Review: The Outlast Trials – Therapy Isn’t Easy

Outlast has never been the smartest of games. It’s never needed to be – by combining the night-vision resource management of a video camera with frantic parkour traversal and some of the most controversial imagery in gaming (even more so at the time of its release in 2014), it’s never had to be particularly subtle.

Red Barrels’ third outing with The Outlast Trials doesn’t change that tonal ambition. This is still the macabre haunted house ride its predecessors were, but with a new multiplayer coating that, at the very least, keeps you running through the corridors long enough to get your gory fill.

The Outlast Trials is set a few decades before the first game, amongst the original experiments that enabled the horrors you’d eventually encounter in Mount Massive Asylum. Part physical assessment and part psychological reconditioning, you have a night-vision headset bolted to your face and are then thrown into trial after trial until you finally earn your release. From captivity, or this mortal coil. Whichever comes first…

Trials usually involve finding specific keys, flipping switches, or offing unlucky former test subjects, while avoiding the stronger “ex-pops” that stalk the corridors by hiding in the dark, under beds, in lockers, or in barrels.

If you’ve played the first two games, you’ll immediately pick up what Trials is putting down. The low-light scares and managing your night vision battery life are just as tense now as they were before, and moments where you’re crouched in a corner mere feet away from a deranged killer are just as gut-wrenchingly tense. One wrong move, and you’ll be on the scariest goose chase of your life.

When things heat up, parkour chases through the maps are still stellar. This isn’t Mirror’s Edge or Assassin’s Creed – Outlast’s parkour is clumsy and frantic, where each door you crash through could be locked and spell your doom. Trials doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but when the wheel is this good, I don’t really care.

Though the mechanical core is the same, the structure of this game is radically different to its predecessors. Instead of being a progression of environments in one linear story, between each trial you’re returned to your confinement in the Murkoff Facility, where you can upgrade your gear, get new medication prescriptions to change your stats, or faff around with fellow subjects.

Mechanically, the trials are concentrated hits of the Outlast special sauce, but thematically it feels more like a parody of it. Outlast isn’t subtle, but having loading screens be replaced with hallucinogenic scenes of people violating dead nuns with drills, or someone pleasuring themselves with a taser after popping a victim’s head like a watermelon just feels silly when there’s nothing to build from. It’s constant in its attempts to be shocking, but the result is less a traumatising ordeal and more an edgy haunted house attraction. There is no tension or build-up, something all great horror needs.

The addition of three other players to the Outlast formula also doesn’t gel as nicely as you’d hope either. Outlast is meant to be about slow, creeping dread punctuated with jumpscares or high-adrenaline chase sequences. When you add other people, you’re going to end up with confident players rushing ahead, ruining the pacing, and leaving those less experienced left to be turned into prisoner jam by an ex-pop. For better or worse, moment-to-moment gameplay is more akin to other multiplayer outings like Lethal Company or Phasmophobia than the boiling thrills of Amnesia or Alien: Isolation.

Other players pull back the curtain on how The Outlast Trials really works, making it less scary as a result. You quickly see how enemy aggro operates, or that nobody bothers hiding in lockers when a dark corridor is just as effective. You know where the enemies are likely to spawn from, and all the puzzle-solving is eliminated when one person already knows the solution. It turns into a race to the finish instead of a tense push and pull of trying to stay hidden while also escaping from the clutches of death.

There are some cool ideas, though. Shortcuts that can only be opened by two players, and the use of proximity voice chat, help reward your team for sticking together. There’s even weekly challenges that make it so enemies can hear you talk as well, showing Red Barrels isn’t afraid to play with the fundamental multiplayer nature of the game, and pull the rug out from beneath you by approaching the game like you would any other multiplayer experience. Make too much noise, and you could be in trouble.

The Outlast Trials is good because Outlast was good. This is a creepy horror experience with all the dashing about and horrific mutants I loved about the first one, and I’m going to find myself coming back to it more often than I care to admit. It feels like The Outlast Trials is riding the coattails of the series, using the same tricks and scares instead of effectively innovating on the formula. I had a good time, but I leave it unconvinced Red Barrels even knows what made the first game such a sleeper hit.

The Outlast Trials

Reviewed on PlayStation 5

Released

May 18, 2023

Developer(s)

Red Barrels

Publisher(s)

Red Barrels

Multiplayer

Online Co-Op

Engine

Unreal Engine 5, Unreal Engine 4

ESRB

Mature 17+ // Intense Violence, Blood and Gore, Sexual Content, Nudity, Strong Language

Pros

• Short, concentrated doses of Outlast
• Night-vision makes things as tense as ever
• Excellent character designs

Cons

• The shocking material tries too hard
• Poor narrative pacing
• Multiplayer doesn’t suit the formula