Third time I tried to kite her around a rusty car frame. That aspect is preserved for the sequel, but now you’re also prompted to record certain events, a red circle filling up as you capture footage. In the original Outlast you were ostensibly “filming” your adventure, but nothing really came of it except you could use the camera’s night vision. These nightmarish scenes also serve to introduce Outlast 2’s new camera gimmick, which feels fresh at the start. Its world is grisly, repulsive, sadistic, with the tranquil blue light of the full moon an excellent juxtaposition to the atrocities below. You’re left to trudge through an eerie countryside, punctured here and there by crucified cult members and stacks of burning bodies while deranged leader Father Knoth hollers his makeshift scripture through a crackly PA system. The opening hour of Outlast 2 isn’t quite as well-paced as the opening hour of its predecessor, but it’s close. Oh, and they think your wife is pregnant with the Antichrist. You and your wife are separated, and as if that weren’t already cause for concern, you soon discover the area is littered with members of a cult.Ĭrazed leader, physical and sexual abuse, the whole gamut of religion’s worst chapters is on display here. Ditching the cliché corridors of Outlast’s abandoned mental hospital for the just-as-cliché cornfields of rural Americana, Outlast 2 sends you crashing into the backwoods, helicopter ablaze. Not all of my complaints will apply to everyone, and if you’ve made it through Outlast 2 and love it then more power to you. Horror is subjective of course-more than most genres. And the worst part is that, given the root cause, Outlast 2’s problems only become apparent late in the game when players have exhausted the bag of tricks and seen them again and again and again. Outlast 2 is proof of this fragility, of the delicate knife-edge developers walk between terror and tedium, mysterious and melodramatic.
Even the most creative scare becomes banal given enough repetition, with the magic replaced by mundanity as soon as we understand the trick to it. Familiarity breeds contempt, and there’s no genre more vulnerable to contempt than horror.
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