Outlast

I dropped this game after the character is tortured. Watched the rest in youtube.

I think I know what makes this game good for some and boring for others. It has the same concept of Amnesia, emphasis on hiding. The difference is that in Amnesia the darkness hurts the player, while in Outlast it only hinders the player. Amnesia had puzzles, whereas Outlast traded puzzles for obstacles and running away. Both games try to generate as much tension as possible. Outlast is about running for your life on multiple occasions and frequent scary jumps. Amnesia didn’t abuse scary jumps and was much more slow paced.

It’s the storytelling that made me abandon Outlast. Whoever wrote this game’s story went for a bizarre direction with nudity, gore and adrenaline rush. Agony for instance had graphic sex and gore. Outlast presents a bizarre plot of mental disturbances mixed with nudity and graphic violence. The point where Outlast can be better than Amnesia is that you have better placement of enemies and they are not some random zombies that show up out of nowhere and vanish without a trace. The graphics are also more advanced than the first Amnesia.

The game’s sequence didn’t make sense to me. First you are captured and thrown into a cell. Your camera is still with you. The cell’s door is opened by magic. They didn’t make it so that some unseen force or some NPC opened it. Without any explanation some cell’s doors are unlocked while others are locked. To get out of the prison block you have to go look inside each unlocked cell until you notice that one of them has a cracked wall where you can pass through. They didn’t explain why the building is run-down. It doesn’t make sense to lock people inside a building full of holes and openings everywhere for prisoners to escape. The environment art also populated the levels with objects, furniture, shelves, hospital beds, corpses of guards and so on in a way that doesn’t tell a story. It’s more about providing places to hide and move around.

There is a scene where two naked guys are standing behind a gate that won’t open. To get to their side you have to climb outside the corridor through a window to reach the next window. When you return to the corridor the two guys have vanished without a trace. In another scene you are captured and tied to a wheelchair by some villain. You are tortured and have some of your fingers severed. The villain goes out and you suddenly break free from the wheelchair with brute strength. What? Why didn’t the character break free before being tortured? How is it possible that the character goes on climbing throughout the whole game after fingers from his hand were severed?

Near the end the environment shifts to a laboratory or facility where almost everything is white. What happened to the darkness? Who wrote this line “You don’t have to wake up, but open your eyes.”? This illogical writing is what got me.

The night vision has too much glare. It caused too much eye strain.