Outlast 2

Outlast 2 serves up an expertly crafted horror experience that will likely find itself burrowing into you even after your time in the Sonoran desert has come to an end.

Outlast II creates a level of tension that has been very uncommon to see in a recent videogame. With great gameplay, amazing sound quality and outstanding setting, it has become one of the best titles of 2017.

This is survival horror at its most base level, where you are a mostly defenseless layperson caught up in a horrifying ordeal, who would feel lucky just to escape with your life. The wait was indeed worth it, and Outlast 2 should be on the must-play list of horror fans everywhere.

Outlast 2 made me jump and cower more than any other game or movie has in the past year. If Red Barrels’ main goal was to make me want to hug my loved ones the moment the credits rolled then they succeeded with flying colors. Outlast 2 is a delightfully nerve-racking horror experience that serves up some of the most horrific and unsettling images you’ll likely see in a video game in 2017. Please enjoy.

Outlast 2 is a good horror experience, but feels frustrating and too linear in some gameplay moments.

Despite spending a majority of the game running for your life, the atmosphere, enemies and environments contain some of the most eerily disturbing assets I’ve seen in a game. As a horror movie buff, you get a real sense of appreciation and inspiration for some classic horror movies. While clearly not for everyone, Outlast 2 is a memorable fright fest that packs the appropriate types of jump scares and gore galore. If you haven’t tried, make sure to play the original first. I will be going back to the first games DLC entitled The Whistleblower in the near future.

Dripping with Christian lore and barrels worth of red blood, Outlast II is a gruesome horror experience that never lets up.

It's often unbearably cruel and yell-at-your-screen frustrating, but if you look beyond that, this is one relentless horror experience that crawls under your skin.

It’s definitely an improvement over the original Outlast. We are not especially fans of the methods by which it achieves the sense of terror, mainly by throwing you in one shocking situation after another, but nevertheless, we can’t deny that Red Barrels achieves its goals of creating an improved sequel and one of the scariest experiences out there.

Even after 13 hours of gameplay Outlast 2 continues to be a frightening experience. The game has some design problems, of course, but the flaws are forgiven when you get a true survival horror atmosphere all the way to the end.

Obscure, blasphemous, creepy. Outlast 2 is the gamification of the most pure evil terror. You can't fight, only run and hide, hoping that the things outside don't hear your breath. A must-have for every horror addicted.

Outlast 2 is a great sequel to the game that started this series. Awesome atmosphere, a scary setting, good game mechanics and an interesting story, are some of the elements that makes this game a must have for survival horror fans.

With a compelling story, strong graphics, and some genuine scares, Outlast 2 is one of the better horror games to come around in recent years. Some aspects of its gameplay may fall short and the first half of the game is a bit of a bore, but overall, it’s an experience worth having, especially for fans of the genre.

Outlast 2 takes its original idea and builds on it very well to create a sequel that’s straight up terrifying. A must for those who love nothing more than feeling the fear.

In an age with survival horror plagued with jumpscares and defenseless main characters, Outlast 2 doesn't surprise as much as the first one. It's obvious that this second entry improves in every aspect. Lengthier, more variety and balanced gameplay, in a new, country and terrifying atmosphere. But Red Barrels Studio keeps aiming for stealth and fast movement with a camera as only source of light, with some unfair or limited situations that doesn't make it a game for every player.

Outlast 2 is pure narrative horror. Great atmosphere, storyline and enemies. Improves mechanics relative to the first game, but feels simple and too linear in some gameplay moments.

I’ve never played a game that made me cringe and squirm as much as Outlast 2. Outlast 2 builds the type of tension and fear that I haven’t experienced in a game for a very long time. If you enjoy horror, Outlast 2 will definitely leave an impression on you. Outlast 2 doesn’t necessarily change the formula established in the first game but improves on the formula as best it can.

It delivers at making us enjoy while we suffer torture and it keeps the spirit of the franchise alive, although it can't help repeating the same mistakes the previous games had.

Uncomfortable, unsettling, and truly unpleasant. A ferociously effective horror game, then. [June 2017, p.68]

Outlast 2 is sadistic and violent without being subtle about it. Fear is not beneath the skin; it just hits you in the head like a hammer. It's not perfect, but it is great.

Violent, gory, and drenched in tension and madness, Outlast 2's biggest flaw is that it sticks to a couple of notes and repeats them incessantly. Being an impotent victim with little chance of fighting back is scary for a while but wearying through the length of a game. Outlast 2's heavy-handed commentary on the dangers of fundamentalism lacks subtlety or perspective and feels like low-hanging thematic fruit. Without a shred of humor or lightness, Outlast 2 doesn't seem to realize that horror is more effective when paired with normalcy and the pleasantly mundane.

