Outlast (video game)

Outlast is a first-person survival horror video game developed and published by Red Barrels. Released for Microsoft Windows on September 4, 2013.

Plot
The story follows freelance reporter Miles Upshur who goes to Mount Massive Asylum to investigate a claim about the Murkoff Corporation sent to him in an email, only to find a horrific experience awaiting him. The DLC story, Whistleblower, follows Waylon Park, a Murkoff employee who's tortured for trying to expose their corruption and goes on a desperate attempt to escape.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Great graphics, which brings the extremely grungy asylum to life with terrifying amounts of detail.
 * 2) You can't fight back against enemies. While that's a mechanic boasted by games like Amnesia and Soma, this one is especially terrifying because you cannot do a single thing to even delay them for the most part, and you're especially vulnerable with more limited health.
 * 3) Because Miles is a reporter, you're given camcorder. It comes with night vision as a means to see in the many dark and pitch black areas. Of course, the camcorder requires batteries and they're in limited supply. Not only that, nightvision drains the battery faster, meaning the player will need to use it wisely.
 * 4) Unlike other silent protagonists of similar horror games, using the camcorder to record certain points has Miles (and Waylon) write down notes about their thoughts on the current situation.
 * 5) Though they don't talk, their voice actor, Shawn Baichoo, does a fantastic job selling the characters fear and pain just by making noises.
 * 6) Terrifying enemies all with tragic backstories.
 * 7) *Chris Walker: He is hulking beast that patrols the Asylum looking for you. Before being admitted into Mount Massive Asylum, Walker was ex-military police, as well as having toured Afghanistan several times that returned home with PTSD. Interestingly, he's trying to kill you mainly to contain and destroy the Walrider before it escapes the asylum.
 * 8) *The Twins: The Twins both appear to be very calm and intelligent compared to other inmates within the asylum and have some semblance of humanity left in them. They are silent killers, and therefore do not run or talk when chasing Miles. They walk calmly rather than sprinting and prefer to kill their victims in silence. Unlike the other antagonists, there is no hints as to who they were before making them the most mysterious enemies of them all.
 * 9) *Richard Trager: Formerly an executive at Murkoff, Trager became insane after the downfall of the asylum and now experiments on patients in order to gain more knowledge about biology. Despite his cheerful and friendly demeanor, he is a sadistic psychopath who revels in torture and death. He also monologues while torturing Miles, but while these seem like the same psychotic rambling like the other inhabitants of the Asylum, everything he says is actually true (albeit filtered through a fractured mind). His talk about how money has evolved from something solid, like the gold standard, to "an article of faith" does reflect the current state of modern economics (as the mortgage collapse easily attests), and his talk of "turning the consumer into the means of production" is a succinct description of Dr. Wernicke's research, which alters the cells of a human being's body to becoming nanite factories. His murderous revenge against Murkoff executives (at least, just the one) may be obvious.
 * 10) *Walrider (Billy): A man-made ghost created by Dr. Wernicke. Described as a humanoid swarm of nanomachines produced by biological functions through the Morphogenic Engine, its host is Billy Hope, and Father Martin's mad religion focuses on the worship of the Walrider. Billy himself might be the most tragic in this game's sea of tragic villains. One of the first notes you find tells you that he submitted to the Walrider Project on the understanding that Murkoff would take care of his ailing mother. And one of the last notes you find tells you that Murkoff killed her with a guided heart attack to stop her lawsuit against them.
 * 11) *Frank Manera (Whistleblower): An insane cannibal who was a part of the Walrider Project and sole goal is to eat human meat. He pursues Waylon with an electric buzzsaw, hoping to kill and eat him.
 * 12) *Eddie Gluskin (Whistleblower): Even before being committed to Mount Massive, Gluskin was a misogynistic serial killer obsessed with the idea of finding a perfect wife, who killed and mutilated women in his attempts to create one. After the staff lost control of the asylum, Gluskin began mutilating other men to make them look like his ideal woman, and relentlessly pursues Waylon in an attempt to do the same.
 * 13) The inmates at the asylum are unpredictable, while plenty are violently psychotic, some are not even hostile, being in a catatonic state or even actively trying to help you.
 * 14) The twins are especially terrifying as they're much smarter than most of the other violent inmates, work together to try and surround you, open doors immediately rather than smashing them down, and getting caught by them results in an instant kill.
 * 15) Lots of documents found throughout in both the main game and DLC that give terrifying lore to the game.
 * 16) The DLC, Whistleblower, shows the events near the beginning of the story from the point-of-view of a different person named Waylon Park whose revealed to be the whistleblower mentioned by Miles in the main game. It's also just as long as the main game and shows that after Miles' death, he becomes possessed by the Walrider.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Has a lot of graphic violence that can feel like it's relying on it a bit too much.
 * 2) * The DLC in particular has an EXTREMELY grotesque scene where it shows the main character tied to a bed and nearly castrated.
 * 3) The last part of the main game that takes place in the Murkoff compound, isn't as scary as the rest of the game. The labs are brightly lit unlike the dark areas seen before, and tends towards linear chases rather than the nerve-wracking stealth you've seen up until that point.
 * 4) The PS4 version has some unnecessary load times at certain points.
 * 5) Plot Hole: When Miles is told that the staff of Mount Massive Asylum are conducting experiments on the inmates, instead of contacting the police, he breaks into the place at night, alone and unarmed, and very vulnerable if discovered. Although, this most likely wouldn't have made much of a difference since the Walker could easily annihilate them.
 * 6) One of the achievements requires you to beat the game on Insane mode without ever reloading the batteries needed for your night vision. Normal mode is difficult enough without needing to reload your camcorder, since 90% of the game is in pitch black darkness. Insane mode, however, not only makes enemies more perceptive, but also completely disables checkpoints. So if you die, you'll have to start all over.
 * 7) * The achievement is not present in PS4 however, so players of that video game console can at least spare themselves the trouble of trying to achieve it.
 * 8) Despite The Courtyard being the shortest level, with exactly one hostile (that being Walker), it will chew through your batteries very quickly if you don't know where you're going, since visibility is pretty much nil the entire way through without the night vision turned on. As an outside level, it is also subject to level design that is harder to navigate than the tight tunnels of the asylum's halls, and it will often not be immediately apparent where you might need to go.

