Outlast (2013)

At this point in my blog, you may have noticed that a large portion of my cultural interests lie within the spheres of horror movies and vidja gaems.  Perhaps you, the random lurker, wonder why I don't talk about that cross-pollination of horror video game, especially considering that the demand for these titles has exploded in recent years.

It's because these games bore me.

Horror movies rarely, if ever, scare me.  I watch them for imagination, because they're a hotbed for new directorial talent, and boobies.  Horror games rarely tend to have these elements, and focus themselves squarely on the element of GET SCARED.  I'm probably too blase for my own good, but even the apparently TERRIFYING top tier titles like Amnesia were just a boring slog to me.  It doesn't help that the current crop of horror games deny the player any real means of fighting back, ostensibly because this heightens the tension, though any intelligent person could probably guess that it's alot easier for an indie firm to design a game when you don't need to have a balanced combat system.

Still, every so often I want to believe that a hyped horror game might have an effect on me beyond eyerolls and exasperated sighs.  Enter Outlast.

The framework for a million and one jump scares is that you're a journalist who gets a HOT TIP about a creepy sanitarium.  The gimmick for a million and one jump scares is that you have a camera which, provided you have enough battery life, can utilize night vision.  The reason for a million and one jump scares is because we love the scare cam lets plays, right????

Like every other modern horror game, Outlast operates in three different levels.  First, you have the exploration, when you're wandering a spooky area, soaking in ambiance and waiting for a spookum to jump out at you.  Second, you have the scripted "oh no he's after me" section, where a spookum wants to get ya and the only way to escape is by pressing spacebar over ten different desks and open windows!!!  Finally, you have the "find dumb shit" section.

You know this one, right?  Where you enter LAUNDRY ROOM C, and there's a door that won't open because the power is fluctuating?  And the only way to get out is to find the 3 circuit breakers/3 keys/3 light switches?  And while you're stumbling around down all these generic halls, there's a big bad that sometimes appears (STRING CRESCENDO) and you have to hide in a locker/closet/sewer pipe until he gets tired and leaves, unless you're too slow and then you spend two minutes running away, maybe getting hit but that's okay because regenerating health?  Yeah, you know this one.

To be fair, the first two modes on Outlast are decent, relatively speaking.  Unlike the turgid and opening-drawer-obsession of Amnesia, the exploration in Outlast is streamlined.  Almost every jump scare is hilariously telegraphed (OH A NARROW PASSAGEWAY I HAVE TO SCOOT THROUGH NOTHING BAD WILL HAPPEN HERE), and the settings are either dirty metal place or less dirty wooden place (with computers), but you generally know where you need to go and I didn't glitch through a wall, so okay.  Spooky chase mode is at least superficially engaging, by which I mean if you really shut down your brain the experience of pushing 'W' until you run into a thing you need to context-sensitive action over, it's fun for about four times, which is thankfully the number of times the designers put this in.

But the last part?  Christ.  I hated looking for the three buttons in Amnesia, the 45 papers in Slenderman 1-3341, and I still fucking hate it in Outlast.  The big issue is that unless you're some playing to the crowd scarecam baby, these sections are never scary, but always annoying.  Unless you're lucky, finding the trigger mechanisms to be able to leave the monster maze is a boring trial and error.  But oh no, the monster has found you!  What you can do in these situation is like the world's worst Choose Your Own Adventure Book.

You can hide in a locker.  The monster man might lumber in the room, utter one of three threatening lines about "gutting you you pig piggy man."  Early on, he might leave, despite him clearly following you to the room.  Later in the game, he might check the other locker in the room, then get tired and go back to his predetermined patrol routes.  If you're up against a BOSS MONSTER, he'll check both lockers, which means...

You can get hit.  The screen gets red and blurry, but as long as you don't get hit one or two times (depending on the ferocity of your worthy opponent), you can just ignore things, run away, and hopefully find another fucking locker to hide in.  Or....

You can just leave the patrol area.  Most the crazy house scavenger hunts have a starting "safe" area, where you can go but the psycho can't.  Call it not respecting the game's tone if you like, but I quickly learned the fastest way to get through these areas was running straight for the the objective regardless where the enemy was, taking the inevitable stab, then running back to the starting area and rolling your eyes when the psychotic murderer stares at you for five seconds, then shrugs his shoulders and lumbers back.  Repeat x2.

To be clear: I hated this game, but I hated it much less than other horror games I've slogged through.  The camera gimmick is mostly played well, and encourages exploration so you can stay topped off on batteries.  More noteworthy is that the crazy people stalking you are occasionally interesting and written well.

(spoilers for the rest of the review I guess)

The promotional materials for the game said that the backgrounds of the inmates were actually inspired by real psychological cases.  That sounds like bullshit, but some of the encounters are sort of engaging, at least beyond the typical "oh it's a guy and he wants to murder me, okay."  You're going to run into nude Russian twins that are remarkably calm and sarcastic about their desire to eat your liver.  There's a former corporate executive that talks about the invisible hand of capitalism while running around with giant scissors.  Your closest thing to an ally is a guy who was denied fingerpainting therapy, developed a religious obsession, and now draws directions on the wall with blood.  It's not exactly good writing, but for most of the game I could tolerate the shit gameplay to see what the next crazy could be.

So it's a fucking shame that the final act of the game is so mind-melting stupid.  Eventually you discover, in true Resident Evil fashion, that asylum houses a GIANT TECHNO LAB.  What is in the lab is the thing that all the inmates fear, the "Walrider," something that I guess was meant to sound German and intimidating but instead always made me think of something out of a Christian children's programming cartoon, about a magical guy that rides on walls with a magic skateboard and helps prevent masturbation by 11-year-olds.

So in this game that was previously about a guy exploring a hellish asylum filled with murder and madness, what is the Walrider?  It is a nanomachine ghost cloud spawned by the bad dreams of a six-year-old psychic boy.  To say I was a little nonplussed that the eventual payoff for all the crapass gameplay I went through was "Hideaki Anno's Metal Gear Ghostbusters" is a fair observation.

I'm probably not going to get the DLC for this game.