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.)
Perhaps, after giving this more thought, I think the reason I wasn't as scared was maybe because I was already too used to Amnesia's style of sneaking, and hiding from enemies that anything too similar was not going to be able to scare me without enough of a twist because I had gotten too used to it/good at it.
Something I do think Outlast may be lacking in penetrating my hardened horror soul is that I think its build-up, and atmosphere could've been done better. There are quite a few areas in this game where atmosphere was done very good, but not so much. In my opinion monster encounters work the best when they are led up to by an array of very subtle mood-building.
I do definitely agree that making the monsters never disappear definitely benefits the game, forcing you to have to confront the horror that is outside instead of waiting for it to go away.
Chases also flowed extremely well, but again...it wasn't particularly scary but rather more "thrilling" not that it's a bad thing though.
EDIT: As for predictable monsters while I won't deny that Amnesia also has somewhat predictable ones to a degree, the main thing that kills it for me in Outlast is that the ones guarding puzzle areas follow a very strict spawning rule which is: If there is a puzzle where you get multiple things there will be a monster 100%.
(09-11-2013, 06:58 AM)Kreekakon Wrote: Perhaps, after giving this more thought, I think the reason I wasn't as scared was maybe because I was already too used to Amnesia's style of sneaking, and hiding from enemies that anything too similar was not going to be able to scare me without enough of a twist because I had gotten too used to it/good at it.
Isn't that a bit like an alcoholic saying a bottle of wine isn't strong because it doesn't get him drunk? I mean no offense, but if everybody went by the opinions of people who are already completely desensitized then nothing in the world would ever have enough anything. There is a limit to how scary you can get, and if you are constantly trying to find something scarier and scarier to satiate your undying need for horror you are simply going to be disappointed with everything.
Quote:Something I do think Outlast may be lacking in penetrating my hardened horror soul is that I think its build-up, and atmosphere could've been done better. There are quite a few areas in this game where atmosphere was done very good, but not so much. In my opinion monster encounters work the best when they are led up to by an array of very subtle mood-building.
I didn't really share your problem. I think it has a sufficient amount of build-up in most places and overall I found the scares to be well balanced and orchestrated. None of it felt cheap or annoying to me.
Quote:Chases also flowed extremely well, but again...it wasn't particularly scary but rather more "thrilling" not that it's a bad thing though.
I don't really understand the distinction and disagree for that matter.
EDIT: In this case, anyway. I agree that chases are not always scary, for example the chase scenes in Mirror's Edge are "thrilling" and not scary at all. If the actual game is scary though and is full of atmosphere, it stands to reason that the chases - which are a culmination of the tension that is accumulated - would be scary, right? I don't really understand how they are not. Did you also not find the chase scenes in Penumbra and Amnesia to be scary?
Quote:EDIT: As for predictable monsters while I won't deny that Amnesia also has somewhat predictable ones to a degree, the main thing that kills it for me in Outlast is that the ones guarding puzzle areas follow a very strict spawning rule which is: If there is a puzzle where you get multiple things there will be a monster 100%.
Agreed, but as I said I do have qualms about the puzzle design - which to me is separate from how scary it is. Subconsciously you know something is coming but if you're properly immersed you should never consciously think: ah, a monster will spawn. Because then even Amnesia wouldn't be scary.
(This post was last modified: 09-11-2013, 05:36 PM by Bridge.)
I didn't find Outlast that scary, more thrilling than anything. I'm not sure why that is though, it seemed to me that most things were there to make it scary but it just didn't scare me that much. Maybe a couple of things I think horror games need to work more towards is the idea of enemies just turning up at random like in System Shock 2, when enemies would just walk through the door when you're in the middle of checking your map or something. You never felt safe, unlike a lot of games where you feel like something bad can only happen upon progressing the game, through scripted events and things. Revisiting different decks of the ship was always scary because there could be enemies just roaming around, and you never knew where they would be exactly, and how many there would be. In general, I think the idea of enemies always being around the world at all times as opposed to being triggered by very specific actions makes for a much scarier game - Distant sounds and things are no longer just atmospheric effects there to build up a single event, they could be a threat moving around the map, interacting with doors and the environment. The creaks above you could be an actual enemy on the floor above moving around etc.
Being trapped in a building with many floors and full of corridors, rooms and crazy murderers could make for a much more crushing atmosphere if the game was designed less linearly, and more about moving back and forth through levels while enemies do the same. The stealth parts of the game would be much improved too, giving an reason to slowly open doors and peep around corners.
(This post was last modified: 09-14-2013, 01:29 AM by JonnyAnomaly.)
Honestly I think you guys maybe didn't want it to be scary, judging from the extremely pessimistic thoughts some of you aired pre-release. You don't find these types of negative reviews anywhere else; most people agree that the horror element is very well executed in spite of everything else, and the game certainly is flawed. I went in with no expectations and was extremely impressed - and believe me I don't get scared simply because I'm told to be.
(09-21-2013, 12:56 AM)Bridge Wrote: Honestly I think you guys maybe didn't want it to be scary, judging from the extremely pessimistic thoughts some of you aired pre-release. You don't find these types of negative reviews anywhere else; most people agree that the horror element is very well executed in spite of everything else, and the game certainly is flawed. I went in with no expectations and was extremely impressed - and believe me I don't get scared simply because I'm told to be.
Trust me, I went into the game trying to be scared to death just like I do any other horror game.
Actually after giving the game more thought I think that the game is still definitely scary, but just maybe not for me as I very much think that you CAN be desensitized to a certain form of horror after you've been exposed to it too much. I've still been able to be scared witless through simply watching videos of other different types of horror games, but perhaps my brain thought Outlast was too similar to the Amnesia form of horror to be affected too much by it.
Also, I think there were two enemy segments in the game that I was legitimately scared more than the others (Bit spoilerly):
Spoiler below!
The Walrider segments, and to a lesser extent the crazed Doctor.
Digging deeper, the reason I think these are much scarier than the conventional segments is that they are unconventional based on both immersion, and game-wise.
What this means is that the way the enemies are designed, particularly the Walrider is so unknown (Not just visually) as opposed to just a bunch of crazed humans. I'm having a hard time spelling out why exactly I found him much more disturbing than the other enemies from a critical stand-point, and that's really the best I can do.
The doctor is effective to me I think mostly because of his quote, and what he did the scene before. This is a case where I think "knowing" a bit about your enemy beforehand actually benefits the scare factor. He's just crazy...and not just mental asylum crazy...he's a complete sadistic psychopath who gleefully demonstrates it right to you. His character design as well as weapon choice helps a lot as well.
The other enemies I feel kind of lack that extra juice to amplify their scare factor.
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