Outlast is a game about modern medicine. Back in the day if you got sick that was pretty much it for you. A rash developed, well god must be pissed, counted every third step while walking up, and wouldn't stop till you got it right? Throw some leeches on your back and walk it off. Such is life. Not much has changed apparently except that Outlast wants to remind us that there is a lot of money in the business of the sick.
Outlast is also about the desperate state that freelance journalism has found itself in. You play a guy so thirsty for a byline that he trucks up to the middle of nowhere for a basic and mostly legal big pharma cover up story. the place is called Mount Massive Asylum, which oddly enough shares the name with a rave I attended up at Indio. The similarities don't stop there. Tightly dressed, sweating, unintelligible wights hopped up on pills, flailing out of their minds to bright lights and loud sounds. Medical masks, the lingering aroma of vicks vapor rub.
Also, it was damn near impossible to get out, place was a labyrinth. Good times.
Anyway, the game is scary in every ostensible way it needs to be scary in. It does you the favor of screaming and cursing for you, and at you. Audio cues are kind enough to let you know when you are going to be scared. Archaic "Find the fuses" quest structure is the bigger man and lets you in on when you are going to have to play a game of buck naked psychopath peek a boo while chasing after trinkets by way of memory thanks to no map. I get why it's not there, I get it.
There are maybe six dom actions in the game, walk, run, climb, shimmy, and duck. And they all help to immerse, or better yet, turn a two hour party into four. Maybe the unreal engine is just a wrap. It was built to shoot and stab and dominate from the first person perspective, so it's tough to feel helpless after the tutorial stretch, which is a freebie. A horror game built in Unreal is like that Nightmare on elm street flick but all the players are O.P. dream warriors. Oh a dude is chasing you? Walk into a hit and pass on by, you have two. Or better yet shimmy into a crevasse, or better yet, run back to the zone boundary.
What happened to taking away a players agency only because you can? Making the controller not work, mimicking the mortal fear an actual person would feel by loosing grip on the reins? Perhaps they broke the mold with the N64 Amnesia : The Dark Decent. I am loading up the new Amnesia tonight, we'll see. And by the way, what is up with releasing these horror standouts in September? Can a citizen of the marketing caste help me out? I would love to play these over the Halloween week. Gaming has the memory of a mayfly, we will forget these titles. they will be flotsam.
No need for fetch quests if the tension is long basted like a quality K - horror film, if the gore is malignant and unrelenting like a french slasher. Video games have a massive cheat sheet from literature and film, they have a the advantage of an extra sense, the sense of touch. Hey, Outlast is scary though. that's worth something. Anyway, yeah I have not been posting, I'm not dead. Stop with the whole, "How ya doing buddy? Still alive? Calls." Ok thank you for the calls it's great to hear from you and it's nice to know you care but I'm fine just lazy and you knew that. Lates, oh wait no also JERBZ.
The Protoculture mixtape v.173 Issue : People : Demi
