As much to tell you straight out: if Outlast is far from perfect, its membership in the great family of survival-horror is amply deserved as the atmosphere of the game will make you graze heart attacks on many occasions. Because let's be honest, Outlast is without a doubt one of the dirtiest and most disturbing games we've ever played, definitely classifying it between Amnesia and the Forbidden SIREN series. A true video game nightmare. Filled with visions of horror but above all offering an absolutely unbearable atmosphere, Outlast will drag you into the darkest abysses of madness and perversity through an adventure reminiscent of films like Shutter Island and Flight over a cuckoo's nest. The player takes on the role of Miles Upshur, an investigative reporter who received a letter explaining that there were a lot of very shady things going on in the Mount Massive mental asylum. Neither one nor two and listening only to his professionalism, off he went for a little courtesy visit to this asylum with an obscure past. Indeed, the Murkoff Corporation, a dubious company, used the place to experiment on behavior modification, leaving behind the remnants of their work. Once in front of the door of Mount Massive, we understand that there will be no welcome drink, everything is more or less dismembered corpses, traces and puddles of blood everywhere and mass graves with the smell strong to discover between two offices. Not to mention the pretty collections of decapitated heads that adorn some shelves. D&Co with Outlast sauce, there is enough to freeze your blood, especially when Valérie Damidot is replaced by a psychotic whose main hobby is to tear off the heads of passers-by. Moreover, the modeling of the places is rather successful, proving that the graphics engine of Epic Games, the Unreal Engine 3, is always as effective. You will therefore have plenty of time to dirty your underwear by walking through the corridors of Mount Massive on a soundtrack composed mainly of the more or less panting breathing of your character, incredibly stressful in certain passages. Otherwise, we can also count on these suspicious noises like grunts or complaints (we don't know very well) that emanate from the residents of the establishment. Note also that if you walk in a puddle of blood, the trace of your shoes will be visible, reminiscent of the good old Duke Nukem 3D which, if we refer to the sole, had the same shoes as Miles!
extreme reporter
In terms of gameplay, we find in Outlast a lot of things that are quite classic in the end. You therefore control your character in subjective view, with the difference that you obviously have no weapon, your only tool being your camcorder equipped with an NVG mode. The latter will therefore serve you to see in the dark, but also to collect notes as long as you think of filming certain points of interest. And since we obviously don't want to miss anything, we tend to play the adventure by using it permanently, which adds a filthy graphic filter to the image, like an old VHS, further increasing the snuff movie effect. In addition, the integrated zoom is a great help to see distant scenes, and thus prepare for the worst pitfalls of the tormented imagination of the developers of Red Barrels. But of course, the help of your camera will not be free and you will have to go in search of batteries to power the night vision system which turns out to be extremely greedy in battery. This forces you to search every corner of Mount Massive to find the too few piles lying around here and there. But the gameplay elements that intensify the discomfort are not limited to the camcorder, the opening of the doors can be done with a jerk or centimeter by centimeter, just to be able to close it immediately if ever a psycho is behind. Moreover, the hands of Miles are represented when you lean to look beyond a corner of a wall or a door frame, reminding if necessary that you are only a fleeing rodent for its survival. . The adventure is divided into several phases which invariably consist of recovering three objects that you must bring back to a room in order to be able to progress. Why three objects and not two or five? No idea, if you have any theories, we are happy to read them in the comments of this test.
Run forest run !
With each object that we recover it is the assurance of having a monster on our heels and this is where Outlast reveals its first weaknesses. The title has the major defect of being based on a repetitive construction and therefore quite predictable. Indeed, once a psychopath chases you, you have only one solution: to take to their heels and as quickly as possible. Luckily Miles Upshur, our hero, is the athletic type and in times of stress he is able to outrun Usain Bolt because only his movement skills can save him. It will therefore be necessary to gallop until you find a way to block the passage, by pushing a cupboard against the door for example, or by hiding under a bed or in a locker. The games of hide and seek are also quite short because even if the internees take the trouble to search the premises, they almost never find you. So of course, from time to time, one of the patients can catch you a leg and you will then have to shake the mouse to get rid of it, but the sprint will remain by far the favorite discipline of our extreme journalist. If Outlast plays thoroughly on the shortage of batteries as the other survivals do with ammunition, the title of Red Barrels also contains sequences of "valvage", that is to say puzzles where you almost always have to handle two valves to find a combination that opens a passage. Like other classics of the genre such as the first Silent Hill, Outlast requires a bit of savvy, in order to scare you better.
At last
Sold for less than €20, Outlast is therefore not necessarily one of the blockbusters that we expect firmly and this is felt at the level of its development necessarily in relation to the proposed price. The game has indeed very real shortcomings, starting with its production, which is certainly inventive but lacks finish. The repetitive aspect of its gameplay ends up ruining the great atmosphere of the game since after a few hours of gameplay, you can easily smell the attacks. When you find an object, the fear fades quickly to give way to a feeling of flight that you have obviously programmed in the face of the repetitiveness of the actions. Similarly, the fact of having to systematically bring back three objects quickly becomes tiresome. A little imagination what the hell! Finally last point, the life of Outlast is around 7 hours, which is not really a panacea but for less than 20 euros, can we really demand more? Finally last point, the plot being one of the main engines to face the dread, the replayability of the title is zero, unless you bring it out in a few years just to remember some good memories. Despite everything, the Red Barrels studio succeeded in its first attempt and with Outlast showed us the full extent of its perversion. This survival horror with old school and unexpected sweetness will undoubtedly delight fans of the genre, since the unhealthy and despicable atmosphere is really there. We often come close to heart attack and the feeling of discomfort and disgust inspired by the design of Mount Massive Asylum is well worth taking our hat off to the developers. The game should easily be able to give PS4 buyers a cold sweat...
