter named Miles Upshur who is investigating the strange claims surrounding the Murkoff Corporation’s activities at the psychiatric hospital. Immediately the game justifies the fragility and lack of power found in its protagonist by making him an unarmed reporter who is bringing nothing but a video camera to the asylum, the only thing the camera really provides for the player being a night vision toggle that allows the game to have dark areas to explore without straining the eyes or over-relying on hiding its dangers in the dark. In fact, the odd green tint it adds when seeing the horrors you’re avoiding can sometimes up their eeriness, and the need to keep topping off your batteries to use the night vision mode discourages you from constantly using it, the player sometimes asked to explore a bit in the dark not out of necessity, but out of a desire to have the night vision option when it is most useful.
Mount Massive Asylum isn’t just relying on the idea that crazy people are running around killing people for no reason though, that horror trope being pushed aside in favor of a more interesting explanation for why the building has become so dilapidated and populated with demented killers. The Murkoff Corporation explicitly used the mental asylum as a testing ground for deliberately horrific experiments because the individuals were essentially discarded by society, and while the game doesn’t exactly go for some sympathetic angle with this, it at least allows for more interesting explanations behind the individuals you meet along the way. The story begins with the reporter quickly learning that there is much more going on than first believed and immediately wanting to leave, but he’s locked in, many of the patients getting released and going on a rampage against the staff and each other. The player needs to guide Miles safely through the asylum, meeting many of its residents and quickly learning just how dire things were for the patients. Murkoff didn’t just torment the people living there, but performed many strange cosmetic surgeries, grafting skin in odd ways across their faces, some even having their eyes and other orifices covered by the new flaps of flesh. Some of the impact of seeing the mutilated patients is lessened though as a few technical limitations make themselves apparent. Seeing the first person who has teeth bulging out of their face as their mouth has been entirely filled with flesh is striking, but seeing that same character model reappear again and again alongside other familiar ones makes later moments feel a little less interesting.
Outlast does at least on the whole manage to deliver on horror set pieces and fearful situations well though. While it will definitely dip into shock value moments, Outlast features far more legitimate scares and maintains a good handle on building up tension. The game takes place entirely in first person, which means to move anywhere you need to be looking in that direction and thus surprises can be lurking just out of sight or waiting in the dark until you click on night vision. There are definitely jump scares to be found, but these have the proper kind of set up to them that make them an effective culmination of the atmosphere built up before hand. There are many moments in Outlast that feel like perfect set-ups for a sudden scare or abrupt attack, such as when you’re slowly climbing down a manhole ladder with only the area above to see or shimmying across a ledge near an occupied jail cell. These both seem primed to be perfect moments for something to leap out, run across, or otherwise try and terrify a player, but by showing restraint at certain moments that would work as perfect setups for such scares, Outlast manages to make itself even more unnerving. You never quite know when the game might hold itself back or leap in full force with something frightening, and that uncertainty helps a lot with keeping the player on edge.
As Miles searches for his way out, finding keys, activating machines and systems, and finding out the truth of what happened in Mount Massive by way of files scattered about, he’ll move through an asylum that not only manages to have some decently varied areas thanks to exploring reasonably different areas like a medical ward, recreation areas, and shower rooms, but it slowly builds up to the mystery of the Walrider. Mentioned early on and brought up again and again by documents and even patients you encounter, the Walrider is the looming mystery behind what is going on at this hospital, but the game does reveal perhaps a bit too much about it early on, making the endgame buildup to the reveal a little less effective since you were given too much info about it early on in a tease about its true nature. Along the way to solving the mystery of the Walrider though, you’ll encounter many special patients, and in a surprisingly effective choice, none of them have any special names or titles to them to dehumanize them. The most consistent, persistent, and deranged one, a large powerful man in clinking chains, is simply known as Chris Walker. While you could conceivably call characters like the delusional zealot Martin “The Priest” for short, the game never refers to them like monsters, for these are very much men chasing after you.