Gratuitous in lieu of sense, Outlast 2 is unpleasant. Fans may lap this up but, while technically competent, there's nothing here to truly enjoy.

Outlast 2 is a good and very frightening horror game, but with some flaws like the annoying "die & retry" gameplay and linear pace.

Outlast 2 builds on what the original did well, crafting terrifying chase sequences with care.

Outlast II is a good game, if it does exactly as you please. Unfortunately, that is not always the case which makes for a very frustrating game.

Outlast II significantly ups the ante in the production values stakes, but its biggest sin is relying a little too heavily on trial and error in the gameplay department. There's an unsettling story here that wanders into some quite shocking territory, but the writing doesn't always sing from the same hymn sheet, and some murderous moments are delivered a little too frantically for the fiction to fully marinate. Despite that, there's more than enough good on offer here to tempt you back to church. Pull up a pew and prepare for a psychological onslaught.

Outlast 2 is visually beautiful, tense and boasts a grotesque but intriguing story. Unfortunately, the overabundance of atrocious chase sequences completely destroy any and all tension and fun the game has going for it.

Outlast 2 is more of an ordeal than the first, in terms of content but also gameplay. The story provides some momentum, but trial and error sequences will see many succumb to frustration (and many large pick axes).

After completing the campaign, Outlast 2 boiled down to being too repetitive and maddening — it’s a horrific, beautiful disappointment. I can’t help but wish the game was half its length and set entirely in environments filled with the creepy corridors, ghostly apparitions, murderous priests, gory suicides and the demons that it does so well. Those moments are when Outlast 2 is at its very best. Instead, the fear was drained by constant deaths, sequences that are more frustrating than they should be, and an abysmal checkpoint system that only highlights how bad the rest is. Outlast 2 looks amazing and sounds amazing, but the gameplay that would make this dark gem shine just isn’t here.

Outlast 2 has some great design elements, and the night-vision handy-cam mechanic is still scary. But the jump scares and gore don't mix right with the elements of psychological horror, and the story retreads horror tropes that didn't need retreading.

As a horror experience Outlast 2 works as a bit of grindhouse exploitation. It’s intense, it’s sharp, and it’s a grisly, beautiful game. But it’s also so linear and tries to be so cinematic that it opens itself to comparisons to similar stories told in other media, and as weird as it is to say, Outlast 2 is also far too safe.

One of the scariest video games ever made, or at least it is for the first few hours – before it succumbs to wearying repetition and frustratingly unfair set pieces.

When I first loaded up Outlast 2, I expected an unsettling experience and that's what I got. Unfortunately, it wasn't always for the reasons the developers intended. If you can get through its many frustrating sequences, there are some good scares awaiting you but it's an incredibly flawed affair that will surely come as a disappointment to fans of the original.

Red Barrels has tried to create something rather different to the first Outlast, but the result is a game that, while feeling undeniably grander than its forebear, is considerably less enjoyable. [July 2017, p68]

A scary adventure that sacrifices as much gameplay as the cult in its story does followers. It also, unfortunately, suffers when compared to Resident Evil VII. [June 2017, p.79]

If you are looking only for horror, Outlast 2 delivers. It’s beautiful, gory and scary. But in terms of story and gameplay, it is repetitive, linear, unfair, and focused too much on trial and error.

Outlast 2’s backwoods territory has a real passion behind it’s visuals and sound but the skew towards the chase quickly strikes me as overbearing. The story tropes sit with a tale that’s been told before and, whilst the antagonists are memorable, their relentless nature adds frustration rather than genuine fear. Stealth remains enjoyable but it seems pushed to the periphery. This game will polarise, depending on your priorities.

By the time we reached the end of Outlast 2 we felt drained for all the wrong reasons. In leaving the confines of its predecessor's psychiatric hospital setting for the wilds of southern Arizona, Red Barrels' horror series has somehow become more linear and less pliable. And now, in the long shadow cast by Capcom's excellent Resident Evil VII, Red Barrels' macabre tricks are made to appear somewhat less dazzling. [June 2017, p.102]

Outlast II is, in the end, a case of wasted potential. It revs up its scare engine to maximum RPMs in the moments after its opening crash sequence, then quickly fizzles in the first major encounter, which I suspect will leave most players cursing at their screens in frustration as they die half a dozen times without any idea where they need to go or what they must do in order to not die a grisly death at the hands of a crazed woman who enjoys nothing more than repeatedly killing us with a sharpened crucifix as we blindly stumble around in the dark...What, that doesn’t sound fun to you? Me neither.