
Like in the first Outlast, you play a camera-toting journalist in Outlast 2 (although the games appear otherwise unconnected). Outlast 2 is as pure and effective a horror video game as has ever existed, which will make it a dream for some players and unplayable for others. This is not terror-lite there’s no action or humor. But Outlast 2 employs a number of other psychological tricks and feints on top of that feeling of helplessness that make it truly nerve-wracking to play. Obviously it’s terrifying to feel vulnerable and helpless, which in this game you always are, without a single fleeting second of safety or respite.

Outlast 2 is also pants-crappingly scary.

But the multiplicitous ways in which you can now scurry off and tuck yourself away somewhere dark, and the things you can do once you have, make Outlast 2 an admirable expansion of the original’s narrow vision.

That generally leaves the same two options: Run, and hide. You still can’t fight in Outlast 2, except for small quick-time moments where you have to rapidly press a button to escape some monster’s clutches. Blake suffers some of the most vile, visceral horrors imaginable, and through him, you experience them too.
