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.