As October is closing to an end, it’s the set time to look into November, where a new batch of PlayStation Plus games are up for grabs, with the acclaimed Team Ninja’s action game Nioh and Red Barrels’ frightful first-person horror continuation Outlast 2.
Nioh came to the screens earlier on PS4 in 2017, and its combination of stellar hack-and-slash-action and light RPG accessories—which saw players taking the form of a real-life western samurai William Adams—was compared with Team Ninja’s, Ninja Gaiden games, and also From Software’s appraised Dark Souls series.
‘While the battle gameplay lords and bosses over that of Souls and Gaiden, “Jeffrey Matulef said in his Eurogamer Review,” there are still aspects in which Nioh has not conformed to its modern masterpiece that it is aspiring to be. The only bottleneck with Nioh is its incessant repetition. With all it offers, its padding is just predictable and often unpleasant.’
Yet, Jeffrey agreed, ‘it signaled a return to form for Team Ninja, a studio most people felt had lost its bearing after the departure of its founder, Tomonobu Itagaki in 2008. Nioh’s spoils hack and slash rarely has a chance on cylinders, but it reminds us of how refreshing a solid Team Ninja combat can be.’
However, Outlast 2, launch was quite impressive. According to contributor Edwin Evans-Thirlwell, ‘its exhausting savage moonlit movement through zombie-infested forests— most of which can be easily viewed through the creepy lens of a portable night-vision camcorder—although it has moments as a thrilling horror game, courtesy of some good art directors, neat perception dynamics, it still is low on charm.
Given that, Outlast has a follow-up of sorts similar to Whistleblower, and there wasn’t a need to repeat the same rounds yet again. On that note, developer Red Barrels changed its night vision view to the dusty Arizona desert, where Journalist Blake Langermann and his beloved wife, Lynn, are exploring the murder of a pregnant woman. Well, not too long, the helicopter taking them crashes, and Blake wakes up alone in the burning wreckage with his jaded camera and some spare alkaline batteries.
Before long, he’s scouting through corpses and cornfields, discovering a heart-throbbing satanic cult as he attempts to locate his beloved wife. As expected, Blake can only run, hide, film, and nothing else! Fans rage on how it leaves them helpless in the path of whatever hides in the dark. A thrilling game, indeed!
However, the post-launch upgrades from Red Barrels attempted to make less the grind of appalling pursuit moments so that newcomers would enjoy the experience.
Check on the 5th of November for it will be free to play both Nioh and Outlast 2 until 3rd of December. It means there’s little time to claim Sony’s current offerings, The Last of Us Remastered and MBL: The Show 19
