If you love having heart attacks or actually have the mettle to stomach horror/survival video games or simply want a break from the mainstream popular title games of today, then Outlast is definitely a great choice to play. Released on September 4, 2013 for PC and February 4, 2014 for PS4, Outlast is a game appropriately named for the first-person survival/horror genre of video games. Red Barrel, the studio responsible for the horrors of Outlast, created the game with three simple options for playing: run, die, or hide. It's just that simple. Those are your only choices to survive a mountain asylum filled with nightmares that stalk you throughout every blood-stained hallway. However, the scariest thing about Outlast has to be one single feature, a hide button; but I'll get to that in a bit.
First off, lets talk about what this nightmare actually is and the back story behind it. You play as a freelancer journalist, Miles Upshur, looking to write a story to expose the Murkoff Corporation and find out what crazy things are taking place in their institution: Mount Massive Asylum. As you enter the asylum and begin to see all of the mangled corpses of the hospital staff, you realize that you have made a fatal mistake....problem is - the front door is bolted shut. So, by this point you are forced to search for an alternate route out, which, ironically, seems to only lead you farther in the dreaded place. Armed with nothing but your handy-dandy camcorder, you must try and survive the former patients of the asylum that now roam the hallways, murdering what is left of the staff in anger of what they did to them in Project Walrider. Now, Project Walrider is a real mystery. As an experiment consisting of drug use, torture, and mind control, it has turned the patients into delusional, mutated nightmares known as the Variant. Somehow, Project Walrider has transformed into some kind of almost physical force and believe it or not, the patients are mad at what it did to them. So, honestly, the patients' violent and psychopathic murdering is somewhat justified, right? Unfortunately for Upshur, they can't distinguish him from the staff. The whole story of the asylum and Project Walrider is all based off of a real CIA project in the 50s, 60s, and 70s in the U.S. and Canada called: MKUltra. The asylum, supposedly abandoned by the CIA, was reopened by a private organization. So, all in all, Outlast has an intriguing story, however it isn't strongly narrative based. Most of the story is developed through documents found by the player and notes that Upshur makes when he has his camera rolling. (P.S. I advise rolling the camera at all times to avoid missing important notes)Now, the hide button isn't the only option presented to you in your struggle to survive. Sometimes you will have to crawl, jump, vault, run, or squeeze your way to safety from one horror only to find yourself holding your breath to avoid another. Thankfully, besides vaulting low objects, the enemies in Outlast can't perform any of these maneuvers like you can. This gives the player a slight edge...however, be warned, as it is one of few. Combat is not an option in the game, only avoiding. Now you do have a few options when it comes to avoiding your enemies, but you need to be fast! You can hide in a locker or under a bed when cornered in a dead-end room, disappear for a short time into an air duct for safety, or slip through a narrow pass to move on to the next area. However, creating loud noises or attracting enemies will force you to act quick! For instance (and this does not contain major spoilers) at one point in the game, you must turn two valves to restart a generator. These valves are in two separate rooms and cause the generator to let out a noisy screech that, you guessed it, attracts the bad guys. Once you turn on the first valve, one of the enemies will barge into the room shortly after, and without much warning. As you hear him try to bust the door down, you will have to think fast before he charges in and beats you to death with a pipe. Hiding in a locker is your only option before he catches you. However, be cautious, as he will check some of the lockers looking for you, so pray that you choose the right one! Lastly, as a big part of the gameplay, your character, Miles Upshur, does a great job at adding to the tension at the already amazingly tense moments in the game. As you leave or come upon a moment in the game where something may (or may not) happen, the music will start to rise and play the classic "opera violin music" that has become accustomed to horror in movies, games, etc. and then Miles will start breathing heavily, mimicking the timidness experienced by the player at the same time. At first, (and I know from experience) you may not realize it is Miles breathing heavily and believe that something is nearby, stalking you. However, I will admit that this is a nice touch that they added to the game. It really helps develop the feel of what it is your going through in this "abandoned" asylum.
The visual appearance of Outlast does a good job of tying in with it's objective of creeping the heck out of the player. The complex layout of the asylum makes it feel authentic and almost makes you feel like you've traveled so far throughout it, even though you've been stuck in the same asylum since the beginning...which helps bring the feeling of being trapped to a realistic level and helps you understand just how far up shit creek you really are.Overall, I say that Outlast is a great game that does an even greater job at scaring the mess out of players. Now, I haven't played many horror games besides this, but I'm sure once you play it for yourself, you'll agree.