Whistleblower

 * 1) Deus ex Machina: Quite a few. When Blaire is on the verge of killing Waylon in the prison, Walker comes out of nowhere and unintentionally stops the murder. At the end of the game, Blaire's murder of Waylon is interrupted again, this time intentionally and fatally, by the Walrider. Beforehand, when Gluskin's buzz-saw is a hair away from castrating a bed-restrained Waylon, a random variant punches Gluskin and sends the bed flying out of the saw's path. Before any of this, Waylon is able to escape from meeting a fiery death at the hands of Frank because the wall was just weak enough for him to kick a hole through.
 * 2) Diabolus ex Machina: Waylon is denied from freedom a mockingly large amount of times. The most notable ones include when he is cut off from contacting 911 in the prison by Blaire (thankfully a Deus ex Machina saves Waylon), when he falls into the Vocational Block, and when he is dragged back into the very same block by Gluskin right after finding the key to the male ward.

Reception
Outlast received positive reviews. Aggregating review website Metacritic gave the Xbox One version 80/100 based on 6 reviews, the Microsoft Windows version 80/100 based on 59 reviews, and the PlayStation 4 version 78/100 based on 33 reviews. It has been received with a number of accolades and awards from E3 2013, including the "Most Likely to Make you Faint" honor, and one of "Best of E3".

The PC gaming website Rock, Paper, Shotgun gave Outlast a very positive review, noting that "Outlast is not an experiment in how games can be scary, it’s an exemplification." Marty Sliva of IGN rated the game with a score of 7.8, praising the horror elements and gameplay while criticizing the environments and character modeling.

GameSpot gave the game a positive review as well stating that "Outlast isn't really a game of skill, and as it turns out, that makes sense. You're not a cop or a soldier or a genetically enhanced superhero. You're just a reporter. And as a reporter, you don't possess many skills with which you can fend off the hulking brutes, knife-wielding stalkers, and other homicidal maniacs who lurk in the halls of the dilapidated Mount Massive Asylum. You can't shoot them, or punch them, or rip pipes from the walls to clobber them with. You can only run and hide".

As of October 19, 2016, Outlast has sold over 4 million copies.

Trivia

 * The game got a comic book adaptation called The Murkoff Account.
 * Earlier concept art of Chris Walker shows him to be considerably less overweight, has one of his feet replaced by some sharpened bone, and lacks the manacles that make the distinctive noise as he moves.
 * At one point Miles was going to be sexually assaulted before the developers scrapped it as being "excessive" (You can still see hints of this plotline with some graffiti stating "FINGERS FIRST. THEN BALLS. THEN TONGUE"). Apparently Red Barrels got over that hangup quick enough as it is featured quite prominently in the "Whistleblower" DLC and Outlast II.