The Outlast Trials

“Many of the antagonists do not have a backstory that feels coherent enough.”

“The true 'horror' of this game is getting spawned into a mission with 14 obscure objectives, 0 information, 0 map/compass/any sense of direction whatsoever, and 0 indication of what you should actually be doing. Honestly maybe the most confusing and intentionally obscured mission goals I've ever seen in gaming.”

“If you hate games that drop you in with 0 sense of what to do, obviously there is a quest bar and tutorial, but the tutorial only tells you controls, not really any aspects of the game, and doesn't give you any main objective. The quests are really slow, boring, and all you do is wander around until you find it. The game either seems way too easy and slow, or too unforgiving to where I don't even want to touch it. All in all this game has no real direction, is slow, and I'm not gonna spend 30 hours playing the game to understand one core mechanic and what the task I'm supposed to be doing is.”

“I do have one complaint though: in the recent update, my game has been really laggy, with fps dropping out of nowhere. I play on medium graphics and lock at 120 fps, but it's not the end of the world.”

“They ruined the graphics. It's like motion blur is always on when I look around, even though I have it off. Very annoying; please fix this. It's a very good game but this makes me and my buddies feel sick.”

“Not sure why but this game has low fps for me and is sometimes difficult to play. I have an AMD Radeon graphics card and an AMD Ryzen 5625U processor. If it can be optimized for that, it would be great. The fps and graphics are killing me from wanting to play this, and I tried everything to make it run better with no success.”

“The whole "horror" lives from cheap jump scares and even cheaper gore but builds no atmosphere.”

“Sounds alright on paper but it fails to deliver in practice, as the gameplay is basic, boring and repetitive, and the atmosphere lacks any real horror or tension buildup whatsoever given how the whole thing is just you (and friends/strangers in online co-op) dashing around like idiots, being followed by an absurdly & uninspiringly numb enemy whose AI is but a pathfinding NPC walking around playing an array of pre-recorded "ooky spooky" lines, as if straight out of a 20-years-old video game.”

“Instead, the game feels heavily focused on cooperative gameplay and structured trials, which takes away from the atmosphere of isolation and pure horror that made the previous Outlast games so memorable.”

“Replayability feels forced at times, like it wants you to grind.”

“The game in its current stage also lacks replayability, as such it forces you to replay levels you have completed in a harder difficulty.”

“Once everyone knows the map, you either just juice it up to intensive to make the slog even more sloggy, or you quit, because there is really no practical replayability.”

“Poor performance no matter the hardware, and each trial's differences make them annoying, not fun or challenging.”

“Firstly I am having a large amount of lag and performance issues after this last update, from near perfect performance to consistently awful.”

“Countless performance issues, low GPU utilization, the list goes on and on.”

“The catalogs and event rewards can be grindy - there is a lot to unlock, which is nice in theory, but some of it takes long enough that it starts to feel more like a chore than a fun extra.”

“It could be peak, on par with Dead by Daylight, but they rely on AI and take years to add a few more levels in the game, which makes it get boring fast or just tedious if you want to master one level on the highest difficulty and waste 25% of your day because of the loading sequences.”

“Unfortunately with the release now scheduled and looming around they haven't addressed the lack of content in a meaningful way aside from re-using the same missions with different modifiers over and over again (made even worse for the grindy seasonal events they had for a few cosmetics pieces in which you had to do the same missions over and over again), and the kicker with trying to upsell cosmetic packs content to people that bought in early access for a mere discount instead of just giving it as a sign of appreciation for their support.”

“You can have NASA Wi-Fi and get hit with the world's biggest lag spike that freezes your solo run and sends you 6 rooms back that you passed.”

“Game freezes constantly for 3-5 seconds and it's never done that before, idk if it's because of the update but it's unplayable now.”

“The game is too buggy to be a 'released' version of the game, combine that with the fact that the game is still getting new content that feels more like it's finishing the game than actually adding more to a complete project, this game should've stayed in early access.”

“The reason I cannot recommend it to myself and to people like me is because of the microtransactions.”

“Until this is fully addressed, I would highly advise you not buy the game or support the developers as they have shown that they do not care about their players or their dedication and are more than happy taking your $40 plus DLC and microtransactions and throwing it all in the trash.”

“Yet again I will say, until this situation is fully addressed, I would highly advise you not buy the game or support the developers as they continue to show that they do not care about their players or their dedication and are more than happy taking your $40 plus DLC and microtransactions and throwing it all in the trash for no reason whatsoever.”

“I really hope the devs tweak the audio mix at some point because the game would be way scarier if trials didn’t have constant music and you had to rely on enemy sounds instead.”

“Sometimes, the music plays at 100% volume no matter what you do, making it impossible to hear yourself, let alone hear your enemies.”

“Outlast trial's soundtrack is tense and does give you chills but it's far from being as memorable as the previous two games, especially Outlast 2; when you take your time to compare the music to the previous games' tracks, it's a little... disappointing.”

“Not only are their character designs extremely lazy and uninspired, so are their personalities!”

“The grotesque character designs and the bleak, dilapidated environments are rendered with a high level of detail, enhancing the immersion and heightening the sense of dread.”

“The disclosure only makes me wonder how much they use AI for character design, lore, etc. Red Barrels created the Outlast trilogy without generative AI, so I am not sure why they now feel compelled to use it as a storytelling method, even if just posters.”