Outlast 2
PC, PS4, XO | $59.95 | REDBARRELSGAMES.COM It’s raining blood! Hallelujah, it’s raining blood!
Pure horror is to be endured, not enjoyed, and few games offer tougher tests of tolerance than this first-person terroriser set in the wilds of Arizona. Here all you’ve got is cowering under beds, ducking inside bins, diving beneath stagnant water, running away, and yelling in terror. Have fun!
You are journalist Blake Langermann who, with his wife Lynn, ventures into the Arizona desert to unravel a murder. It’s certainly no coincidence people go missing around here. When the couple’s chopper crashes, the investigation turns into a rescue mission. Lynn’s not within the wreckage, so Blake makes a move to the mist-shrouded village up ahead. What follows are nervy cat-and-mouse hunts with deranged cultists, frantic running from cannibals and the odd ‘find the thing to put in the thing to open the door’ puzzle.
Being the cameraman to Lynn’s reporter, your camera has a greater presence than in the original Outlast. You’re no longer merely cowering behind it, you’re holding its gaze on grisly sights to capture them for prosperity, and possibly score some gnarly Tweets in the process.
However, the camera is functionally disjointed. You can only record at set moments, which means you’re only pointing your viewfinder where the game tells you, and since you’re mostly chronicling static scenes, the only difference marking your footage from another player’s is a slight variation in camera wobble.
Outlast 2 takes place mainly in the dark, with only candles and bonfires providing occasional stabs of lighting. You’ll have to activate your camera often to utilise its night vision, and while the grainy filter adds to the tension, it’s a tiresome way to go. It runs on batteries you scavenge along the way — so if they deplete, night vision does too, and the game is literally unplayable. Night vision should be an option, not a requirement.
This outing does a better job than the first game in terms of spectacle, using the Sonoran Desert’s natural splendour as a backdrop for impressive, improbable biblical plagues, from showers of blood to swarms of locusts. Red Barrels times these moments well, never overloading you with options or overwhelming you with freedom, and this produces a stripped-down and urgent affair. You’ll be scared but rarely stuck.
Red Barrels is desperate to tell its story, and it does it through diary snippets, suicide notes, hymn sheets, and religious texts left glowing on tables, which is a clunky, hideously overused way of transmitting story. Not reading them makes you feel like you’re missing out, but legging it from murders doesn’t really put you in a reading mood.
Outlast 2 is no-holdsbarred in its quest to boot you from your comfort zone. Despite not hitting the heights of the first due to its lessened gallows humour, forced night vision and overreliance on diary entries, it’s everything a horror game needs to be — a relief once you’re finished. Ben Griffin