
"One of the reasons I love horror is because the genre is wide enough to be so many different things-slasher, ghost story, even comedy-and there are so many tools to use. "They definitely have a place," says Dion Lay, who was lead writer on Alien: Isolation at Creative Assembly, when I ask about jump scares. "If you don’t do the suspense correctly," said James Wan, director of movies like The Conjuring and Saw, back in 2016, "then your jump scares are not going to work." The same principle applies to games. Context is everything, though-jump scares can be a valid device in horror if it doesn't feel like the only thing the creators are throwing at you. I've played games and seen films where the scares are exhausting rather than exciting, and they're not much more sophisticated than someone jumping out of a cupboard and shouting 'boo'. Jump scares are often considered cheap scares, and to some extent that reputation is justified. These changes are not drastic in our opinion and do not impact gameplay, but they had to be made to avoid an Adult Only rating."Ĭould this removed material be the reason Australia's classification board initially refused to classify the game? "Also, we’ve taken the opportunity to reinsert some of the things we had to remove from the original game in order to get an M rating.
#Outlast 2 game stuck in documents and recordings update
But more importantly, the update has also lead to the introduction of more grimness. "It is still possible to die," the notes read, "but we’ve decreased the number of enemies and have lowered their speed, damage and perception."Ĭhanges have also been made to the pacing of the game, allowing more passive players to poke around the game's sinister environments. But for those who prefer story to nail-biting monstrosity evasion and, uh, dying, there's a Story Mode now.īut unlike Soma's recent non-lethal playthrough option, you'll still be able to die in Outlast 2's story mode, and there will still be monsters. Studio Red Barrels did end up dialing back the difficulty a few months after its early 2017 release date, and having played it since then, I can confirm it's not as bloody frustrating as it was at first.

Outlast 2, aka the horror game which features a "charred baby pit", was notoriously hard at launch. Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. For extra reading, here's what horror game creators think about jump scares. Humble's Outlast 2 sale runs now through tomorrow, April 6 at 10am PST/6pm BST. Huge spoilers within, obviously, but James explores the above in greater detail over here.

It’s fear of the drastic measures people will take to ensure their salvation, the burden of guilt, and whether or not the big guy up top exists and gives a damn. It's not a fear about being hunted, artistic viscera spills, or neatly arranged corpses on spikes (though there’s plenty of that stuff). It’s one of the most bizarre ending sequences I’ve witnessed, tapping into a fear I’ve known since my first week at Sunday school.

Long after the final minutes of Outlast 2, I felt queasy, uncertain that what I saw had actually happened. Here's an excerpt from James' 85-scored review, which speaks to the game's rather extreme ending: If you fancy taking on the cult-battling, camcorder-flashing, hide-in-lockers horror venture yourself-you brave thing, you-know that it's on sale on the Humble Store for £7.81/your regional equivalent off until tomorrow. Does the game in question operate a first or third-person perspective? Are we fighting/pegging it from zombies, cultists, government soldiers, supernatural beings or all of the above? Does it let us walk across a charred baby pit-hang on, what?įor me, Outlast 2's tone will be forever captured by Tim's striking post-E3 2016 preview headline, no matter how it dials back its difficulty and/or introduces less hostile story modes. When shopping for horror games, there are a number of things to consider.
