Coug Gaming: Fear and Adrenaline in The Outlast Trials

Trigger Warning: The Outlast Trials includes bright flashing lights, religious themes, frequent violence, gore, suggestive imagery, and nudity. 

Some of the most interesting games on the market are not of one genre, but rather experiences which blend multiple genres to create something new and unique. While on the surface The Outlast Trials may appear as an extraction game, it sets itself within developer Red Barrel’s Outlast franchise, creepy and tense survival horror games which leave you defenseless against the monsters in a story based on conspiracies of mind control in the CIA’s MKUltra program. 

As a result, The Outlast Trials, released in 2024 on all current and last gen consoles and PC for $39.99, offers a co-op survival horror experience where you must get in, complete missions, and get out before death finds you.

Players enter this experience as “Reagents,” individuals who have been abducted by Murkoff during the Cold War. You are at the mercy of Murkoff’s sadistic experiments in the aim of creating sleeper cell agents to do their bidding on the world stage.

Trapped within the Sinyala Facility, an assortment of underground hangars that house various constructed trial environments connected by a series of tunnels, Reagents are treated as expendable, and performing poorly in the trials or doing anything outside of Murkoff’s wishes can result in death, or worse.

The gameplay loop is simple yet effective: Select a trial environment, enter the trial, collect items to help you survive, avoid the variety of enemies out to get you, complete your task and escape before the shuttle abandons you. 

To help you along the way, Murkoff allows you one of eight Rigs, as well as different personal ability upgrades and Rig upgrades. Rigs function as special tools that allow different actions like stunning enemies, opening locked containers, setting traps, healing, and more.

After finishing a match and returning to your home base, you can utilize currency earned in-game to purchase various special tools, personal upgrades, or even arm wrestle or play arcade games with fellow reagents while you wait for the next match. Meanwhile, a list of variators, which include modifications to difficulty, traps, enemies and other trial mechanics, help enhance both gameplay strategy and replayability.

When playing the game for the first time, you’ll notice the smooth gameplay design and graphics. Each movement made by the player is effortless, and transitions into interactable actions are seamless. The lighting and reflections also shine, giving the in-game environments an eerie realism thanks to the optimized use of Unreal Engine 4.

Exploration will reveal an incredible attention to detail that only developer Red Barrels can provide, from dingy and grimy environments, roofing of the hangar containing the manufactured set you’re in, as well as miscellaneous trash and the occasional body scattered about.

The fear factor of this game largely comes from the depth and variety of enemies you’ll face. Brainwashed by Murkoff, the Ex-pop, meaning “experimental population,” will occasionally enter the trial environment, as you’ll discover when you hear blaring alarms going off.

Ex-Pops come in all shapes and sizes. The Screamers, narcoleptic subjects of Murkoff, will produce an incredibly loud scream which notifies nearby enemies and blur your screen when awakened. Other Ex-Pops will hunt you down, with Grunts, disfigured Ex-pop which carry melee weapons and patrol the map for reagents, and then the Big Grunts who are impossibly large versions of the latter.

Unlike other games where enemies are simply enemies with no depth or backstory, Ex-Pops will repeat lines like “You don’t belong here!” or “I live here!” which clue you in to the fact that they are also victims of Murkoff, mentally twisted and brainwashed into believing you to be an adversary intruding in their homes.

Of all Ex-Pop you may encounter, the Prime Assets are some of the worst, individuals who excelled under previously scrapped Murkoff experiments, and each trial environment has its own Prime Asset. They are incredibly dangerous and should be avoided at all costs. Notable ones include Mother Gooseberry, a prior children show host with a split personality in the form of a hand puppet with a drill in its mouth, or Liliya Bogomolova, a stealth-centered Prime Asset, and a self-proclaimed messiah who wears jewelry-adorned mannequin parts and a two-headed mask.

One key difference between The Outlast Trials and other games is the inability to fight the monsters, at best you have throwable items like bottles and bricks, or a rig. None of these options will stop an Ex-Pop from pursuing you, but only stun them momentarily. Your best way to stay alive is to hide and run. While night vision goggles assist with traversing dark spaces and hiding from lurking Ex-Pop, some can still see in the dark, and the goggles only reveal your immediate surroundings, leaving far off areas dark and out of focus in an eerie atmosphere familiar to the Outlast franchise.

While solo play is available, playing in a group is where the game shines. Whether it comes to lifting a heavy door, accessing high ledges or getting a pouncing Ex-Pop off of you, having teammates allows for greater success. 

All of this comes together with a gritty realism injected with psychological horror and adrenaline gameplay, and everything informed by well-crafted characters and lore. The interaction of teamwork, along with fright and pressure, makes The Outlast Trials thrilling and replayable, with a bevy of ways to work together in order to get out and survive.