While exploring the asylum and trying to find paths forward, certain mutated patients will take a deadly interest in your activities, chasing you down the moment they spot you. With no way to fight back, Miles will have to flee any moment he is detected to either try to lose them in the long halls and open rooms of the asylum or hide in lockers, under beds, or in pitch black darkness, and while a death only punts you back a small amount of time, the game often sets up its progression goals to be small multi-step tasks that will be fully reset if you are caught and killed. While some horror games will make being caught or even simply detected by an enemy an instant death, Outlast makes these moments more interesting since you can escape safely and lose your enemy with smart movement. With some hiding places it seems essentially random if the enemy will check them though, but if you do get caught, Outlast may let you survive the encounter. Most foes will hit you hard if they catch you, but save on the hardest difficulties, you can survive a hit and flee before they hit you again, needing some time to recover after but the potential to overcome getting cornered or having a bit of bad luck making these more interesting than an instant death and area restart. There are some enemies that shift this up too in effective ways, like the two twins. Most of your pursuers have some audio cue to help you run from them, but the twins are exceptions from the norm in a few ways. They talk with surprising intelligence despite being completely naked and clearly cannibalistic, and that intelligence also means they know to keep silent while stalking around whereas most of the patients you need to avoid have some audio cue to help you know when you’re in danger. On top of working together, these two manage to inspire fear because you’re not dealing with the typical angry mutated patient who wants you dead, but thanks to things like being faster than your foes and having night vision so you can slink around the darker areas if you’re careful, you can still survive the few moments the game breaks these more challenging enemies out.
Outlast isn’t perfect at keeping its difficulty in check though, mainly because there are quite a few moments where it asks for some platforming from the player. The player is asked at a few rare points to jump across gaps or jump up to higher areas, and while first person platforming is often a little wonky, the game happily punishes even a slight error here with immediate death. Tense chases that suddenly involve a jump over a pit lose their appeal when you have to do them repeatedly because you must have the perfect running start and angle to clear the gap at their end. Hopping between small ledges or across crumbling wood can also hit these problems, where progress can suddenly be undone because you just barely missed a leap that was almost exactly the length of how far you can jump. A bit more of a consistent issue comes in the way navigating the asylum can end up a little confusing. The twisting design that makes losing enemies possible can hurt you when you need to find your way around. Masking the moments where you will be pursued by seeming to set one up and not delivering also makes getting around regular areas confusing at times even if it helps with the atmosphere of the game where you never know if danger is lurking nearby, but it also hurts moments where you are under a time crunch and need to find your way to a specific exit or area. A quick death again awaits you if you aren’t correct in finding something like a vent hanging open that wasn’t open before, and other little moments of the game expecting you to climb up objects aren’t hinted at too well to the player, mainly because having so many options on where to go at times makes it harder to spot where you should go.
THE VERDICT: Outlast manages to be an effective first person horror experience through an odd balance of restraint and excess. The game happily uses shocking visuals and has pop scares a-plenty, but these pay off an effective establishment of the tone, story, and atmosphere of the game. By not taking every opportunity it has to scare a player, Outlast builds up tension that culminates in the sudden appearance of one of its deadly foes, and while you might not be able to fight back, making encounters survivable even if you’re caught surprisingly makes them more thrilling since there are no foregone conclusions. Night vision adds an interesting workaround to the horror genre’s reliance on darkness as well, but the areas that do work are hurt a little by the game dipping into reusing character models, requiring precise action from weak controls, and sometimes making your path forward unclear and a little tedious.
And so, I give Outlast for Xbox One…
A GOOD rating. There is a lot to commend about the artistic and story choices in Outlast. The mutated patients you encounter along the way are memorable and given scenes and situations to establish them as threats even if they need more than one hit to take you down, and the durability of Miles Upshur actually makes being chased more exciting than if getting caught just spelled instant doom. Night vision is an intelligent way of keeping darkness in the game without using it as a crutch too, especially since your vision with it on isn’t totally clear and the dangers lurking in the dark still have room to catch you off-guard. The problems with Outlast mostly come down to the patients who aren’t as important feeling generic and recycled and the issues with getting around the asylum. Some confusion is to be expected and it can help heighten those moments that are meant to be wild chases where you are just barely able to find a way to lose your pursuer. However, even in well lit areas with no enemies you can sometimes be given too many open doors or jumps that can instantly set you back if you fail. Outlast is at its best when you and your enemy have that somewhat even relationship where you’re faster and smarter but they’re the ones who can take you out if they catch up to you, and while building up to a scare justifies moments of quiet and deceptive set ups, dawdling around with weak movement controls or directionless area layouts are dull rather than tense.
Outlast definitely gets things like the scares and the story right though, and those are the key parts of a good horror game. Developer Red Barrels Inc. learned from familiar horror tropes and design approaches and tweaked them in a way that makes them work well. While it can’t be called a complete refinement of its horror concepts due to its own rough edges, Outlast does deliver on tense cat-and-mouse chases and a strong sense of atmosphere, its horror amplified by its restraint in not taking every chance it had to slip in a scare.