One particularly memorable sequence involved the player being attacked from in front and behind in a corridor by two naked, machete-wielding maniacs, able to survive only if they launched themselves out of a nearby window.ĭespite its lack of combat, the game still fiendishly repurposed the familiar survival horror mechanic of scarce resources to brilliant effect, by having the night vision camera operate on finite battery power. The terrified journalist could do nothing to battle the dangerous denizens of Mount Massive Asylum, and instead had to rely on creeping around and hiding in cupboards. The game was also a great early example of the then-popular horror gaming trend of featuring powerless protagonists, forcing the player to avoid combat altogether and instead focus solely on stealth mechanics. Instead of equipping its investigative journalist protagonist with a torch to penetrate the gloom, Outlast instead gave the player only their trusty video camera’s night vision mode, offering a blurry monochrome view of the horrifying lunatics that stalked the player in the shadows. Outlast was a smash hit for a number of reasons, one of which was the ingenious decision to have many sections of the game take place in almost total darkness. Red Barrels’ first game was released in 2013 for PC, with console ports for the PS4 and Xbox One following soon after.
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