When comparing Dying Light: The Following - Enhanced Edition vs Outlast, the Slant community recommends Outlast for most people. In the question“What are the best horror games on Xbox One?” Outlast is ranked 2nd while Dying Light: The Following - Enhanced Edition is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose Outlast is:
Outlast combines its tense atmosphere, creepy setting, stellar sound design, and a cast of horrifying inpatients to deliver a truly nightmarish experience. The developers even replaced the usual flashlight found in horror games with a camcorder, which has this really creepy nightvision mode.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Enjoyable co-operative multiplayer
Dying Light features up to four player LAN and online co-op.
Pro Satisfying combat
The combat is impactful, visceral, and offers a great deal of variety in terms of available weapons and different enemy types. It presents a reasonable amount of challenge that is rewarding to overcome and offers multiple ways of emerging victorious in each encounter.
Pro Fluid parkour movement
The main protagonist is capable of scaling buildings, jumping over obstacles, and vaulting over zombies with ease, making traversing the open world city a lot more enjoyable.
Pro Rewarding side-missions
There's a wide variety of side-quests and a large chunk of them are multi-part adventures with great storytelling.
Pro Expansive weapon-crafting system
There are blueprints found throughout the gameworld that can be used to modify existing weapons in a wide variety of ways by adding various elements to them and creating weapons such as enemy-seeking grenades, exploding throwing stars, and makeshift bats with nails through them.
Pro Really scary
Outlast combines its tense atmosphere, creepy setting, stellar sound design, and a cast of horrifying inpatients to deliver a truly nightmarish experience. The developers even replaced the usual flashlight found in horror games with a camcorder, which has this really creepy nightvision mode.
Pro Unpredictable inpatients make exploration more tense
Outlast proves that people can be much scarier than ghosts. As you explore the dark hallways of the insane asylum, you’ll encounter many inpatients. Some of them good, some of them bad, but all of them crazy. So it’s sometimes really hard to tell which one will attack you. While some of them make it very obvious by holding knives or looking especially atrocious, sometimes they will attack unexpectedly. This uncertainty will creep inside your head, making exploration a lot more tense.
Pro Your character is really agile
Unlike most horror games where your character is clumsy and slow, in Outlast your character can actually move really well. Not only is your character fast enough to be able to outrun most enemies in the game, he also knows how to parkour. You can jump, grab ledges and climb them, and even slide over a table during a chase. This makes it a really refreshing horror experience.
Cons
Con Poor plot and characters
The story is nothing new with many elements that are just too familiar at this point. A reluctant hero and a cold government agent mixed with a rather basic plot points to a lack of imagination and an obvious attempt to create a game for the masses.
Con Poor multi-threading
Sadly, Dying Light does not do multi-threading very well which results in low frame-rates. For a modern game that is to be played on consoles or PCs with multiple cores, it is mind boggling that proper multi-threading has not been taken full advantage of. This simply comes down to laziness, something that is not new to Techland and their poorly optimized ports.
Con A little too reliant on jump scares
In some parts of exploring the insane asylum there are too many jump scares one after another. After a while it loses its scare factor and instead becomes somewhat annoying. This feels like a missed opportunity to build on the dark and gritty atmosphere of the insane asylum.
Con No substance, unrealized potential and utterly disappointing
Once you get past the jump scares, gore and shock value you might find that there's very little to keep you invested and going back for more. Boredom may sink in nearing the end, with a sense of longing for the game to just be over. However, the night vision mechanic was fresh and unique at the time and introduced a sense of suspense, which other developers have lent from Outlast since. If you're a fan of traditional western horror games you will not disappointed, but if you're looking for something more to your horror games besides learning paths and jump scares, you might want to steer clear of Outlast.
Con Cliche story
The typical horror story protagonist goes to investigate a location that simply oozes danger. As if the abandoned SWAT trucks, locked doors, and boarded up windows were not telling enough, the protagonist realizes his terrible mistake right when there's no way back already.