Anyone have a camera charger?
Let me paint you a picture. Or let Red Barrels paint it for you, as they have already done. So just let me repaint a picture that's already been painted but let me say I painted it. Or let the pain….never mind. Anyway, picture yourself as a journalist looking to uncover a very old buried mystery, a mystery of an asylum that housed some of the craziest psychopaths and mentally unstable people. Now picture investigating this old asylum, alone… in the dark… with no combat skills and no basic survival knowledge.
That's pretty much Outlast in a box. The premise centers around a lone journalist looking for answers of a murder that occurred in this abandoned asylum many years before. The cause of the facility's ruination was due to a patient killing a doctor and creating chaos throughout the ward.
Lucky for us, the gamers, we are now that journalist, here to save the day. In this horror-stealth style title, the main objective is to find whatever answers you are looking for, and not to die, and if possible not shit your pants. Since Outlast's first looks, testers have been saying this is one of the most, if not the most, creepy games out there. The developers have fully prided themselves in creating a real-to-life horror adaptation to the genre. And what goes well with any horror genre piece of entertainment? Well, a video camera with night vision of course. You can use this at anytime, especially when in extremely dark areas, but be aware that battery life does run out.
One of the central aims of the game is to immerse the player completely. Every little detail seems to be taken into account. When exploring rooms, notice the subtleties: how the clocks on the wall ticks, how much soda costs in the soda machine, the log of turd in the toilet (funny to think someone in development said "we must add poop to that toilet!"). Just being able to see your hands and feet adds a depth of realism in simply moving around.
Truly, it's all about the experience. Releasing for PS4 and PC in 2014, Outlast may not have the newest, best innovations to hit the gaming world, but it has developed the trend of faux reality. A reality that will keep us all engaged and entertained until its final minutes.
