You’d think that a place like the cacophonous show floor of PAX East 2016 would be just about the worst possible venue to preview a game as reliant on mood and atmosphere as Outlast 2

Like the original, the immediate takeaway from Outlast 2 is just how damn gorgeous the game is. Every single gross, maggot-covered severed limb looks exactly how I'd imagine a gross, maggot-covered severed limb would look like. Textures and objects in the environment are terrifyingly-realistic, low fog and walls of dust obscure your vision in a realistic and evocative way, and the night-vision camera effects from the original game are back to amp up the tension ten-fold.

WATCH THE OPENING OF THE DEMO BELOW.

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The core gameplay element of battery management from the original was definitely back in this demo for Outlast 2, which has me a bit worried. While I liked the tension that an ever-depleting battery delivered, I ultimately felt like it actively prevented me from exploring the rich, gorgeous, and terrifying world that Red Barrels created. Here’s to hoping that the mechanics of Outlast 2 rely less on this management, and more on some new gameplay tweaks and elements.

While the original took place primarily in a trope-heavy asylum and the laboratory that existed underneath it, Outlast 2 tossed a wrench in all of this by guiding me through a variety of different locales in my short time with the demo. An ominously-empty village filled with shadows that scurried away as soon as my eyes caught sight of them quickly led way to an abandoned school rife with self-slamming lockers and whispers from just over my shoulder that felt like they were pulled straight from my nightmares. Shortly after that, I found myself blindly storming through a corn field trying to stay hidden from the flashlight beams to a group of backwoods do-wrongers who wanted nothing more than to jam their pitchforks straight into me.

CHECK OUT 5 MINUTES OF THE TERRIFYING CORN FIELD BELOW.

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While I definitely felt a sense of whiplash in going from environmental dread and schoolyard poltergeists, to a Cthulhu-esque tentacle beast and religious zealots, I appreciated the kitchen-sink approach that Red Barrels took to horror in this demo. Whether this was a tone-piece meant to highlight some of the different types of horror that we’d see in the final game, or a demo that’s actually indicative of the rollercoaster ride we’ll be going on later this year remains to be seen, but my short time with Outlast 2 made it quite clear that PC, PS4, and Xbox One owners who like scaring the hell out of themselves have something to look forward to in 2016.

Marty Sliva is a Senior Editor at IGN. He once ate a whole blueberry. Follow him on Twitter @McBiggitty.