Chapter 1: Can you say Marketing Scheme?

This game is almost identical to Bendy and the Ink Machine's first chapter, and has a lot of the same "Horror Games for Kids" issues that a lot of horror games have that fall into the FNaF zeitgeist. The people who made this game also have a YouTube channel that makes millions of views by churning out hour long episodes of Minecraft Five Nights at Freddy's animations geared towards children. This wouldn't be worth mentioning, if they didn't feature other characters like Baldi, Bendy, and the Doki Doki Girls, that arguably generate more views because of their brand recognition, which is ironic given the fact that someone could easily suggest that they made this game so that Poppy or whatever it's name is could appear in those same videos. Me, I'm suggesting that.

They made this horror game so that their recognizable blue scary character could appear in YouTube animations to generate more views. Also they're selling NFTs for Chapter 2 lore.

outlast if it happened in chuck e cheese and was rushed out for the holiday season so parents would buy their tweens and early teens the new fnaf game at launch

hilariously glitch-drunk and determined to ruin it's own atmosphere, fnaf: security breach seems to be held together by hopes, dreams, and maybe a little bit of chewing gum as a back up. controls are too sensitive or too unresponsive. you can break the AI, or use it to break the game. security breach regularly interrupts itself, freezing cutscenes to deliver information in an obtrusive manner. it feels like watching someone argue with themselves, and thoroughly disrupts any attempt at atmosphere. i haven't touched a fnanf game in literal years, and seeing the animatronics move around and talk like people saps all the unease out of their presence. they are, more often than not, comical to witness. it's consistently bizarre, if nothing else.

the real kicker is that it's not scary, nor is it particularly clever. even if it had been complete upon release, every detail fine-tuned to perfection, it would have drifted somewhere toward mediocre at best. there is nothing about this that sticks out other than the fact it's a tried and true mess.

anyway, i laughed so hard when roxy cried about not being able to catch a 12 year old on foot that i slapped myself

Polish is a quality that's hard to quantify, but Outlast is a good example of how a lack of it in key areas can bring down an entire experience. This is a survival horror game where the main resource you manage is the batteries in your night vision camera, so players should be anxious that they’ll run out and be left alone in the dark. However, with the dark sections being so dark that you can’t see at all, you receive an extremely generous supply on top of getting a free refill when you load a checkpoint. Not only does this keep you safe regardless of how poorly you play, even the people who play well can abuse the system by loading immediately after the game says it’s saving. Feelings of vulnerability won't last long when you're constantly reminded that any mistake can be corrected by a loading a checkpoint from a minute ago. You’re also constantly reminded of the controls, with text boxes popping up whenever you encounter something with contextual actions available. Little things like this kill immersion, like how there’s a crosshair in the middle of the screen even though aiming is never required. Some of this stuff can be turned off in the menu, but leaving them enabled by default means that it’ll subtly subtract from the enjoyment until players get fed up and go look for how to turn it off. With so many of these little problems and a few too many cheap jump scares, Outlast feels little more than satisfactory. It wouldn't need much change to be great, but it’s plain to see how much better it could have been with a little more thought put into it.