Episode 120 - Dude With Knife - Outlast

When people get scared, they’re as likely to turn to podcasts as anything else. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re talking about Outlast, which is one of the classics of the modern horror game community. This is a first person horror adventure game that gives you no way of defending yourself against the things that are coming to kill you (a “haunted house game” in our parlance), but despite coming out when this type of game was decidedly in vogue, it sets itself apart in two big ways. First, it is shockingly fast paced for a game in the genre, with a lot of your time spent running and following a fairly clear path, and less of it spent investigating and exploring the way something like Amnesia would play. And the second, pretty clearly, is its aesthetic. The washed out green atmosphere is a staple of the game’s marketing which carries over into its DLC and sequel as well, but also emphasizes the found-footage style they were going for here. Using your camera as a flashlight and as a way to get collectibles in a kind of token way is the gimmick that the game rides on and it does succeed in generating an identity of its own. We’re going to be talking about how the game holds up after several years and multiple refinements of its genre, the effectiveness of patrolling enemies, and we explore the assumptions created by the “gamer brain.” Thank you for joining us for the last episode of Halloween! On the main podcast, anyway, we still have one more horror title to talk about on Pocket next week, so be sure to check in for that to really round out the month. Did you play Outlast when it came out, or had it recommended while talking about horror titles? Do you think it holds up? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Thank you for listening and I hope your October has been pleasantly spooky, or unpleasantly, or whatever you wanted it to be. As we’re leaving October, next time we’re going to be talking about Psychonauts 2, the newest entry in the list of game sequels that released extremely far apart from their predecessors, so we hope you’ll be back for that.