This review contains spoilers
While outlast 2 has all the basic elements to make a great horror game, it falls short on too many areas to make a game that's worth coming back to for more than just a few good scares.
Outlast 2 is very flawed, but to start of some of the things that are great about this game. I love the setting of this game, the desert full of crazy Christian hillbillies is so creepy and the general atmosphere is bone chilling. The basic concept for outlast of having nothing but a camera and nothing to defend yourself with for me sets it apart to make much scarier than your average horror game. Some of the transitions in this game are absolutely phenomenal and I'd absolutely reccomend going on YouTube and checking them out if you haven't seen them already, my personal favourite occurs fairly early on in the game and its when you see Jessica hanging from a tree and as you pass a branch that blocks your line of vision of seeing her and then she disappears.
While there are many things I can praise about this game, there are just as many , if not more, that they get wrong. The chase sequences are done really poorly for starters. They're tense as they should be at first but the level design for some of these chases are really bad which makes it become trial and error figuring out what way you're supposed to go as you're chased by blade weilding hillbillies and heretics. The story is very dramatic which isn't a bad thing in itself but Red Barrel overstep the line a few times where a few of the events are just a bit dumb as well as deaths of certain characters such as Papa Knoth and Martha being so anticlimactic and unfulfilling. While I thought the directional sound feature added to the camera was a good idea overall, I generally didn't find much of a justification to use it all that much other than when I'm trying to hear what an enemy is saying when talking to themself, although that's not madotory. I wish there was more of an emphasis on the use of the feature. Blake as a protagonist is honestly pretty bland and uninteresting, he's more of a bystander of horrid events rather than being someone who goes through the traumatic events. There is just a lot more characters in Outlast 2 who are much more interesting such as Papa Knoth, Jessica (more specifically the discovery of her death) and even the priest for as short of a segment he appears in the game is more interesting than Blake ever is.
For the bare bones of a horror game which is just managing to scare me, Outlast 2 does a great job, but from a gameplay and story standpoint this game could have been a lot better so overall this is just an okay game.
Outlast 2 is very flawed, but to start of some of the things that are great about this game. I love the setting of this game, the desert full of crazy Christian hillbillies is so creepy and the general atmosphere is bone chilling. The basic concept for outlast of having nothing but a camera and nothing to defend yourself with for me sets it apart to make much scarier than your average horror game. Some of the transitions in this game are absolutely phenomenal and I'd absolutely reccomend going on YouTube and checking them out if you haven't seen them already, my personal favourite occurs fairly early on in the game and its when you see Jessica hanging from a tree and as you pass a branch that blocks your line of vision of seeing her and then she disappears.
While there are many things I can praise about this game, there are just as many , if not more, that they get wrong. The chase sequences are done really poorly for starters. They're tense as they should be at first but the level design for some of these chases are really bad which makes it become trial and error figuring out what way you're supposed to go as you're chased by blade weilding hillbillies and heretics. The story is very dramatic which isn't a bad thing in itself but Red Barrel overstep the line a few times where a few of the events are just a bit dumb as well as deaths of certain characters such as Papa Knoth and Martha being so anticlimactic and unfulfilling. While I thought the directional sound feature added to the camera was a good idea overall, I generally didn't find much of a justification to use it all that much other than when I'm trying to hear what an enemy is saying when talking to themself, although that's not madotory. I wish there was more of an emphasis on the use of the feature. Blake as a protagonist is honestly pretty bland and uninteresting, he's more of a bystander of horrid events rather than being someone who goes through the traumatic events. There is just a lot more characters in Outlast 2 who are much more interesting such as Papa Knoth, Jessica (more specifically the discovery of her death) and even the priest for as short of a segment he appears in the game is more interesting than Blake ever is.
For the bare bones of a horror game which is just managing to scare me, Outlast 2 does a great job, but from a gameplay and story standpoint this game could have been a lot better so overall this is just an okay game.