Red Barrel’s greatest achievement with Outlast 2 is also its most unsettling: the depth in the detail of this cult is impressive, but it’s also harrowing, with some of the things I saw and read being even too much for me. Once you’ve run away from somebody, you can press a button to look over your shoulder, but this is more of a curse than a blessing because, I don’t know about you, but I’d rather imagine they weren’t following me instead of knowing they were right behind me. I’ve not been this anxious playing a game since Alien: Isolation (which I still haven’t finished due to this), and if it wasn’t due to me reviewing, I probably wouldn’t have finished this either. This ended with me having to step away from the game a few times, heading to the kitchen to make myself a coffee and finding sanctuary on social media for a couple of minutes. Saving is generous, but there are times when the game saves at the exact time one of the many chases begins, and you’re left to replay it a handful of times before you manage to escape.
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It didn’t matter if I was wandering around one of the abandoned houses, exploring (with trepidation) the eerily quiet woods, or running away from one of the savages in the underground mines or caves you never knew what was coming. Throughout the entire game, I felt uneasy, stressed, and unable to relax at any point. It’s also cool that you can use the camera’s built-in microphone to listen to nearby enemies as a means to know whereabouts the threats are, but like the camera’s night vision, it eats up batteries so use it wisely. I did find it odd that some of the scenes kicking off didn’t require any capture, and there’s no way for you to film any footage you think might be important, but it wasn’t the end of the world. Your video camera is used to collect evidence of the activities within the cult, whether that’s a snapshot of a letter or extract from their ‘bible’, or a short video clip of a certain location. They are scattered around, but they are also in short supply, so it is wise to rummage through the various buildings you come across. In order for you to survive (apart from the whole running away from killers), you must keep a supply of batteries for your camera, and bandages for your wounds. Even though you have these places to use to your advantage, you never truly feel safe in them, and when the clan of psychos walk past you, peeking out can still result in them spotting you, and that’ll mean death, but not after having to watch yourself bleed out. You can hide under beds or in wardrobes, but there’re also oil drums, confessional booths, tall grass patches, small rivers, and cornfields which you can find a shred of refuge in. Even when the game becomes more enclosed towards the end, you’re still easy pickings for the murderous foes. With the environment being bigger, and with Blake being so exposed, you’re much more on edge knowing one of these freaks can attack from any direction. You have no way to fight against these religious fanatics, and your only option is to run and hide. From the very start you’re terrified, alone, and completely vulnerable to everything. Outlast 2 delivers on survival horror in every sense.
OUTLAST 2 WALKTHROUGH FULL
The more you play the game, the more these flashbacks become as terrifying as the occurrences in the main story thread, as the school you find yourself in goes full on Kubrick, and a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues. You’re also thrust into various flashbacks at a high school in the 90s, unclear how it relates to the main story until the end. Not only are you on your own, you’re at the mercy of an evil, murderous cult, the members of which have no quarrel with slicing your throat or stabbing you a hundred times over with a rusty knife. You play as Blake Langermann, a cameraman and investigative journalist who’s left alone following a helicopter crash that leaves you separated from your wife, Lynn. There is no asylum this time around, and the claustrophobic terror felt in the original has been expanded to the Arizona desert, as you investigate the disappearance of a missing pregnant woman.
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Why would anyone want to put themselves through this amount of stress and torture? For the game’s ten hour campaign, I’d seen so much gore, violence, and sexual depravity, along with suffering through countless chases and pitiless attacks that I kept wondering why anyone would choose to play this. With my nerves threadbare and my mind disturbed, I tried to formulate some thoughts on what I had just played, but all I could see was the horror of those final moments – those lasting images from the things I’d seen, and holy shit, did I feel affected. As the credits rolled on Outlast 2, I was shaking.