Outlast Will Scare the Holy Bejeezus Out of You

[Susan Arendt]

Outlast Will Scare the Holy Bejeezus Out of You

Get a sneak peek at what might be the scariest game of the year.

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[Andy Shandy]

Oh man, if this is as scary as you say, Paul must livestream his first run through of the game for everyone to watch.

Sounds promising anyway, which is always good.

 

[sir neillios]

Noted, show me some footage and maybe I'll be interested. Until then the only horror game I'm investing in, is a Machine for Pigs.

But this sounds like a step in the right direction, helplessness, check, massive spookiness, hopefully check, fatal frame style nonsense, bonus check.

Not bad.

 

[Susan Arendt]

Oh man, if this is as scary as you say, Paul must livestream his first run through of the game for everyone to watch.

Sounds promising anyway, which is always good.

Dude, it scared me. It might actually kill Paul.

 

[Andy Shandy]

Oh man, if this is as scary as you say, Paul must livestream his first run through of the game for everyone to watch.

Sounds promising anyway, which is always good.

Dude, it scared me. It might actually kill Paul.

This is very true.

Now would that make it better or worse to watch?

[sub] I kid, I kid. We love you, Paul. =P [/sub]

 

[WMDogma]

Oh man, if this is as scary as you say, Paul must livestream his first run through of the game for everyone to watch.

Sounds promising anyway, which is always good.

Dude, it scared me. It might actually kill Paul.

This is very true.

Now would that make it better or worse to watch?

[sub] I kid, I kid. We love you, Paul. =P [/sub]

I'm already scheduling a consultation with a doctor to see if my weak heart can take it.

 

[kamay]

I hope it is scary, screenies look good.
It has been a while since I poo'ed my pants playing a video game.

 

[Olas]

A horror game that's actually scary? That might be worth a look, Dead Space pretty much proved to me that you can't make a game truly scary if you can actually fight the monsters.

 

[Ratties]

The game has to promote how scary it is, I don't think it's going to be all that scary.

 

[Bat Vader]

Outlast sounds like it will be a very good and very scary game. Just to not make me sleep at all for a month I should play both Outlast and Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs when they come out.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

So who's the developer and/or publisher?

I'm glad we're finally seeing another mainstream horror title but let's not pretend this is anything new or groundbreaking. The Indie scene has been making games along these themes (Haunted asylum, disorientating darkness, using a battery powered device as a light source, risk/reward systems, run don't fight etc) for years now.

I'm glad that someone has finally remembered that horror should be a slow burn with plenty of atmosphere and not just one cheap jump scare after another. Definitely looking forward to this.

 

[IllumInaTIma]

We need Paul livestreaming it with Susan grinning menacingly behind him.

 

[Jamous]

Excellent. Now give it to me. Need me more horror.

 

[Skeleon]

As I said before, looks very interesting, but I really want to get a demo or at least see some proper amount of gameplay. I need to know whether it'll be the typical "boo, be scared, there's blood"-type of horror that's trying to just jumpscare you until you get used to it or if it's going to be more effective than that.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

Oh man, if this is as scary as you say, Paul must livestream his first run through of the game for everyone to watch.

Sounds promising anyway, which is always good.

Dude, it scared me. It might actually kill Paul.

This is very true.

Now would that make it better or worse to watch?

[sub] I kid, I kid. We love you, Paul. =P [/sub]

I'm already scheduling a consultation with a doctor to see if my weak heart can take it.

Know that you sacrifice yourself for a good cause.

Our entertainment.

Glad to hear some good news about scary games. The news Susan gave about The Evil Within was a bit sad.
Hope it all goes well!

 

[Hazy]

I am more than prepared to Outlast any baddie that comes my way.

I ain't no casual.

 

[Weresquirrel]

I'm looking forward to this... Kind of... See, I'm an absolute coward, but I have a massive respect for the genre. I can't bring myself to play Amnesia for more than 10 minutes at a time.

I've been keeping quite a close eye on this one though. The first trailer I saw gave me a good jump at the end.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

I'm fairly hard to scare as well, so if this scared the hell out of you then I might need to buy a night light.

It's been a while since I've played a good horror game and Amnesia, while it is still good, really isn't doing it for me anymore.

I just hope this turns out to be really really good.

 

[Therumancer]

I'm fairly hard to scare as well, so if this scared the hell out of you then I might need to buy a night light.

It's been a while since I've played a good horror game and Amnesia, while it is still good, really isn't doing it for me anymore.

I just hope this turns out to be really really good.

I hope it and "Machine For Pigs" turn out decent, but honestly creepy enviroments only do so much on a computer screen, and to be honest all of these "your character is not a fighter" arguments seem to largely be designed to create entirely the opposite kind of disbelief from that in a game where some paramilitary He-Man kills everything. My big concern when looking at this is that it's hype is pretty much amounting to "creepy graphics, tying together a series of forced stealth sequences and timed puzzles that will kill you and force a restart!".


Now this will sound silly to many, but I think that one of the reasons why "Silent Hill" and the original "Resident Evil" worked well was that the game mechanics made it so combat wasn't all that easy or desirable due to the controls and limited resources, but was still possible. The result was a situation where I generally could fight, but didn't want to if I could find other solutions to a problem, and it was fairly tense waiting to see what kind of situations the game was going to throw at you. Of course at the same time this was the result of primitive technology as much as intentional design, however they did stumble on a balance that worked, and people should try and emulate.

My concern about this game is that it's going to be cool for a while, I'll dig the atmosphere, and then I'll hit some areas where it largely becomes an exercise in dying until I figure out what the developer wants me to do and in what sequence. Along the way I'll become less creeped out and annoyed, and wanting to simply bypass my own death animations because they represent nothing but a delay before I can try again. Moving from situation to situation I'll become increasingly jaded going "okay, that was cool and all, but now what obtuse things do I need to do in order to progress".

I'll keep my eye on it, and I wish them well, but to be fair as much as I love horror games and the idea of them, there have been so many disappointments that it's hard for me to justify quick purchuses of them. A creepy environment and some cool looking monsters is only as good as the gameplay that goes with it.... and with no offense to Amnesia, hiding in a corner trying NOT to look at the cool looking monster gets old after a while. It's called a forced stealth sequence combined with watching pixelated paint peel.