DON’T MAKE ME PLAY! OUTLAST

Don’t like it. Never tried it. Every month we force one of our team to play their most feared game.

WHO?

Anne-Marie Coyle feels that there’s already enough to fear in the real world, like housing prices and rising taxes, and prefers to keep her virtual experiences scare-free.

Outlast arrived early in PS4’s life cycle and instantly became the horror game of the blooming generation. Eager to get in on the hype, I desperately wanted to try it out. The problem? I simply don’t possess the steely mettle required for horror games. My brief stab at Silent Hill 2 resulted in many sleepless nights, and to this day the Spencer Mansion still gives me the heebie-jeebies. So OPM is ‘kindly’ making me play Outlast now.

Entering Mount Massive Asylum, the setting for Outlast’s grisly events, instantly fills me with terror. The game induces spectacular fear by capitalising on the player’s vulnerability. There is simply no way of defeating the horrors that lurk in the grim halls of this run-down asylum, and so all I can do is run and hide from a succession of killers. Hearing the music spring to life while the shadowy figure down the hall rushes towards me, or hiding in a locker, praying to some ethereal being that I won’t be found, is, at times, almost too much for my ticker to take.

To make things worse, much of the game takes place in complete darkness. Forced to rely on the night vision mode on my trusty video camera, I find myself constantly torn between searching every nook and cranny in the hope of finding extra batteries and getting the heck out of that miserable place as fast as humanly possible.

More than the game itself, I think I enjoy the satisfaction of managing to escape Mount Massive without quitting and retreating to the certified (but at least not certifiable) safety of under my bed. While I’m perhaps not quite as utterly averse to the horror genre as before (read: not a complete wuss), I think I’ve more than had my fill of dark corridors, blood-soaked rooms and prowling madmen for this generation.

I’M TORN BETWEEN EXPLORING AND GETTING OUT AS FAST AS POSSIBLE.

Woefully inadequate electrical supply, lashings of blood on the walls, and inmates who’ll slice your head off if they spot you. Health and safety would have a field day here.