Recent reviews by Gabe Newell

AI Subnautica

boulders fell and I died so now my game is softlocked

worthy ending of the series, awesome game

again nice idea for story and setting, yet way to many long cutszenes , I dont want to watch a movie, I want to play. The only partily scary parts were the school flashbacks. Wasted potential, I hate when my character gets crippled for 5 mins to watch a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cutszene. Also relies to much on jumpscares instead of horror.

This story is actually even deeper than the one of outlast 1, blake witnessed something horrible happening to his friend when they were children, he did nothing to stop it and he didnt tell anyone, which led his friend into suicide.
He finally forgot about it and the horrible circumstance made him remember it part for part.
Sadly the gameplay is stale and booring so in the end the writer deserves a raise while the programmers deserve to get scolded. They basicly had the engine but did almost nothing interesting and new with it. The only monster that is kinda scary is the evil reprasentation of the evil catholic priest/teacher, the rest is to goofy to be scary.

Also the ending is very confusing to me, it was kinda hinted that all the crazy supernatural things are from the audiowaves , in the end when Knot said the voices stopped the audio speakers were broken. But the child who could not exist is still in blakes hands, would actually be even better if blake would suddenly have empty hands and everyone died for nothing. It also seems when the final scene plays he is in range of other working audio towers again.

I had to force myself to finish this game.

The forrest made this game less scary then the first game, you had too much space to evade.

A better and deeper story is sadly less important than the gameplay part, where in Outlast 1 you had the goal to get out and had multiple setbacks, Outlast 2 you just search for lynn basicly and when you find her she is gone and you have to find her again.


I literally got the speedrun achievment on my first playthrough.

Awesome setting and story, but extremly linear gameplay which makes it less scary

dlc was not bad but had too many cutszenes

Confusing UI and Inventory(turns out to be the least confusing of all frictional games, infact so simple that even xqc could finish this one), I am not even sure if I got injured or died when I took the lock of some door.

If you accidentally pull your headset plug the game has no more audio and you need to restart.

I hate the ranged enemies in soma and in rebirth.

Most rooms have no gameplay purpose besides maybe a note.



this was the least scary frictional game until it became the scariest

There was a shark in the distance, I feel like there was some potential to get some shark attacks.NVM, the creature eating my robot with the light was fd up, I somehwo thought I had to run into the void... and tried 2 times

ok I first wanted a giant angler fish, than I was disappointed there are only small ones and now I dont longer want a giant angler fish ,
btw did I lose it at that point or did the last entry to tau also look like the angler fish ?

I literally pulled the plug on the last human without even talking, I was done with everybody involved with this situation

this feels like subnautica + penumbra

best ending of all frictional games.

Best Story/Setting - Penumbra

Best Ending and the scariest - Soma

Best Gameplay - The Bunker

This game made me afraid of picking up items. While I hated the forced story hour of alexander in tdd , i hate the mini cutszene of any item I pick up even worse

Like the entire first part of the game before the fort nothing scary happens

A lot of the assets used in the bunker later: helmet , workbench, grenade and door

The cistern was actually good.
When you stop picking up story elements which stop gameflow the game becomes good shocker.

Softlocked my self, energy repeater beacon disappeard in the wall, luckily I had only to redo a 5-10 mins because I didnt want to save and exit and see what happens.

I actually like the alien god/cursed city.

The only time I died was when a Wraith spawned in when you have to collect a specific energy repeater beacon, then I had to run and the Wraith didnt stop aggro even when I layed down 3 rooms further.
And when I came back to collect the beacon it just oneshot me.

I completly forgot I had Laudanum I didnt use it once the entire playthrough.

Final thoughts:
A lot of things are way better than in tdd like enemys actually trying to find you instead you waiting for them to despawn. But rebirth had like the fort , cistern , the maze and the big ghoul place. Like half of the game had very little horror and the amount of mini cutscenes in some areas are insane I had to skip them all at one point because they ruined the gameflow. Where Penumbra and the Bunker intrigued you to read information or even were necessary clues to progress, in rebirth you could say the only notes that mattered in that regard were the ones about the explosive shell in the fort to get to the cistern.

I actually had fun with this game, but it didnt give me the penumbra , bunker experience I was looking for.

Best Frictional Game and now my favorite horror game, Best setting since Penumbra

All Negative Reviews in a Nutshell:

1. I didnt save ,so the game is bad; well there is not much to say about

2. The game is too hard the monster never leaves ,so the game is bad; well there are actually a lot of negative reviews saying the opposite and the take the monster is easily tricked into leaving or not finding you , this actually a reasonably take because you can run almost the entire time and always outpace the monster in the wall aslong the light is on, but I actually think it was exactly done perfect, "The ♥♥♥♥♥♥ hates the light" when you try running back when the generator goes out you will get a little surprise.

3. The game is too hard the rats are too op ,so the game is bad; well you can literally remove the rat dmg and easily burn the rats with a torch/flare + fuel, so you dont even need a lighter, these people probably cant read ether some didnt know that when you bleed they follow your blood.

4. The game has to few resources ,so the game is bad; I had like 3 instances where I had no fuel+nades , so I had to run into the dark to drag a explosive barrel to a door and shoot it to progress or get fuel, these moments were the scariest and most intensive and in retrospect the most fun. Also deciding between using fuel to burn bodies to permanently remove the rats from your path, a chance to retrieve a code or keep the generator running. It gives every item a huge value at the start of the game and it is not like a lot of games where I just stack an item because it is basicly useless.

5. There is no minimap ,so the game is bad; also strange like would you guys like to pause the game and read a map in a horror game ??? penumbra did it even better and the halloween update brought back in shellshock ,that you cant read notes or watch your inventory while getting chased.


6. The game is to buggy to play; like I had like 1 Item stuck to the ground and 1 broken Door stuck to the dead npc in the tunnel, ether the halloween update fixed it all, because thats when I bought it or these people make ♥♥♥♥ up

7. Amnesia TDD was so much better; this has to be a joke , Im starting to beleive they watched the pewdiepie playthrough years ago and then say this ♥♥♥♥, like amnesia tdd is literally camp the corner until the monster despawns and then get forced into alexanders slowmotion tales which also despawn the monster, die in amnesia tdd while getting chased monster despawns and you win anyway


Final Statement:
Most believable setting and story since Penumbra , Amnesia Tdd had to many magic elements which break my immersion.

Fun to explore and everything is valuable. Easiest Speedrun I have ever seen and done but it is funny.


From the obscure post from frictional games


“Without this knowledge, without this foundation, you could not have the will to do what I must now ask of you.”

Penumbra - The Arrival

If it is a remake, I hope they keep the mechanics from the bunker. The cut content monster actually would fit the tunnel diggin ai theme(To be clear just as a bonus the old monsters should all be there obviously). Hopefully we can see the full vision the creators of Penumbra had back then, when they didnt had the budget and technology to make it.

PS: F*** Requiem, Give us the Penumbra ending we deserve.

Boss Fights are amazing, rest is ok to bad

base game is harder than the dlc

fun but way too short, kinda hoped the entire story was gonna be playable