Outlast 2 Review
Follow the blood, and try not to die…
Outlast 2 ticks all the boxes for a perfect survival horror happy meal, with extra blood, gore and scares. It combines a dark, scary atmosphere with excellent graphics, an eerie soundtrack, and the total inability for players to fight back against what the game throws at them, to create an unsettling, frighteningly-grotesque adventure and a truly horrifying experience of uncertainty and anxiety in which the player’s only options are speed, stealth and quick thinking. Those aspects might put some players off, but they also make Outlast 2 absolutely perfect for horror fans.
In Outlast 2, players take on the role of investigative journalist Blake Langermann who, along with his wife Lynn, becomes involved in a helicopter crash in the Supai region of Arizona, where a pregnant woman was mysteriously murdered. The accident renders Blake unconscious, as one might expect, and he awakens to find the helicopter’s pilot murdered and Linn missing, forcing him on a horrifying journey into nearby Temple Gate to try and rescue her and get out alive. Outlast 2’s religious-themed story continues with the found-footage approach of its predecessor; Blake’s camcorder is his best friend, but can very quickly become his — and the player’s — worst nightmare when the first-person scares get a little too close for comfort.
The most important, and significant, aspect of Outlast 2’s horror is the fear of the unknown. It’s hard to keep composed when there’s often no way of knowing exactly when the next scare is going to happen. Players are forced to take care when exploring Temple Gate knowing that there could always be around a corner or behind a door just waiting to kill you violently. Even those who stand motionless, as if torn on whether to attack or not, can become aggressive as a result of the slightest movement, and that’s even more terrifying! Given that the game is set at night, Blake is required to explore his surroundings in search of batteries in order to keep his camcorder’s night-vision functionality handy. If that’s not enough, Blake will randomly experience disturbing hallucinations based on his traumatic childhood in a Catholic school, in which he is pursued by a hideous monster with a very long tongue. Moments like these serve to increase the player’s anxiety levels, with the hallucinations becoming more and more powerful as the game progresses. Even with the camcorder’s night vision at Blake’s disposal, it’s almost impossible to ever feel safe on such a painfully long night; seriously, I wasn’t sure that I’d ever see the sun again.
Blake is an experienced cameraman, so his camcorder is more advanced than Miles Upshur’s was in the original Outlast. New additions include the ability to view your recordings for specific events (replacing Outlast’s notebook), and a microphone that allows Blake to listen through walls and discover approaching enemies. Recording events tended to get a bit frustrating; the camera would blink when Blake needs to record something, forcing the player to stand still and wait until the recording finishes… Only to then be forced to review the footage on the camera with Blake narrating his thoughts. This process felt far too time consuming, whereas Outlast’s notebook was much faster and more convenient.
Jump-scares are rather scarce early in the game, leaving the disturbing atmosphere Red Barrels has created to do the heavy lifting when it comes to keeping the player on the edge of their seat; in a bittersweet way, this was short-lived, and the scares soon intensified to the point where I was compelled to hug my dog every time I jumped in the my seat. I was terrified to walk two steps. Heretics and monsters jump out of nowhere, and the game is so dark that running away and hiding is significantly difficult, especially when Blake needs to find someplace to hide very quickly.
Outlast 2 contains more enemies, and a greater variety of them, than its predecessor. Groups of cultists are all out on the hunt, and they will chase you down if you’re careless enough to get spotted. A crazy lady named Marta also roams around town armed with a massive pickaxe, making her quite easily the most intimidating character in the game, and she’ll likely impale you if you try to flee from her. The diseased people strewn around Temple Gate were also particularly unnerving; they seem harmless at first, but are often found standing next to bandages or batteries that the player needs to pick up, and it’s only after you grab what you need that the sneaky bastards will grab Blake and scare the ever-living hell out of the player in doing so. The absolute worst, however, are those insane people who crawl on the floor and attack when you can’t see them — I’ve taken to calling them “Creepy Crawly Mad Motherfuckers.” In addition to the Creepy Crawly Mad Motherfuckers, players will encounter inhuman creatures, similar to what one might find in Neil Marshall’s 2005 horror film The Descent, who start chasing you with little notice… And they’re bloody quick. There were far more enemies than I’d expected to see going into the experience, and they’re all looking to serve up a bloody, gruesome death. Despite often resulting in repeated death, each encounter was more exhilarating, more intimidating, and more terrifying than the last, making me anxious to finish the game and relieve myself of the terror I’d walked into.
The soundtrack often makes the difference between a good horror title and a great one. Combining jumpscares with a dark and gloomy atmosphere may cause players to feel uneasy, but the music and sound effects tie it all together, maintaining the fear factor — and the mystery — even when it’s not visible on the screen; Red Barrels has done an absolutely phenomenal job in creating a soundtrack that perfectly complements Outlast 2. The music is creepy and eerily disturbing, turning from soft waves when aimlessly wandering around, to heart-stopping, fast paced and pounding music that makes it alarmingly clear that Blake has been spotted… that’s your queue to run like hell. While there are many hiding spots around the game (in barrels and closets and even under beds), the trouble is finding them in the dark before being impaled from behind; that’s a frightening enough prospect without the shockingly loud, screeching music to spur you on.
While Outlast 2 is terrifying to play and is sure to make players want to adopt a hundred cute puppies in order to cope with it, it is not without its flaws, with the extremely confusing storyline standing out the most. It’s quite clear from the outset that Blake’s mission is to find Lynn and get out of the region alive, but everything that happens after that — right up until the game’s ending — is extremely confusing and difficult to properly describe. While Outlast’s narrative had so many fascinating and underlying plot points, most noticeably in the form of documents that provided more details about the game’s central location, Mount Massive Asylum, Outlast 2 seems to have a harder time clearing up exactly what Temple Gate is or what anyone’s doing there. Although there are documents scattered throughout the game, they are mostly pages of scriptures from the Bible, serving little-to-no purpose but to establish Temple Gate as a religious hot-spot. Blake’s frequent, rapidly-intensifying hallucinations became difficult to distinguish what was “real” and what wasn’t, and started to cast doubt on his actual sanity — a theme that unfortunately wasn’t explored too much further.
Either way, Outlast 2’s story is definitely not one of its highlights. Just like the original, players will need to play through the game multiple times — if they can stomach that — and collect and read every little clue they can find as to what’s happening and why. Although the vagueness did make the story, and the whole experience, more intense, I can’t help but be eager for an expansion like Outlast: Whistleblower that might clear things up and help me even better appreciate what I just put myself through As well as this, the game can be difficult in some places, at times forcing me to run around aimlessly and get killed quite frequently because I had no idea where to go. The overbearing darkness can also cause dizziness and nausea from spinning around so much trying to get one’s bearings or find places to hide; breaks are definitely recommended, especially if those breaks involve playing with a puppy or something similarly adorable in order to remember that there is good in the world.
Our Verdict:
Outlast 2 ticks all of the boxes in delivering a fantastic survival horror experience that will surely please many fans of the genre. Although it starts off slowly and has a rather confusing storyline, the scares are definitely there and they will frighten the crap out of you. Outlast 2 is definitely worth the money, and it’s also a great way to justify adopting a puppy.
