Outlast: Whistleblower

It's hard to write a review for this after doing one for the base game, because everything I said about Outlast 1 is basically applicable to Whistleblower, too. It's an amazing add-on to the core experience that builds on the story and somehow dials up the gruesomeness even further. You can't play one without the other.

I remember when I first played Outlast, I was in College during my Senior year and I had just gotten a PS4 a month after it first released with my Christmas money over that Winter break, and I remember bringing my new PS4 to my friends apartment to play, even though their really weren't many games. I had a free month of PS+ and this was one of the free games being offered and I remember playing the first Outlast while my friends watched over about a week and while the game was flawed, it was a decent horror experience that I enjoyed for the most part, and I was able to look past the terrible story and ending segment. Then I remember years later Outlast 2 came out and I was already out of college and seeing the game get mediocre reviews really destroyed any expectations I had for it, so I ended up not really checking it out since I had other games I had to catch up on. But then I decided this October for my Halloween games marathon to check out the Outlast Trinity Collection from my library and decided to play through these games, after all, even if they are disappointing compared to the original, they are still horror games I haven't experienced yet.

Whistleblower, is really a mini expansion to the first game, its basically the backstory, which truth be told, I could have gave 2 shits about, so mainly I only cared about the gameplay and horror aspects. Whistleblower starts off decent enough, you are thrown back into the asylum and must hide and sneak around to survive psychopaths like the first game, although its a bit more basic. The second half is pretty boring and drags out and feels like a combination of a walking simulator and trial and error chase segments. During the final 1/4 or so, you basically confront the games main antagonist, and he slowly chases you while you have to run from him through a linear path, but one mistake and he can catch you and kill you in one hit. I actually found him very lame and generic, he was nowhere near as intense or interesting as any of the antagonists from the first game, and he's not as creepy or well-designed as the psychopathic doctor from the first game.

The story to this is kind of silly and I found it kind of lame, but to be honest, I didn't like the story to the first game either, but this just adds more convolution to the already messy story. The characters in this are equally as bland and generic. I mean if the game had just kept the same setup as the first game where you went to different areas hiding and evading psychopaths in a dark asylum, it could have been decent, but the game at times just has not much going on at times, and there are segments where you'll be walking between areas with no enemies for a long time and solving really basic puzzles, and the end segments of this are very trial and error running segments that have no originality to them, and are ruined if you go the wrong way by accident or aren't fast enough. While this game tries to add to the original game, it only feels unnecessary and doesn't really do anything interesting, and is too short to really be anything significant since it can easily be beaten in under 3 hours.

Whistleblower certainly does more with the story of Outlast, but the atmosphere becomes just plain goofy, built on singular shock moments so laughable they become B-grade 80s slasher levels of just funny-bad, most notably when the pampered main villain tries to saw your dick off. Very difficult to take seriously and not in a way where it really works.