![]() ![]() You move around with the same intentional care as previous Outlast protagonists, ducking low behind boxes or knifing through a door and slamming the deadbolt closed behind you before darting beneath a desk. One thing that I noticed immediately is that the feel of Outlast is still well-intact. This is the bulk of the gameplay as you slowly navigate these environments with your team, scavenging around for health drinks and lockpicks, all whilst trying to outsmart and out-maneuver a suite of Murkoff-branded psychopaths. All while avoiding marquee killers and generic villains armed with machetes or human-oriented hallucinogenic pesticides. You and up to three others are sent into staged “Trials” with objectives like restarting generations, finding (yucky) keys, and pushing chair-bound victims to their gruesome deaths. It’s an interesting premise, and Red Barrels leave enough unanswered to prod questions as to the bigger picture. Murkoff is trying to wipe away the person within the body, leaving a blank slate for unrepentant violence and indulgences of one’s most basic urges. You’re brought into a testing compound where you partake in “Trials” that work to systematically remove what it is that makes you a person. This game revels in psychological conditioning and manipulation ala MK Ultra. The shady organization is none other than our favorite Murkoff Corp, and we get to experience some of the events that lead up to our stay at Mount Massive in Outlast, and Temple Gate in Outlast 2. Set during the Cold War, The Outlast Trials sees your anonymous protagonist abducted after perusing a job found on a flyer posted in a back alley. I can say that both of these instances were the case, and yet Outlast Trials subverted my expectations and, at least upon initial impressions, appears to be a thoughtful, smart, and scary take on coop horror with some room to grow. ![]() I admit to some reservation when I learned this would be the case, as I feared that what made Outlast so scary would be lost in the ringing tinnitus in my ears left behind by my screaming friends as they ran for their lives, or the incurable cackling that would come when we ambush and inevitably outsmart the AI killers. Of all the ways The Outlast Trials could have been conceived, I don’t think folks expected it to be as a coop-run-based meta-progression early access game. ![]()
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