Welcome to the chilling review of The Outlast Trials. Prepare for an unspeakable horror experience.
One of the hardest reviews I've ever had to write was for Outlast 2. The game was so creepy that it was hard to find the courage to play it at times. Outlast Trials, Red Barrels' first game since then, doesn't consistently reach those same heights, but it's memorably terrifying at times and, when it's not scary, it's very rewarding in other ways. Taking a single-player survival game like Outlast and turning it into a four-player PvE game sounds like the kind of live-streaming service experiment that many teams have been undertaking lately. But as an independent team, Red Barrels seems to have forged its own path, and that's perhaps why The Outlast Trials still feels more like Outlast than the cynical experimental orientation that the name suggests.
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The Outlast Trials takes place during the Cold War, where you'll customize your virtual guinea pig for an extensive series of gruesome experiments within the Murkoff Facility. The game's opening cutscenes, along with the lore, paint a scene so gruesome and sinister that it will be familiar to series veterans, but unsettling to those new to the Outlast universe. After training to become sleeper agents who are psychologically disrupted, tortured, and then subjected to torture, you're eventually released back into the open world awaiting your activation as a secret weapon. The context of your overall mission is at least as dark as anything this team has done before – and it's set very high before that.
In practice, these experiments take place across a variety of large maps, including a police station, a courthouse, a circus, and more. Each is added as a replica of the real thing as you run through the mazes Murkoff has built like a lab rat. This includes many elements of Outlast, none more emblematic than trying to carefully walk through the darkness in first-person, desperately searching for salvation – or at least batteries – before your night vision runs out.
Like its predecessors, The Outlast Trials is still often in the dark, but it makes more use of light than its predecessors. It's a clever way to torture you. While you'll often wish you could find the next battery pack before you're forced to start searching for walls in the dark, you'll also often have to move through well-lit areas, which betray you in the opposite way by making your escape obvious to patrolling enemies. It reminds me of how, in the scorching heat, one might wish it were winter, but then in the snow, one might dream of summer. Light and darkness are used to differentiate the obstacles in your path, much like noise traps, failed mini-games, and naked giants looking to crush you to the mat. Yes, what would an Outlast game be without monster men waving their swinging arms?
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The mini-games will feel familiar to players of other multiplayer horror games, such as Dead By Daylight and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Starting generators or picking locks quickly but quietly is stressful but it's done fairly, so that your mistakes feel like they're yours, rather than the game imposing drama where none should be. The mini-games are challenging enough to provide the drama themselves, and the idea of an ideal or even perfect run - avoiding traps or failed mini-games, sustaining no injuries, and perhaps never even noticing enemies - is a fun reward for players who play long enough to become familiar with the game's scariest parts.
You'll have to deal with all sorts of rude AI, including a jailer who's always too happy to use his baton, a supernatural being called The Skinner Man who haunts you whenever your mental state deteriorates, and Mother Gooseberry, a parasitic, corrupted version of a kindergarten teacher who wears a face similar to Leatherface's Pretty Woman mask, but completes it with a disturbingly hand-drawn duck with a menacing drill hidden in its beak. In Outlast, almost every villain is a virtual person - this has been the case for a long time, and continues in The Outlast Trials.
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Adding to the sense of insecurity the game evokes is the level of sickening detail found in every corner of each map. Bodies are left piled high in trash cans, or quartered like a butcher's shop. The walls are plastered with propaganda promoting humiliation and brainwashing your inner self. Most disturbing of all, and something I consider a true stroke of horror genius, is that each map features Murkoff researchers wearing white lab coats and observing you from behind security glass. So while you might be running for your life, losing consciousness, or bleeding out on a bathroom floor, the cold, hard scientists are simply observing and reporting. The Outlast Trials continues to prove that the company has a knack for being downright malicious.
A new element in this reimagined Outlast is that you can throw bricks and bottles to distract or temporarily suspend enemies. It's the simplest means of self-defense in a series that has so far only allowed you to run and hide. But the most sophisticated version of reacting, built for a game that wants to be endlessly repetitive like this, is your gear – a special cooldown ability of your choice with a number of upgrades that unlock gradually over time. There are a few different pieces of gear, such as abilities to heal your team or toss smoke bombs to cover your tracks, and the best use of any of them is to combine them with those of other players who may be loading into matches with different gear than you. Collectively, you are a team.
