Outlast Review (Xbox, PlayStation & PC)

If it isn’t tinder boxes, then it’s batteries. Sadly, when it comes to horror, a lack of either is a common issue. Thanks to Outlast, in particular, a scarcity of batteries is but one of several problems that require a hands on approach to rectify. Aside from a concerning lack of power for a secondhand camcorder, you also have an institute of brainwashed patients, a cannibalistic doctor, and a groom with a colorful history of sewing heads into rectal arteries. This is but a tiny snippet of Outlast’s horrifying anatomy, too. Frankly, there is a lot more to ponder, but, like a lot of things, it’s often best to leave it to the imagination. Well, for the time being, anyway.

Outlast is a lot like a your conventional nightmare, in that it forces you to spectate your own worst fears whilst ensuring that you have no space to maneuver. It doesn’t keep you company or out of harm’s reach, but rather, it drops you at the doorstep to an ominous institute with a camcorder and a handful of batteries, and simply tells you to document your studies. Here’s the catch: everything in its world can haunt you, and the only light source that you have is the night vision on an old camcorder. You have a couple of batteries, a vague idea of what you’re looking to accomplish, and an entire medical institute that’s rife with secrets and questionable records. You cannot fight, and you cannot weaponize the environment. It’s just you, an institute on lockdown, and a breadcrumb trail that points to a disturbing crossroad on the far end of a morally dubious path.

What Lurks Within Mount Massive?

In what can only be described as a disturbing glimpse through the looking glass of brainwashing practices, Outlast finds the means to disturb, shock, and ultimately traumatize you with a series of daring chase sequences, stealth-based encounters, and foraging affairs that serve to whittle down your sanity and keep you from finding the next beacon of light. With a worrying amount of batteries in the institute and a surplus of documents to collect, the game does all in its power to keep you on your toes and forever searching for the next corridor. The world is bleak, soulless, and without the comfort of a familiar face to keep you company. So, a lot like a good old-fashioned horror flick, then.

It goes like this: a whistleblower has forwarded an email to you to address a disturbing situation taking place within Mount Massive Asylum, and has instructed you, a journalist, to enter the premises to unearth the truth and document the details whilst you gather as much evidence as possible. It’s here, as the curator of questionable research, where you begin your quest for evidence to incriminate the overheads of Mount Massive. To echo, you have no ability to fight, and you must keep your camera fully stocked with batteries to tackle the darkness. Without a light, you cannot progress deeper into its labyrinthine halls, and without a camera, you cannot chronicle your fact-finding mission. Blind luck, perhaps, though not exactly an advisable route toward the endgame.

Questions Without Answers

From a gameplay standpoint, there isn’t much here that sets Outlast apart from your traditional survival horror escapade, in that it mostly involves sneaking through dimly lit corridors, hiding beneath beds and within lockers, and gathering resources to help power your camera. With that, there are no boss battles, puzzles, or irrelevant side quests to complete. It’s just you, a linear path, and a series of eventful encounters that lean into some rather intense chase sequences and the occasional jump scare. And sadly, the only thing that you can do is capture it all on tape. Well, that is if you can collect enough batteries to make the necessary recordings. It isn’t a needle in a haystack ordeal, though it does require you to go out of your way and search every nook and cranny of every room. Not that this is a bad thing, mind you, as Mount Massive Asylum fosters a lot of intriguing ports of call—documents, timestamps, recording opportunities, for example.

Although Outlast isn’t the lengthiest of indie horrors in the world, it is one that brings a lot of baggage to the forefront of the genre, with its generational appeal and memorable encounters adding to a disturbing plot and a unique gameplay experience that favors isolation and scarcity over big-budget, action-oriented storytelling and extraordinary facets. Combined with a trove of genuinely creative jump scares and foes, Outlast finds a good balance between being a solid fright fest and a great survival horror with notable scavenging elements and cinematic moments. And that’s barely scratching the tip of the iceberg, to be fair.

Outlast wasn’t the first to spearhead the idea that, in order to progress, you must keep a stockpile of items or, in this case, batteries. That being said, it was one of the best of its caliber to blend unnerving resource management with a dimly lit, camera-operated world. And it wasn’t what it made of its world; it was how it presented it, which in turn led to the creation of a perilous hellhole that could keep you on your toes and dreading each new corridor. It didn’t need a bouquet of puzzles to tell its story; Mount Massive had its own, and all you needed to decipher it was a camera and a satchel of batteries.

Verdict

Outlast builds a formidable backbone for an indie horror that has the generational edge to beat even the most ambivalent players into submission. With its dense atmosphere and claustrophobic design, scarce resources and nail-biting encounters all forming to establish the foundation for a genuine nine-to-five fright fest, the game quickly becomes a moniker among fans of the survival horror genre. It isn’t the longest game you’ll ever put your hands on, but where Outlast falls short of a sizable campaign, it most certainly makes up for with its signature gameplay style and tender moments. It’s a masterclass in indie horror, and, when all’s said and done, Red Barrels’ crowning achievement.