I’ve been a very busy bee as of late. My board game reviews and Kickstarter previews are picking back up, hopefully due to the new board game video series that I’ve introduced on my YouTube channel. At any rate, I still love to play video games…especially scary ones. After hearing so many good things about how scary “Outlast” was, I knew that I just had to play it. Due to time constraints and the fact that I am covering this on my own dime, I’ll opt to keep this article short and sweet.
Outlast (Windows)
Being a fan of “Amnesia: The Dark Descent”, I have to say that I took to this game almost immediately. “Outlast” has the same general gameplay mechanics in that you won’t really be able to defend yourself. All you’ll be able to do is run, hide, and whimper in some dark, secluded corner. In this case, you’re an investigative journalist by the name of Miles Upshur. Your task is to explore Mount Massive Asylum and uncover its dark secrets, preferably without being killed.
“Outlast” is not for the faint of heart. You WILL get scared. You WILL need a change of undergarments. You WILL be jumping out of your skin, wishing that your character had SOME way to defend himself. Your handy camera, you see, doesn’t make much for a weapon. Sure, it allows you to see darker areas, but using it will drain your precious battery. While you’re hunting the environment for more batteries, the threat of some crazy loon wandering around the corner becomes all the more real.
Overall, I thought “Outlast” was a very pretty game. The developers purposely designed the game to scare the pants off of whoever played it, and I must say that they accomplished their goal and then some. If you can’t stomach a good scare, then stay away from this game. For those of you who have already grown a pair, then you’ll find “Outlast” to be an intense and riveting experience. Of course, watching a horror game is much more effective than reading about it, so check out my gameplay videos below to see just what you’d be getting yourself into…though you may want to turn on some lights first.
Final Verdict: 8/10
Editor’s Note: I encountered issues launching the game initially. A DOS box would pop up for a few seconds then nothing would happen. Apparently, my game was missing DLL files that should have been in the Steam/Steamapps/Common/Outlast/Binaries/Win 64 folder. After receiving the DLL files and unzipping them into the Win 64 folder, I was able to launch the game. You can find those files here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7sbjb891nayezan/dlls.zip
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You can purchase the game on Steam here:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/238320/
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You can view the fifteen-part video walkthrough here:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy-_-0rh3dPqpufPYvX8BPpJfcpjPNmpW
Or you can start with part one below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w6_zDbWutI