I don’t like Outlast 2. At all.

It’s repetitive, shlocky, apathy-inducing, immature, unsatisfying, poorly designed, with a bad story, and, perhaps most damningly of all, isn’t scary.

So it was with some trepidation that I approached the original Outlast this year, which seems to be held up by the gaming community as some sort of horror game classic. Heartfelt but misguided reviews talk about how the game “propelled horror into the mainstream”, and there’s a general consensus that this is “one of the scariest games ever”.

Outlast‘s marketing campaign must have been particularly effective back in 2013. I do remember a lot of talk after its release about how it was supposed to be “the scariest game ever”. Pretty bold claim, of course. But another Steam review says; “This game is the Horror genre at its peek.” I also sat down and watched YouTuber Markiplier’s video on it, where in the description he proclaims that it “[… ] might just be the one of the scariest games I have ever played!” I’d love to ask him why, but I’m afraid he’s a little out of my subscriber range. And true, he did make this video eight years ago – but he sure did scream a lot. And he apparently found the second game just as scary as the first, too… somehow.

As Outlast was already sitting in my library, I knew I should probably just bite the bullet, and get stuck into this immensely hyped horror “extravaganza”.

One thing that I certainly can’t deny is that both Outlast and its sequel are technical achievements. The graphics are gorgeous, and the settings feel pretty well realised both graphically and in sound design. The screenshot above might be simple, but I think it showcases just how good looking the game can be.

Outlast opens with a slow drive up to Mount Massive Asylum, with the initial hook of some whistleblower talking about something mysterious and awful going on being genuinely interesting. Our protagonist, Miles Upshur, stops the car and gets out when the main gate refuses to open. Now, it’s time to head in.

After a bit of nosing around, and then clambering up to an open window, we get our first jumpscare! A security guard impaled on a pole, begging for you to leave, swiftly dies. Outlast loves gore more than any game should love gore. I began to fear that the original would fall prey to the second game’s genuinely frustrating desire to expose the player to as much mind-numbing gore as possible.

The night vision mode adds the potential for frights, but aside from a few cleverly built areas that make a tool both useful and useless, is mostly unsatisfying.

I’m about halfway through Outlast at the point of writing, and I haven’t found Red Barrels to be quite so obnoxious this time around. While there is spooky gory times abound, there’s never been a moment where I became as annoyed with the game as I did with its sequel. I hope it continues this. The story is also much more compelling. I don’t have to worry about Mr. Upshur’s personal stake in the story, since he doesn’t really have one beyond “get out alive”. I like that motivation, because its basically the same as my own. In that way, the original Outlast doesn’t have to worry so much about the protagonist and telling a story about them in such a way as voiced protagonist Blake Langermann does in 2.

But I continue to have a problem with the actual game design.

You know, if in Silent Hill, when I met a bunch of the creepy little child monsters in the school, my only option was to run away and hide under a desk somewhere, I would feel incredibly disconnected from the scenario. Why wouldn’t I defend myself?

I thought about it for a while, and I realized that a big reason why I don’t like weaponless horror is the idea that you never really get to confront anything or anyone on your own terms. If an antagonist is defeated, it is because cutscene protagonist dealt with them, not because you dealt with them. Catharsis is functionally nonexistent.

Imagine if in Resident Evil 7 you never got to have a fight with Jack Baker. Imagine if throughout the whole game you were running from Jack Baker, only ever lightly scratching or stunning him, but never getting to confront him on your own terms. Imagine if he was defeated in a cutscene, disconnected from anything you had ever done. You know how lame that would make you feel? Very, very lame.

Also, you never (or rarely ever) see a horror movie protagonist run forever. There’s a moment where they stand and fight. Often, that’s the scariest moment of the film. Without confrontation, there is no satisfaction. Constant running is not fun, and constant hiding is boring. Sometimes, you just want to stand and try hit your nasty horror monster with a 2×4 or a rusty pipe or whatever is on hand that’s big and heavy. Even if it doesn’t work, you’ve at least broken up the monotony with an attempt at agency, at confrontation.

Another example. If, in Pathologic, you had no way of defending yourself, you would feel disconnected from your protagonist. If you are being stabbed to death, you kind of want to be able to use the scalpel you’ve been trying to heal people with to at least offer some resistance. It adds to the feeling of moral erosion, too. Perhaps before you avoided being a murderer. That is a choice you made, not a choice the game made for you. When the time comes to actually kill an opponent – another human being – that can be a big moment if you’ve been withholding from fighting out of a sense of morality.

Outlast is so obsessed with the idea of defenseless horror that nothing else exists. I’m not sure why people consider this the scariest game ever made, either.

It’s certainly much more effective than the sequel. Again, not a high bar to clear. But Outlast got me once; when I assumed I was safe and then the large, chain-dragging, muscle-bound stalker emerged from the darkness, I did jump. Beyond that, the game approaches scares in a rote and uninteresting way. Blood smeared on the wall, caricatures of mental illness, corpses piled on the floor, obvious jumpscares, and so on forever.

The most interesting horror idea so far is the Walrider. I am really, really hoping this plotline pays off. If it doesn’t, I will be immensely disappointed.

Why does Outlast have such a positive reputation, is my question. Has a younger / more naive generation of horror gamers just never experienced classics like Silent Hill and Resident Evil? Does no-one branch out into indie horror, or appreciate a certain amount of thought and interesting concepts placed into their horror games? Is this it? Is this what I am supposed to hold up as an example of great horror? Flashes of genuinely scary bits ruined by cheap jumpscares, an overreliance on gore, and using mental illness as horror.

It’s merely “okay” horror so far – and that’s at best. Perhaps what everyone raves about is yet to come. But I don’t see Outlast as being any scarier in the hours to come. Props to Red Barrels, it is obvious they have found a winning formula. Perhaps I am the strange one, to want some cerebral elements to my horror. Maybe that’s not what mainstream horror is supposed to be. Maybe it’s just not for me. And maybe it’s selfish to want horror of a higher standard to earn the title of “scariest game ever”. But damn, can’t there be anything truly clever and modern to take that title off of Outlast? Will there ever be something to wake people up from gore and jumpscare fests? Probably not. They’re easier to make, after all.

Now I’m just grumpy.

Sigh.