Something’s been on my mind lately, and it’s clearly not love. No, this is the stench of an unknown death at the hands of the nefarious Markoff Corporation. Outlast series fans may remember Outlast 1’s Mount His Massive as the same being who oversaw his asylum and built Outlast 2’s creepy radio towers. The dastardly experiments continue in The Outlast Trials. This is a first person horror survival sim. I take this lightly, but I find all the best ways to upset you. It was a very tense experience playing the tutorial and the first level on an ultrawide monitor in a dark room.
Whereas the first two Outlast games revolved around the story unfolding as an investigative journalist uncovers dark mysteries, in this Cold War prequel you play as a prisoner and fight for your life in a squid game-like race for survival. I will fight for Thus, The Outlast Trials sees him trying to outsmart his fellow inmates, outwit and outsmart detectives. Inmates are often violent and badly wounded, and when they pop out of a closet and are pinned to the floor in classic jump scares fashion, they become quite terrifying. .
These scares are arguably more in line with American Chainsaw scares than, say, the darker, more psychological scares you’d expect from a Silent Hill game. Even if you can’t hear it, it has excellent sound and level design that makes it eerie. Areas are often difficult to analyze without night vision goggles. Night vision goggles drain quickly and can only be recharged with scarce battery resources, so it’s best to use night vision only when absolutely necessary. On the other hand, using stealth to your advantage is absolutely necessary as open lighting is both a blessing and a curse as long as you can effectively hide in the dark and you will never fight your opponent head-on. .
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It’s nice to be given a very limited amount of inventory space (3 slots total). This means that you should always think about what items you carry around to support your playstyle. Outlast Trials strikes the right balance between an inventory and a loadout customization system. This allows you to tilt your playstyle in a certain direction. This means that you can change the relationship with which items you prioritize in your inventory. In my own preview, I experienced the police station level on easy mode. So the map was littered with healing and antipsychotic items, batteries, and lockpicks. In tougher modes, you’re more likely to run out of these items, making the whole thing a cerebral battle for survival.
The good news is that if you are smart, there are many ways to survive. It never brandishes a weapon against an unhinged assailant, but as mentioned above, it’s equipped with various perks and mods to give it an edge, unlike the perk system fans of Dead By Daylight have been accustomed to. can stand on For my own Trials first level demo, I chose the X-Ray rig. This allows you to temporarily see through walls in the dark without draining your night vision battery. A fairly long cooldown that the lack of a battery pickup made much less of a challenge. This was just one of several available rigs to choose from, and others seemed viable as well. But the itemization seems much deeper. There’s an entire menu dedicated to customizing your loadout and combining several different elements, and I’m excited to see how deeply The Outlast Trials takes that strategic interaction.
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You can return to the hub area at any time after completing or failing to survive. While this seems to have a lot to do with story progression, it’s also where you meet other players and participate in Trials’ multiplayer co-op mode. You may even meet returning characters in areas, but the peculiarity here is that you can customize your character with special loot and equipment that you unlock through gameplay. You can even show off to your friends, or sit back and enjoy a casual arm wrestling session between sessions.
