The Outlast Trials

The Outlast Trials is a fun coop adventure, perfect for teaming up with friends. But loses what made Outlast saga so special among hardcore survival horror fans.

The Outlast Trials is a tense and rewarding multiplayer horror game. Though it’s not quite as nerve-shredding as previous Outlast games, especially when playing with others, its primary loop is an addictive one, and it drip-feeds rewards and challenges at just the right place to keep you hooked until you feel you can renter society again.

Although it can be played solo, surviving The Outlast Trials is better and more fun with friends, although they’ll need pretty strong stomachs and a taste for extreme imagery. The Outlast Trials has strong survival puzzle mechanics, a good bit of macabre humor, and a confidently over-the-top presentation. It’ll need some additional content over time for real longevity, but the foundation is strong.

You may miss the straightforward single-player experience of previous Outlast games, but in The Outlast Trials the cooperative multiplayer experience feels original and well thought out. Fun to play with friends, it can be as scary as hell.

This highly immersive game surpasses most horror titles with its uniquely designed environments and chilling narrative. Powered by Unreal Engine, the game boasts stunning character models and environments that draw players deeper into its hellish world. With a strong emphasis on group participation and replayability, each playthrough offers new challenges making it great game for horror enthusiasts and cooperative gaming fans.

The Outlast Trials successfully co-opts the Outlast formula into a multiplayer experience. It does a great job at offering what Outlast does best – macabre gore and tense horror with some genuinely gruesome objectives. But while it's fun to experience with friends, the solo players will find little reason to continue playing after the first program, and reusing some of the stalkers feels like a missed opportunity.

It's initially jarring to witness an Outlast with things like cooldown abilities, cosmetic customizations, and upgrade trees, though it doesn't take long to appreciate this new look. The Outlast Trials, like the lineup of villains at the heart of it, wears many faces, but each of them is memorable.

At times, it does feel like Outlast Trials is trying too hard to be shocking. It soon becomes less frightening and more silly. The sadistic mutants become predictable but this doesn't detract from the fun of it all. When playing with a team you get a unique experience I haven't had with other multiplayer horror games.

The Outlast Trials is a survival horror game that takes the series to the coop area with friends and gives us a very fun product. Its cooperative aspect fits quite well with the gameplay of the series, it can be played alone but it is even more challenging. The new mechanics of the franchise are good but it can be boring at times.

One of the toughest, most extreme multiplayer experiences we remember. Feeling its craziness and overcoming its challenges can be really really satisfying, but stay away from The Outlast Trials if you are an impatient player.

A new entry in the Outlast universe that adds very important new features, keeps the horror element, but will leave fans wondering if we shouldn-t have received Outlast 3 instead.

The Outlast Trials can give you several hours of entertainment with your friends, while played alone it is far too unbalanced and frustrating. Unfortunately, after several hours the repetitiveness of the missions starts to become noticeable, and even in co-op it starts to become a bit tiresome.

Outlast Trials may not be for everyone, but I feel confident in saying that those that do love it, will really love it, and considering Red Barrels approach to listening to player feedback throughout it’s early access, it’s sure to be a worthwhile investment.

As 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.

A trial by horror if there ever was one, The Outlast Trials does its best to flavour up the Outlast formula with its particular slant on co-operative gameplay. The results are decent alone or with friends, but too many times The Outlast Trials sacrifices its horror potential by implementing its newly-minted multiplayer features, consequently threatening to trip over and compromise the experience. Outlast‘s bespoke brand of horror manages to keep its head above the bloodbath thanks to brimming environments, meticulous presentational elements and its ability to unnerve, but trying to be bigger doesn’t payoff as better with The Outlast Trials, it’s merely good, but could’ve been great if it was smaller and more focused.

Sadly, The Outlast Trials just didn’t live up to the hype for me. With monsters that didn’t really feel scary, and maps and objectives that just start to feel repetitive really quickly, I can really only recommend this one for the real Outlast fans.

The Outlast Trials reinvents the saga's formula for cooperative multiplayer. During the first few games one can enjoy the level design and cooperation. Soon, however, repetitiveness and limited gameplay take over. Moreover, in single player it is too difficult to complete any mission.

The Outlast Trials is almost entirely devoid of fun as a solo experience. Add friends or other random players, however, and there's ample enjoyment to be had fighting through the unrelenting horror together. As long as you have the stomach for all that blood, guts, mutilation, death, and unsettling imagery, of course.