- Publisher: Red Barrels
- Release Date: Mar 5, 2024
- Also On: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X
- Critic score
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- By date
- Unscored
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Apr 15, 2024As it stands, this surprisingly good and dark, bloody horror experience is a refreshing entry to play with friends for a few hours that will surely leave a lasting impression or induce many nightmares for days to come.
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Mar 7, 2024Outlast Trials tries to mix its traditional gameplay with online elements, and the result is neither revolutionary nor entertaining, making it more of a spin-off to the original series rather than a cornerstone for future releases.
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Mar 4, 2024As it exits Early Access, The Outlast Trials is a really enjoyable and unique cooperative horror game, but it runs out of runway more quickly than I would have liked. Each of the five stages are memorable and wildly entertaining thanks to their over-the-top horror (despite repeatedly reused antagonists), and the enemy AI is aggressive enough that I was always on my toes. But with just five levels and two main bosses, there isn’t much variety available to support all of the progression that’s in store, and even all of the neat upgrades to chase and some truly devious difficulty options that unlock after your first run through each of the stages can’t jolt life back into them. Some more meat on the bones of the story would have gone a long way to keeping my interest long term, but that’s little more than a skeleton. There are plenty of fun, grotesque memories to be forged in the first few hours of murderous bliss The Outlast Trials provides, but that novelty quickly subsides once you’ve seen everything once.
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Game World Navigator MagazineApr 23, 2024In this co-op stint, Outlast lost most of its story content, ramped up its difficulty and became repetitive. The game has only a few maps and very little variety in tasks. [Issue#263, p.70]
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Mar 4, 2024The Outlast Trials takes the franchise into a new multiplayer universe and surprisingly, it works quite well. The hide-and-seek from the saga remains intact, it's bloody and violent just like the previous games, and the sound design is excellent. But unfortunately, the content is still rather limited and we can get bored pretty quickly. However, we hope that Red Barrels will find ways to improve the game in the coming months.
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Mar 4, 2024But if you’re hoping to scare yourself senseless and expose yourself to plenty of shocking scenarios as a reagent for the Murkoff Corporation, with or without friends, The Outlast Trials is undoubtedly worth its retail cost of £24.99 / $29.99 (via Steam) at launch, but if you’re expecting a game that you’ll replay well into 2024 and beyond, I’d temper your expectations.
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Mar 13, 2024Like squeezing blood from a stone, The Outlast Trials is a repetitive chore that features monotonous searches and running laps through mazes until there is nothing left but pain and the option to share the misery with others.
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Mar 11, 2024As is the case with most other players, I genuinely want to see The Outlast Trials improve with time, something I am sure the developers agree with in principle as well. Where they and I must differ is in our priority for said changes. They appear to prefer focusing on cosmetics, new optional challenges, and implementing new social activities, whereas I prefer more core maps and a darker tone, truer of what Outlast has, up until now, been defined by. Whatever the future may hold for The Outlast Trials, one can only hope that they strive to find a more definitive balance between these two disparate directions.
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Mar 21, 2024The Outlast Trials offers a very particular cooperative experience, with great moments of fun and genius. However, it is also excessive and repetitive, and is not recommended for a single player.