Outlast Critic Reviews

Red Barrels have done a fantastic job combining an intensely disquieting setting, a unique visual look, and an incredibly effective camera gimmick to ensure that nobody escapes Mount Massive without a few nightmares.

Survival horror at its most primal, this is an exceptional jaunt into madness.

Outlast’s combination of stealth, platforming and horror is exceptional, the benefits of the diverse experience of its highly talented development team always in plain sight.

Outlast perfects this self-inflicted madness in every area of its design, and it's absolutely petrifying. I love it.

Even late in the game, it had the ability to get my blood racing and my spine tingling. It’s possible that by the end, Outlast does, in fact, slightly outlast its mechanics and AI, but the novelty of running and hiding and its phenomenal, no-holds-barred presentation definitely make up for it. This is a gross, scary, disturbing game: you should play it.

Outlast simultaneously reminds me of the grainy slasher flicks of the '70s, the gruesome body horror of Clive Barker, and gratuitous modern torture porn. It manages to squeeze a great deal of diversity into what is quite a small package of around six or seven hours, but it doesn't burst or struggle to reconcile the different elements.

Outlast offers a lot for the $20 that the developers are asking: great visuals, a decent story, some solid scares, plenty of checkpoints, and a little bit of openness in both exploration and in dealing with the enemies that can't be fought back against.

If you enjoy a terrifying game and are not prone to heart attacks, this $20 fright-fest is for you. Just be warned, it is not for the faint of heart.

This game is completely honest about wanting to scare the crap out of me, and being released next to Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, it’s good to have the plain option.

An unrelenting torrent of gore and terror that plays your nerves like a fiddle...until all the strings break.

It’s stressful and terrifying in a way that most recent horror games can’t match... I say play it in a brightly lit room surrounded by pictures of kittens. The heart can only take so much.

Dark, intense and brutal: Outlast celebrates classic survival horror.

Outlast is terrifying, brutal and crazy. The story is clever enough to assemble all themes into a complete picture and tie it with some historical facts, but the most important thing is this: Outlast is really scary. Honestly, no game before has made me feel such strong emotions. Outlast is a must buy for all fans of scary stories. Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is a fairy tale in comparison.

It’s certain not to appeal to all gamers, and while I often personally use games to relax and blow off steam, I find that after playing an hour or so of Outlast I’m too wound up to play anymore. Good thing then that the whole game is about five hours long.

Outlast is a game designed to frighten even those who deem themselves hard to scare. What we have here is a proper survival-horror game that thankfully doesn’t make the transition to the action genre like so many other horror-themed games these days.

Outlast hits most of its objectives, serving as head of a new series for the horror subjective.

Outlast is the best horror title this year.

Red Barrels is a developer that I hope to see more from, and to my knowledge, there's nothing currently like Outlast that doesn't freely give in to cliches on a regular basis (I have yet to play either Amnesia title), and that's enough for me to call it worth playing.

A good horror game, with plenty of chills and a very effective setting.

Fostering a reaction as elusive and subjective as fear and then circulating it through a game presents a vicious assignment. Outlast nearly completes this task before exhaustively collapsing under the burden of its medium. While Outlast doesn't crack the code, its dreadful atmosphere and relentless tension move the entire genre closer to figuring it all out.