Blood; you know that maroon, viscous stuff filled up inside our flesh and the gushing goop My Chemical Romance sing about in a single on their Black Parade album? The Outlast Trials loves this icky fluid – heck you wake up surrounded by it and trails of it are smeared along the ground you walk on. Horror games have historically had a disturbing love affair with claret, but Red Barrel’s third entry in its seminal survival horror franchise keeps the grisly goo going, this time encouraging you to invite a few fellow victims along for the frightful delights of getting pursued and stalked by mangled psychopaths as you complete objectives and desperately rush to the nearest exit as you desperately cling onto your bleating and depleting strand of health. Does The Outlast Trials aptly outlast the competition in the survival horror space, or will you want to quit when the going gets tough?
Outlast is over a decade old now, and with the success of the first outing and the divisive response to the second game, Red Barrel Studios has decided to turn Outlast into a multiplayer experience, whilst of course retaining the single-player haunts if buddying together with other players isn’t your jam. There is a case to be made that more players equals less dread, but Outlast Trials manages to deliver on its sumptuous co-operative premise by allowing up to 4 players to share the frightful delights in this splendiferous scarefest, which manages to trade the careful and dripping intensity of a lonely experience, for a more jovial jaunt with a few pals.
You’ll know the state of play if you’ve played Outlast before; the meat and potatoes include stealthily traipsing your way through linear environments, completing rudimentary objectives, and trying very hard to avoid the freaky fiends stomping the grounds typically unaware of your presence until you’re too close to them, meaning hidey holes in the form of wardrobes, trunks, metal trash cans and car boots are the only respite from these malformed monstrosities. Panic obviously sets in if caught, especially seeing as you can’t fight back and are essentially moving offal for your prey, so you gotta ensure they know that their mealtime isn’t going to come at your expense.
The bare-bones horror in The Outlast Trials is by the numbers stuff, but it’s amplified by a thick sense of dread, even if it’s a little cliched with the amusement parks and porcelain tourist guides, yet the unnerving coat of thick sludgy uncomfortable horror bleeds through remarkably well with uncomfortable execution scenes and plenty of disturbing imagery, which is particularly noteworthy when Outlast 2 fumbled when it came to designing a truly grotesque atmosphere.
Another peculiar but forward-thinking new inclusion is a prison facility hub you can mosey about inside of to unlock skills and upgrades. This infrastructure coheres admirably well with the “Trials” aspect of Outlast Trials, as you drop into the game’s myriad of meticulously designed horror sets, then after you frantically escape, you’re zipped right back into this disorderly safe haven after receiving your grade for the level just completed, where you can organize your preparations before heading out again.
Just like the multiplayer aspects, the prison hub detracts from the horror and dread because the former works best when your arsenal is limited and you are forced into an unhelpful state of vulnerability. Outlast Trials lamentably foregoes the essence of survival horror by deciding to make you comfortable between missions, which snaps the sense of danger up in a way that forces each mission to exude a slightly less-threatening vibe- which is quite the problem when you’re predominantly a horror game.
Admittedly, The Outlast Trials‘ tilt towards multiplayer suggests that Red Barrel Studios doesn’t know how to make a bolder stride forward for the series. The original Outlast uncorked in 2013/2014 with exponential fanfare because it was a suspenseful single-player horror game that worked because the player was alone and wholly vulnerable to the spooks and terrors presented within.
Clearly, The Outlast Trials wants to reignite that innovative spark again by opening up its horror to 4 players at once. The main problem though, is that timing has become the enemy because there are already a handful of contenders thanks out in the open, thanks to the swarm of asynchronous multiplayer alternatives out there like Friday The 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Obviously The Outlast Trials doesn’t fall into the asynchronous multiplayer camp, but we’re already familiar with playing horror games as a team, and thus as much as The Outlast Trials tries to blaze a new trail, tracks have already been laid.
At least the aesthetics are on-point. The locations are painstakingly designed with a particular eye for the macabre that gives the presentation a distinctive Outlast-stylized identity. The claustrophobic and darkly-lit locations always manage to gong with eeriness like the lunatic-infested police station and its grotty prison cells, and the seemingly welcome but seedily deceptive hotel presenting players with some delectable environments for the trials in The Outlast Trials.
The music conveys the panic and tension representative of survival, giving rise to an aura that’s somewhat reminiscent of Alien: Isolation. Impressive sound design is sometimes an underappreciated element in the horror genre, but in The Outlast Trials sound is exacting in how it floods you with a sense of panic and unease, managing to ping up a sense of urgency to every moment it chimes in to warn you that you might need to change your trousers.
Conclusion
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.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
