Jesus Christ
First-person horror makes up for frustrating trial-and-error stealth with brutality and beauty in Outlast 2.
What if the most deranged doom-saying cultists are correct? Outlast 2 prods this question with a pointy stick until it bleeds, festers, and wails in agony. Structurally, it’s a very conventional first-person horror game, a string of tense stealth scenarios where you hide from monsters before they chase you through dense forests and flooded mines.
The story is too opaque and the trial-and-error necessary to figure out most of the stealth sequences is maddening, but through it all, Outlast 2 is a striking train of depravity steered by a good old-fashioned fear of God.
As a freelance journalist, you’re investigating the disappearance of a Jane Doe. Your wife is quickly kidnapped by a cult, the genesis of which is fascinating, mostly told through discarded letters and environmental cues. But the details are hard to process when an entire village is actively hunting for you. Outlast 2 maintains such a relentless pace that there’s almost no time to figure out what’s really going on.
Besides the vague story and some directed flashback sequences that feel like a detour, the slow progression through rural Arizona is layered with enough apocalyptic Christian imagery to be a complete journey. Expect to witness the best of the worst of the Bible through some of the most shocking first-person scenes in games ever.
On that journey, you’ll need to sneak past packs of roving rural folks gone mad. Your camcorder is your only tool, used to see in the dark with its night vision mode and a mic that detects sound wherever it’s pointed. Both functions drain your batteries and, like healing bandages, they’re limited, but never so much that you’re left without enough supplies to outwit any pursuers. Even without wit, persistence does the trick, as frustrating as it can be.
Immoral compass
Early on, I wandered the same cornfield for 30 minutes, crawling the perimeter and making several suicide runs to scope out the buildings for an exit. The way out was a short sprint not far from where the sequence begins, a quick hop over a pile of wood pallets piled next to the fence. The area was a wild goose chase killbox, built only to confuse. It’s not an isolated issue either. While the original Outlast could depend on the hospital’s architectural pathways to direct the player, pulling off subtle signposting in an outdoor setting can’t be as obvious without compromising the feeling of being lost and helpless. Red Barrels’ commitment to building such a disorienting horror simulation is as admirable as it is annoying.
But it’s a tower that topples often, leading to repeated attempts at trying to find a tiny hole in a huge fence, to figure out if the enemy can see me or not, or if I can grab a particular ledge to scramble away in time. There are even a few instances where enemies are set up to ambush and instantly kill you, totally deflating a close getaway. Without clear rules the illusion fades quickly, exposing the simple AI and restricted level design. The few times I happened to stumble the right way through a level, Outlast 2 felt like an audiovisual horror masterpiece—the artistic and graphical work is stunning and the soundtrack incredible. Just don’t expect a smooth experience the whole way through. When it clicks though, those moments stick.
Long after the final minutes of Outlast 2, I felt queasy, uncertain that what I saw had actually happened. It’s one of the most bizarre ending sequences I’ve witnessed, tapping into a fear I’ve known since my first week at Sunday school. A fear that isn’t about being hunted, viscera, or neatly arranged corpses on spikes (though there’s plenty of that stuff ). It’s fear of the drastic measures people will take to ensure their salvation, the shame of sin, and whether or not the big guy up top exists and gives a damn.
Expect to witness the most shocking first-person scenes in games