You can’t beat a good horror game, can you? Well okay, actually you can. It wouldn’t be a good game if you couldn’t beat it. Outlast proved a hit with many, but we weren’t convinced. Its attitude to mental illness was disturbingly crude and, although there’s fun to be had with the game, we found that – mainly through iffy design decisions – it simply wasn’t scary most of the time. It was nonetheless plump with good ideas and potential, so perhaps Outlast 2 (due some time next year) will fix the problems of the first game.
If you fancy a hands-on look at how the game’s coming along, a publicly available demo can be found on Steam, the PlayStation Store (PS4), and Xbox Live (Xbox One). The press release assures us that the demo is available “for free”, as though this were an unusually generous gesture on the developer’s part. What is unusual is that the demo is only available for a limited time; you’ll need to download it by November 1st if you want to play it. Bit of a daft and desperate method to encourage people to play, but we’re sure the demo will reappear shortly before or after the release of the full game.
While it doesn’t seem to be a direct sequel to the first game – understandable given the ending – there’s a free five-part online comic available at the website of developer Red Barrels (at time of writing, the first two are up) to fill the gap. In terms of gameplay it seems the basic idea of using a camera’s night vision to fumble through darkness will return, as the player’s character is a cameraman. Interestingly, he is described as working “alongside his wife”, hinting that perhaps it may not be such a solitary experience this time around. We shall see…