Outlast II

According to a walkthrough I dropped by the beginning of chapter 2. That’s when a dwarf attacks you with arrows and right before another hallucination that brings you to the school. Later on I returned and played until the river. This game has taught me that “darkness sickness” is a thing and is similar to “motion sickness”. I got a terrible headache and sore eyes due to the excessive darkness in this game. This game is meant to be played with a monitor at 100% brightness. Amnesia also gave me headaches, albeit much weaker.

When the character is knocked off the wooden raft and has to walk up to some hill and knock down a tree to create a bridge to reach the stranded raft on the other side of the river. That’s the point of the game that I said “enough of this s*!”. I couldn’t see the raft because I play with the monitor at half brightness and even if I could see it I wouldn’t know that I was supposed to knock down a tree. This game continues the same trend of the first, the character’s hands are mutilated and yet, he’s still able to climb up and down, grab objects, swim and even knock down a tree till the end of the game.

Many negative reviews tell that this game relies on too much trial and error. I agree. Rather than guiding the player through the environment, the game forces the player to err, die and try again.

At first I was amazed by the graphics, but soon I noticed the flaws in this game’s design. The story ends with multiple unresolved plot lines. It’s the classic “bright flash” and the screen turns to black.

The good side

It has better game design than Outlast 1. For ex: “hear nearby dialogues and see something from behind a wall, through some cracks in that wall”. The is a common technique used by the movie industry.

Terrifying atmosphere and hyper realistic graphics which include the moon’s halo.

The corpses in the first game were randomly placed as if they were merely decorations. In the second game the corpses and carcasses are better integrated into the environment. This results in better storytelling (or is it a cause of? Not sure).

It continues the trend of the first game, running away and scary jumps. However, this time around the scary jumps are better placed and better timed. In the first one the scary jumps were overly done.

They made a creative mechanic with the camera being able to record scenes, audio and log documents. It captures the atmosphere of mystery and investigation quite well. This game reminds me of the movie “The Wicker Man” among others that has the idea of a cult in some isolated place where the character is left to die or escape.

Thank god they reworked the night vision filter. In the previous game the greenish glare was unbearable to my eyes.

In Alien Isolation you can’t escape once the alien sees you. In this game there is a witch with a steel crucifix that hunts you in multiple scenes. In comparison to the alien you can at least evade her or shake her off your tail.

The sound effects and soundtrack are very immersive and truly create a chilling experience

The segments in the school remind me of F.E.A.R. 2 and I wouldn’t be surprised if they did them in reference to the latter. In addition, there is a sphere in Outlast 1 that seems to be a copy of the same sphere used to contain ALMA in F.E.A.R. 1.

In comparison to Amnesia TDD and Rebirth I’d say that the enemies were better placed and integrated into the environment. In Amnesia TDD and Rebirth I felt that the enemies were disjointed from the environments, except for that last part in Amnesia Rebirth that takes place in the alien world.

The bad side

I understand why people call this type of game “coward simulators”. There were times that I really wanted to have weapons or be able to fend off the enemies. Alien Isolation had weapons to offset the hide and seek repetition. Amnesia had the puzzles which made the environments more interactive than in Outlast 1 and 2.

This game is linear, but that’s not what made me abandon it. It’s more about leaving the player lost with no clear direction to follow. This game is much darker than Amnesia, both figuratively and literally. When the enemies are hunting you, you just run for your life in any direction that is opposite to where the enemies are coming from. With the deep darkness you can’t see a thing and you often become lost, despite the levels being pretty linear. In regards to scripted events this game clearly does them better than the first. Yet, the level design is very confusing. For ex: in the beginning of the game, the first time you encounter the witch, you have to run forward to evade her. If you try to sneak around there is no way to play stealth to get past her. In other parts of the game they employed that technique of placing enemies in front of doorways or corridors to tell the player “not safe this way”. However, you have to die first to learn that. There is a part in this game where you have to lure that witch somewhere away from a wooden cart, so that you can push it towards a gate to jump over it. In hindsight, Alan Wake was much better at guiding the player through the darkness of the game. There is more than just light to guide the player.

Many players complain about long texts to read in Remedy’s games. This includes me. Outlast 2 went too far in including long pages that sometimes have two columns of text to read. That’s a sign of poor storytelling and I gave up reading those long pages with nothing of importance for the gameplay. All those texts provide some context to the cultists’ beliefs, but you can skip them.

Many players complain about the batteries draining too fast. In the beginning of the game there were always plenty of batteries, but as the game progressed I often found myself lost and running low on batteries. In Amnesia there is a blue glow that provides enough light for you to see around. In Outlast 2 however, once the batteries are flat there is just a faint green glow for you to identify walls one feet away from your nose.

The fact that you never know when a door is locked or not in this game is frustrating, especially when you want to hide. For every door you have to check it by yourself and see the same animation of a locked door over and over.

The camera can record sounds, but the levels weren’t designed to take advantage of this feature. Players even keep audio recording off because the batteries drain too fast.

This game is yet another example of focusing too much on graphics and leaving design behind

What’s the difference between fear and shock or adrenaline rush? In Amnesia the darkness drains the player’s “health”. On the other hand, in Outlast 1 and 2, the darkness only hinders the player’s vision. In Outlast 1 and 2 they resort to jump scares to instill fear. They also made a strange combination of nudity, terror and insanity. I think that somehow they confused horror in the context of crimes and sexual assaults and terror in games.

Outlast 1 is shorter and smaller than Alien Isolation, yet it makes the same mistake of returning to the same places over and over. Outlast 2 did the same by returning to the school during hallucinations over and over.

People complained about the A.I. being omniscient and seeing through walls. Really, to be scared of enemies is one thing. An A.I. that sees through walls is something else.

The monster that shows up in the school during the hallucinations makes organic tissue spawn in walls, ceiling and floors. It’s clearly “stolen” from Amnesia.

The bright flash that blinds everyone in certain moments seems to be borrowed from Alan Wake. It’s the same light that is seen in Alan Wake when Thomas Zane appears.