The opening 15-20 minutes of the game set you up to learn the basic character controls and operations of your camcorder. Outlast is easily the scariest game that I’ve ever played to date and a lot of that has to do with the buildup of tension that happens when navigating seemingly quite corridors and rooms in various states of disrepair and decay. Sound advice…too bad the front doors are locked and electronically sealed. Led to Mount Massive, a remote psychiatric hospital owned by the shady Murkoff Corporation, by a source only known as the Whistleblower, Miles soon finds out that things are very, very wrong after finding several mutilated corpses and a swat-ka-bob that uses his dying last words to tell you to get out while you still can. Outlast puts you in the shoes of Miles Upshur, a freelance investigative journalist, who’s looking for his next big story when he receives an anonymous tip that he should have stayed far, far away from. It’s one thing to be a trained badass with a gun, but something entirely different to be a normal everyday person trying to survive odds that are not in your favor. While having a gun and no ammo is in itself a certain kind of terrifying, I have to throw my hat into the side where having no weapon at all is far worse. I’ve always wondered which was more terrifying in a survival game, going through a corridor with a gun with little to no ammo or going through that same instance with nothing but a flashlight or in the case of Outlast, a camcorder and a notebook. As technology has advanced so has the way developers build up the scares and none so more than Red Barrels, the company behind the release of Outlast for the Xbox One. Clock Tower was one of the first games that I ever played that featured a protagonist that could not attack its pursuers requiring the player to hide and avoid them while solving puzzles along the way. The biggest trend today in survival horror titles is the inability to fight back in games. While it is true that survival horror games have taken a substantial hit over the years with titles like Resident Evil and even Silent Hill losing their way, developers are finding a way to breathe new life into the genre. Just when I thought survival horror as a genre was dying Outlast proved me wrong.
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