Wow. I just finished playing this game and have to say I absolutely loved it. It has many flaws which I'm sure some of you have already pointed out (have not read most of the posts here yet) but for some reason I found the game to be so wonderfully balanced that I don't actually mind them that much. If any of you are on the edge - I recommend it. In some ways I found it to be more scary than Amnesia actually, but I think I consider Amnesia a better game overall.
EDIT: I don't really understand some of the comments here. 20% horror? I'd like to challenge some of the common complaints circling around here:
Spoiler below!
Encounters - A lot of you are bringing up the fact that there is an incessant barrage of monster encounters - I disagree. They are more numerous than in Amnesia for sure but I do not feel they ever become tedious or too many.
Jumpscares - With the exception of a few I did not flinch during most of them and completely resented every quicktime event, so I agree with that.
Scariness - I'm not sure whether any of you actually took the game seriously but I became quite immersed myself and I found the game to be quite scary. Could anybody explain to me exactly how Amnesia is scarier? You say the monster encounters are predictable (occurring during "puzzles" especially) and yet a good deal of the monster encounters in Amnesia were much more predictable. Plus, in Outlast enemies do not respawn, so you actually have to use stealth to avoid enemies whereas in Amnesia what I did was hide in a corner until the music stopped playing. It didn't make sense to put yourself in danger when the game would remove it for you.
In Outlast the danger is there and doesn't go away. That alone makes the encounters scarier than in Amnesia in my opinion (especially the ones with the two guys toward the end of the game that can kill you instantly). I do agree the encounters with Chris Walker (horrible idea to give him a name by the way - at least without developing his character in an interesting way) occurred once or twice too often but I found them to be tense each time. Also, maybe it's just me but I found the entire hospital level with the crazy doctor to be one of the scariest things ever. I found it to be brilliantly executed in almost every way and it gave me literal nightmares. I found all of the chases to be quite well designed and the parkour element felt really nice to control. I can understand the parallels to Mirror's Edge, but I do not see how it is a bad thing at all. The lighting is also pretty amazing in my opinion.
Music: I didn't see that many people bashing it but I found it to be pretty great overall. The orchestration is obviously quite detailed and it's even played by a real ensemble of people conducted by the composer himself (and one other guy). Believe me, that is rare in these types of games and I found it to have a great effect personally. It isn't amazing, but I did find it good.
Misc.: The level design is excellent in my opinion, although I completely agree the objectives and overall layout of the levels bordered on awful sometimes. Even so, each specific area has a very clear feel to it and memorable visual design and I don't feel it ever became samey or uninteresting. Regarding the gore, I wasn't really scared by it but I'm not really sure that was the point. There definitely is an abundance, but whether there is too much or too little I think is very debatable. Also I don't agree the "friendly" NPCs are a detriment to the game at all. I find games without any sort of non-hostile characters to be quite depressing sometimes. Here I didn't find a problem with it, although it can easily be overdone.
Plus:
I found the ending to be quite creative and well executed. It's true it doesn't make a whole lot of sense and the game is basically devoid of any cohesive story which admittedly is a shame, but I found it to be quite well balanced. It didn't end too soon and it didn't drag on and the injured walking mechanic was interesting.
@Paddy: I say with all possible due respect, believe me, but could it be you either did not take it seriously or are way too desensitized by now to be scared? Because I've played games that were almost completely unscary like Alan Wake and I found Outlast to be basically equal to Amnesia when it comes to distilled scariness.
Well anyway if anybody decided to read that meandering mess of an edit I just made I thank you. I agree with most of the specific problems you guys have but I still found it to be very scary on a fundamental level. My general thoughts on it are that it's not amazing, it has many flaws, but I do not agree with you that it's unscary and hackneyed. It does this specific type of "formula" better than many of the games it's inspired by as well as bringing some original ideas to the table. I don't know, am I crazy?
(This post was last modified: 09-10-2013, 08:32 PM by Bridge.)