The Outlast Trials Early Access Review

The two single-player installments of the Outlast franchise, Outlast and Outlast 2, have seen a lot of success. Red Barrels, the game’s creator, chose to do something with the third game that most horror games can’t really carry off successfully: co-op. It’s rather intriguing to consider how well the game handles having up to three companions alongside you while you creep through dank, dark passageways without any means of defending yourself from the monsters you’re up against.

Let’s get this out of the way: The Outlast Trials obviously treats co-op as the primary way to play, even though it can be played entirely solo. When played in single player, The Outlast Trials feels like little more than a rehash of the games we already played back in Outlast and Outlast 2. Most of the more fascinating level design and features mostly come from the game’s co-op.

The Outlast Trials still primarily focuses on its jump scares and eerie ambiance to frighten you despite its focus on co-op. This game won’t cause you to experience any lasting psychological anguish like the Silent Hill series did. Instead, The Outlast Trial wants to frighten you repeatedly throughout the game by unexpectedly revealing a horrifyingly deformed visage. How well this works is debatable; players typically have varying tolerance levels for this kind of stuff. While some of us could find jump scares boring after the first few times, others might still find it to be an immensely intriguing form of terror.

The mechanics of The Outlast Trials contribute to its other side of the horror. You have to rely on stealth and whatever tool you can find because you can’t really defend yourself against the horrors you’re in the room with. For instance, hurl an empty bottle to divert an enemy as you swiftly dive into a nearby locker to conceal yourself. There are also more sophisticated gadgets available, such as a smoke mine that allows you to flee if an attacker ever gets too close to where you may have planted it.

The atmosphere in The Outlast Trials is also incredibly dense, in large part because you’ll be spending a lot of time in the dark. The Outlast Trials, when combined with the fairly outstanding sound design, can seem incredibly eerie, especially when all you can hear are the distant screams of an ally who has been found or the thundering footfall of your foes as they draw closer. Of course, you can use your night vision goggles, but you’re best off storing them for situations where you have no other genuine options because they drain their batteries at an alarming rate.

The Outlast Trials is an intriguing indie co-op horror shooter that surprisingly shares similarities with GTFO in that both games subject players to demanding tasks with limited resources while they attempt to dodge as many horrifying monsters as they can. The Outlast Trials and GTFO are both far more challenging games, but some of their stages are remarkably similar. Aside from independent games like GTFO, there aren’t very many well-made level-based co-op horror experiences available. This makes the comparisons useful.

The Outlast Trials is a gorgeous game that portrays dank, dark pathways and rooms. Some of the monster designs serve as excellent examples of the visual power of the game, revealing every last hideous aspect in fine detail. The Outlast Trials still looks amazing even when you’re in complete darkness and your only source of illumination is the grainy, sepia-toned night vision goggles. This is primarily down to the excellent art direction that was unquestionably refined over the creation of the previous two Outlast games. Although the player characters may not be particularly attractive at first glance, the opportunity to gain cosmetics greatly improves the experience of viewing other players’ characters.

Even though the game was installed on a SATA SSD, the loading times were minimal, with the exception of the first time the game opens up. The game worked fairly well on my mid-range gaming PC, which is outfitted with a Ryzen 5 3600, a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, and 32GB of RAM. The game was able to maintain frame rates between 80 and 140 throughout my time with it, with the majority of the settings at the highest setting at a 1080p resolution.

The Outlast Trials has a meager, at best, plot. Although there are a few sporadic cutscenes and your overall objective is fairly obvious from the start, many of the more intriguing details about the plot can only be discovered by playing through the game’s levels and discovering hidden documents and other collectibles that show you how seriously screwed up your situation is.

The Outlast Trials, a precursor to the first game, takes set during the Cold War. The player has been kidnapped by a particular corporation and is being subjected to gruesome and unethical tests. In order to regain their freedom, players must cooperate, go through the game’s titular trials, and amass enough proof to expose the corporation’s unscrupulous business practices.

The Outlast Trials doesn’t actually employ any particularly brilliant storytelling techniques; instead, it focuses on offering a focused experience that isn’t overly constrained by the have to look for the appropriate documents in order to obtain the entire picture. The Outlast Trials tells its tale in a rather straightforward manner, and despite its dependence on collectibles, you won’t ever really find yourself becoming too confused about what you’re intended to do or why you’re doing it.

It is important to bear in mind that The Outlast Trials is still in early access, thus there will certainly be many modifications made to the game, particularly in regards to elements like balance that can have negative ripple effects on the game’s overall enjoyment. To run some further tests, I was also unable to get The Outlast Trials to launch on the Steam Deck, but I’ll put that down to it being a pre-release build of an early access game.

It’s enjoyable to play The Outlast Trials, especially in co-op. Its terror may not resonate with certain players as much as it did with me, but the experience itself was a lot of fun. Even playing online games with strangers is never boring or annoying, and if the game becomes too tense for you, playing with others is a great method to release the tension.

The Outlast Trials, aside from its co-op, doesn’t accomplish much new, so if you don’t like horror games where you can’t defend yourself, you probably won’t find much to appreciate here. The Outlast Trials is a game you should keep an eye on if you like slow-paced gameplay where you’re practically defenseless against terrifying monstrosities but still have to accomplish quests.

Source: gamingbolt