Outlast.

[Hangthebuggers]

For any fans of Amnesiac and similar modern survival horror (the kind of game were you have no weapons and you just run and hide and shit your kecks), then you'll love this.

I'm only ten or fifteen minutes in, but this is something else... I can't cope. The atmosphere and sound effects are superb.  A brilliant, no-nonsense opening that leads you, (a journalist) into the shady remnants of an insane asylum.

I'm not going to spoil anything, but so far it's wonderfully effective. Horror at its very best. I've shat myself twice now, once as a lingering continuation of having to fucking arse around with my batteries and nightvision on my in-game camera, as I creep between extremely dark rooms, trying to figure out if those footstep sounds are mine. And secondly, I shat my soul out as a result of a fucking brilliantly timed 'jump' scare[nb]Which I usually hate...[/nb], which was anything but cheap. Fuck me.

Had to turn it off for a breather as I'm the only one in the house and I've just had a bit of a smoke. But so far it seems to have combined the ominous and abandoned isolation of Silent Hill, with the camera shaking terror of the Blair Witch project (note that it's your hand shaking the mouse/camera). Genius.

[madhair60]

2spooky

[Moribunderast]

There was some discussion of this game in the horror games thread but, yeah, I agree that it's very good. I've seen some complaints that it uses too many jump-scares but I don't really see it. It does use jump-scares, to be sure, but they're only effective because the game creates an atmosphere that has you constantly on edge. Outlast only has a few tricks but it does them well and the game knows not to outstay it's welcome, so it's all over before anything can get too repetitive.

The night-vision/camera mechanic is an inspired idea and it creates an immersion that many horror games can't match. Whilst it isn't the scariest game I've ever played (Silent Hill 2 and Haunting Ground were downright unpleasant to play at times, in a good way) it's the best horror game I've come across in quite a while. I too had to play in half-hour spurts, just to preserve my nerves. With the current trend of Amnesia-inspired copycats sadly offering diminishing returns in this genre, Outlast is one game that worked and far surpassed the Amnesia sequel, for mine.