Outlast is a survival horror game released last year that terrified and traumatised gamers more than any game before it. Now, with the release of the much-anticipated Whistleblower DLC, we get to do it all again.

The original game still wears a blood-soaked crown for being, in my humble opinion, the scariest game ever. What shocked me more than anything is that Whistleblower is scarier. It’s astonishing, but Red Barrels have managed to one-up themselves.

The DLC is an over-lapping prequel to the original Outlast, which began with plucky journalist Miles Upshur receiving an email from a concerned employee tipping him off to some of the atrocities occuring inside Mount Massive Asylum. Whistleblower begins with our new protagonist, Waylon Park, sending the aforementioned email.

His shady employers do not take kindly to his attempts at ‘blowing the whistle’ as it were, so they brutally incarcerate him and torture him, intent on conducting their twisted experiments on him until he dies. However, when the Walrider begins to cause mayhem, Park breaks free from his bonds and manages to flee into the asylum. Armed only with a digital camera, he is determined to escape the hellish institution and return to his wife and children.

Those of you who have played the original Outlast we be painfully aware that, for Park, escaping Mount Massive Asylum won’t be as simple as walking out of the front door. Along the way, our unfortunate protagonist is brutalised by a number of vicious inmates.

Despite Outlast’s superb adversaries, Whistleblower’s antagonists are unbelievably more scary. There’s the ‘Cannibal’, who persues Park with a mechanical saw-blade, leading to many unpleasant scenarios where you’ll be hiding under a table listening to the ‘whir’ of his saw get louder and louder and you weep to yourself quietly.

However, even the cannibal seems tame when compared to Whistleblower’s most demented character, ‘The Groom’. I would not be so churlish as to spoil anything, but I will say that there are some things you cannot unsee, and there were some moments with the Groom that were literally the most horrific things I ever have seen. At times, it borders on tasteless, but as a horror fan, I cannot remember the last time a video game made me feel so alive.

In terms of gameplay, nothing has changed. Conveniently, Park also uses a digital camera with night vision that just happened to be at hand when he first escaped. The game consists of exploring the asylum for batteries and keys when necessary, and hiding or running from antagonists who relentlessly pursue you through the blood-soaked corridors.

However, Whistleblower offers a streamlined and focused experience. At around two hours in length, it grips you mercilessly from start to finish. Instead of forcing the player to search for an arbitrary number of valves in the name of padding out the game-time like the original, it’s short but astoundingly effective.

One small issue with Whistleblower, which is also an issue with the original game, is that if you’re bold enough to sprint past enemies in search of the next area, it’s often quite easy to avoid them and get through large and complex sections of the game in just a few moments. However, it’s easy to get lost too, which balances it out somewhat.

As I said in my original review of Outlast, it’s incredibly frightening but completely unsophisticated in its horror. It does not attempt to do anything new, it simply uses tried and tested methods but executes them so amazingly well that you’ll be running and screaming regardless. Whistleblower is at times even more ludicrously gory than the original. At times, it even feels a little bit Grindhouse, such as when the inmates are shooting hoops with decapitated heads.

Outlast’s DLC is a triumph and without a doubt the scariest video game I have ever played. There were times when I could feel myself physically shaking. If you are dying to feel that same adrenaline-soaked rush that the first game elicited, then Whistleblower will not disappoint. However, it’s not for the faint hearted or for those who are averse to seeing a man masturbate over dead bodies.

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