Your stamina is limited, preventing you from just outrunning any of the patrolling lunatics, a flaw in many other horror themed games. Balancing what to carry with you vs what you give up becomes a tense balancing act, like standing on a rickety beam above an octagon filled with juiced up, crazed beasts waiting to part your bones from their muscles. You’ll be needing to scavenge batteries to replenish your night-vision, medicine for health, adrenaline for a stamina boost and other various items. The Outlast Trials’ formula for gameplay requires you to manage your inventory space, of which you have 3 starting slots. The game has one trick up its sleeve for every program, instead of having multiple or unique ones to test your fortitude. Like taking a faultily crafted grater to the skin, The Outlast Trials would be great if it had multiple scraping holes to graze you with, but this grater only has one very large sharp circle. Each location is littered with obstacles, threats in the shape of hidden enemies, trapped doors and every ninja’s most hideous nightmare: broken glass. Areas will loop back on themselves, shortcuts can be found and certain sections on each level will standout like the garage of the station or the rides area of the circus. The gameplay itself works fine and the level design is very good. The lack of originality in tasks was actually quite demotivating almost immediately, as The Outlast Trials had the opportunity to go for more unique setups with its co-op focus, but alas, no such luck. Objectives boil down to collecting keys to unlock doors, pushing X thing (a snitch for execution, a doll ride to destruction, etc), finding the right object for whatever, that kind of thing. The latter of which is where 80% of your playtime will actually be, especially as a solo player. Whether you’re in the Police Station, Orphanage or Circus, you’ll be tip-toeing around, avoiding enemy detection, using distractions and running away or hiding. The majority of programs fall into typical tropes of the horror genre almost immediately. Once you’ve survived each initial level, you’ll unlock sub-levels and versions with difficulty modifiers to try your hand at. After customising your character, you’ll be able to select from up to 3 programs – each with unique missions and objectives to complete. In order to erase your past and experience your “rebirth”, you’ll need to embark on and survive The Outlast Trials’ multiple programs. Even so, The Outlast Trials shows there’s some interesting story lurking somewhere in the bloodstained shadows. I certainly missed the more personal touch of the previous Outlast entries’ stories, as you’re just another haphazardly created NPC in amongst a sea of other likeminded survivors. It makes sense that in a more cooperative style game, there’s going to be much less personal focus on you and your character. It can feel a bit piecemeal as a result, but picking apart the wider lore and story will be something I can foresee a lot of people having fun with. Aside from an interesting opening salvo, the rest of the story is pieced together via lore documents you can find in trials. Your actions during trials are graded on performance and you must earn your way to freedom by completing one harrowing task after another. Scientists are constantly watching your every move. From the hub world being an asylum complete with your own individual cell, to the viewing posts and glass observation rooms – you’ll regularly see on display throughout your trials, the game perfectly captures an eerie, uncomfortable aura. We take the role of a random person who has enlisted into a program, one which promises we “deserve to be here” to have us be “reborn” through the trials of… crazed danger and obedience.Įverything that you encounter takes place in a facility that can best be described as One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest had horrendous relations with Saw and out popped this monstrosity. All in the name of progress, science, and profit.In-keeping with previous entries in the series, The Outlast Trials does a fantastic job at setting up the context for this descent into violent masochism. In a world of distrust, fear, and violence, your morals will be challenged, your endurance tested, and your sanity crushed. Set in the era of the Cold War, human guinea pigs are involuntarily recruited by the good folks at the Murkoff Corporation to test advanced methods of brainwashing and mind control. Whether you go through the trials alone or in teams, if you survive long enough and complete the therapy, Murkoff will happily let you leave… but will you be the same? Red Barrels invites you to experience mind-numbing terror, this time with friends.
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