The really big bummer about the poor encounter design is that it detracts from the hard work that clearly went into Outlast II ‘s visuals and storytelling. I can buy the idea of nixing a mini-map in a game like this, but why can’t Blake pick up one of the flashlights lying around all over the place, or arm himself with one of the farm tools or machetes rusting away in the cultists’ shacks? We’re set up to fail from the start, and with no good reason. More than that, Outlast II just feels unfair. You no longer see your enemies as murderous lunatics or the dark cornfield you’re wading through as a deeply creepy setting you see them both as part of a program that you’re trying to understand so you can outsmart it.

Die half a dozen times in a row and the terror morphs into frustration and tedium. Trying to find your way through a deadly gauntlet of crazed cultists who will ferociously murder you on sight is scary the first or second time you do it. This sort of trial and error play is problematic in most games, and worse in a horror game because it counteracts the creepy atmosphere the developers want to cultivate. I felt like a blind man working his way through a series of deadly mazes by touch alone. With each death I was left with only a slightly better understanding of how the ground ahead of me was laid out and where enemies might be lurking. And then it was usually pretty much game over. I’d frequently blunder into bad guys and they’d blunder into me. And trying to avoid enemies with your senses nearly completely deprived is stupid hard.

The upshot of all of this is that I spent the bulk of the game not knowing where I was or what was around me. The camera also has a directional mic to detect sounds at a distance, but I found it nearly useless save in a few key scenes. And, truth be told, the night vision mode isn’t always much help, since it often only illuminates an area perhaps five or ten metres in front of Blake, with anything beyond obscured by a weird greenish-grey digital haze. But in a stroke of opposing luck, it turns out his camera runs on crappy disposable batteries that die every couple of minutes, forcing him to continually scavenge for more. Article contentĪs luck would have it, Blake’s a cameraman equipped with a video camera that has a night vision mode. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Outlast vs outlast 2