This design reveals a more traditional Outlast hidden within this multiplayer-oriented, prequel. While many mission objectives are adjusted for the size of your group, such as the need to activate multiple generators in a dark basement when you're in a group instead of having to activate just one as a solo player, the game is almost as terrifying as I found Outlast 2 when played alone. That's a good thing, because it means that any reactions to the series' new direction can still find something close to the classic Outlast experience if they so desire.
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Missions can take much longer when played this way. A mission that might take 90 minutes alone can be reliably completed by a full team in a third of the time, in my experience. I'm fine with either case, depending on how I want to play at a given moment, but it's frustrating that the game's constant online connection means I can't really pause it even when playing solo. I reverted to hiding in closets, barrels, or under beds if I needed to get away for a while, but that comes with the risk of being kicked out for inactivity.
The Outlast Trials gets less scary with every additional person you add to your party. It's a bit of "strength in numbers" and a bit of "anguish loves company." It's just that the incredible terrors this game throws at you become more understandable as your party grows. When played with people you know, it can take the form of a vampire romp - the screams become equal parts laughter and terror. It's fun to be vulnerable with your friends. The Outlast Trials isn't as scary with multiple players, but it becomes an unforgettable experience in a way that previous Outlast games weren't meant to or capable of.
Still, I find this result odd; a game designed for four players loses much of its terrifying luster if actually played that way. This review is based on version 1.0 of the game, which launches on March 5, but both this week and in previous sessions – some of them from months ago during the game’s validation on Steam Early Access – I’ve experienced some missions in which everything was remarkably easy because the three players who connected were, in some cases, experts. It was as if they had virtually transcended the limits set by the timid setup and were able to exploit the system to maximize the rewards. For them, it became less a cooperative horror game, but a climb up a difficult reward tree.
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This isn't particularly satisfying to me, as someone who wants to play an Outlast game to be terrified, but thankfully it hasn't happened often. It's possible to have such an experience, but more often than not my group consisted of a few unfortunate souls struggling to do enough to get out of the exit doors, injured, before they closed forever. This is more like what I wanted, and thankfully it's more common.
Still, if you're going to chase the ultimate skill horizon for the game's rewards, there are plenty. As each player builds their character, unlocking new cosmetic decorations for their personal "sleeping room" and character, as well as new passive skills and gear abilities, it quickly becomes apparent how rich it is. There's not a single skill I felt I could pass up, from learning to scythe, to picking locks faster, to increasing my stamina or battery life. For most players, the odds will be stacked against them, so choosing a new skill is both so difficult in a way that's paralyzing from choice, and at the same time kind of easy too, since you can't really go wrong. Every improvement is welcome when you're otherwise so powerless. I wanted all of them, and I'm still chasing some of them today.
Rewards are earned each time you level up, which will transform your victim into lab superpowers over time, unless the missions manage to progress in difficulty alongside you, with end-game content and limited-time weekly quests acting as flashbacks to the distant past and eventually becoming the long-term excuse to return to the game regularly.
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The game still uses a prestige system almost like Call of Duty, in which you complete a character through the end-game trial and release them into the world – in the literature this allows them to join society and await their verbal trigger, which I find deliciously dark. You’ll keep your unlocks and start over with a different character, or Regent, which means this process is light on both rewards – the only example in the game – and consequences, but at least the story justification is compelling. I just wish there was more story to put front and center. Beyond this syntactical understanding and an initial animation, you’ll only glean the narrative through the collectible texts found randomly throughout each level.
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The Outlast Trials is a surprisingly satisfying multiplayer horror game. It's capable of being as terrifying as previous Outlast games, and while you'll likely exchange a few terrifying moments when playing with a larger group, they'll likely be replaced by nervous giggles as you and your allies narrowly avoid monsters in the darkness. Surviving and returning to the base means you'll unlock great post-game content, like harder missions and skills that are useful no matter what you unlock. These gameplay loops are difficult for most live-streaming teams to grasp, so it's especially impressive that a small, traditionally unique horror team has found a formula that works so well.
It's initially jarring to watch an Outlast with things like healing abilities, cosmetic customizations, and upgrade trees, though it doesn't take long to appreciate this newfound insight. The Outlast Trials, like the series of villains at its center, wears many faces, but each one is memorable.
Information source: gamespot.com
