?/?/? Notes on Outlast II (Sequel to an allegedly legendary horror game that has nothing legendary to it)

I had high hopes for this sequel, even though fully aware of its negative reviews.

 

Plot reminder: Since the first game you've been demoted, so you're no longer a journalist, but your girlfriend's sidekick in some sort of documentary she's making.

 So, as her cameraman, the first thing you record is the helicopter you were flying on having an "engine failure" (how did this happen I guess would be poorly explained later in-game, probably because some spirit got jammed in the rotor). You woke up after falling with (incredibly) no injuries whatsoever, near the crash site, but you see no clues of your girlfriend, so you start searching for her. 

That's when the game introduces the "new" system of notes which are the only way to make sense out of scenes like the skinned man near the helicopter who, as it turns out, is the helicopter's pilot. Good thing the locals missed MC, right? 

The thing is, the tip for using this function is "recording important events" and they seem to me rather random; you may film a village you get into from afar or the crashed helicopter, but the gruesome scenes such as burned corpses arranged in a cross pattern, the rotten dead horse stabbed with a shovel, the creepy villagers chanting something about you being "the father of lies" or the twelve feet tall woman that chases you with a pickaxe holds no relevance. Speaking of which, this fair lady spots you very easily, sometimes with objects blocking her sight, you cannot outrun her since, as already stated, she's twice your height, and so her legs are twice as long. She kills you with one hit, too. After dying nine times in little more than an hour, I've decided that the game isn't worth playing. On the positive side, reviewers claim that, once you thoroughly check the tips and tricks pages, maybe the cultist plot holds impressive images and several jump-scares. As for me, these two hours seemed to me to go to waste, I feel like a threw them into the worst garbage container. I don't think I'll be touching any other horror games in a while.   1/10