‘Outlast 2’ Review (PS4)
Playing the first Outlast game, it was a good blend of exploration, running for your life, and escaping monsters. When the sequel was announced, there was a high expectation of what would come. Now we’ve had chance to play Outlast 2, does it manage the same scares or is it just another forgettable horror sequel?
While the first game was based in a mental hospital with your character investigating evil doings on the patients, in Outlast 2 we are taken outdoors and into the countryside. Blake Langermann, an investigative journalist is working with his wife on a story when their helicopter crashes in the middle of nowhere. With his wife missing, Blake finds himself in a nightmarish race against time to find her before the locals kill them both.
For horror fans, the story found within Outlast 2 feels like well-trodden territory, but in a good way. There is plenty of gore, and plenty of rednecks looking to kill you in many violent ways. Where Outlast 2 begins to suffer though is in the mechanics of the game. If feels like the designers looked at the first game and decided the chases were the best part, then made the sequel all about the chase.
What happens in Outlast 2 is a constant cycle of hiding, running for your life, fighting off a reaper like woman who is stalking your every move, then repeating the cycle until the end of the game. This wouldn’t be a problem if the routes given to you weren’t so hard to navigate. The fact your stalker is Terminator like in her ability to hunt you down is also very annoying. Especially when she can one hit kill you if you are unlucky (which is most of the time).
What does happen while you play though is that you get hooked on the story. There are plenty of notes lying around to create a back story for the game, and the more peaceful school moments provide another side of the story that teases of past misdoings. There are plenty of theories about what is going on in the game, and they are very plausible, especially with the ending of the game. It is fair to say though that for those playing for the first time though, the conclusion will leave you wondering what the hell was going on.
With Outlast 2, what it feels like is that the balancing is off with the difficulty. The fact that the developers released a patch to change this does seem to confirm that. Whether people will go back to the game to see if this difficulty has changed though is another matter.
For those who can handle the difficulty, Outlast 2 is a good game, and mainly for the story. There is a sadistic nature to forcing the player to search for batteries while the locals are attacking with whatever sharp objects they can find, but the question has to be asked, what do you expect from a survival horror game? In many ways, Outlast 2 is aimed at being a survival horror from hell, and at times you feel you are definitely there.
Fans of Outlast will no doubt rush to play Outlast 2 and may feel a little disappointed. The fact is though with the strong story which is very gory it is a game that will keep you hooked. You may swear and feel like throwing the controller at the Television at times, but that need to know what happens next is always there. Now to wait for the inevitable DLC that confirms all the theories behind the game’s meaning.
**** 4/5
Outlast 2 is out on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 now.
