Developer: Red Barrels
Publisher: Red Barrels
Platform: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PC, PS5
The Outlast Trials: Invasion – Review
Around a year and a half ago, we reviewed The Outlast Trials, which proved to be an entertaining multiplayer-focused experience in the Outlast franchise. We concluded that there was sadly not enough content to keep players engaged for a very long time, but developer Red Barrels did their best by adding limited-time events to the game, as well as releasing quite a few new maps and enemies. Today, we’ll be giving you our humble opinion of the newly released Invasion mode, which allows players to experience the game from the other side of the fence by attacking Reagents.
Without delving too much into the main gameplay loop of The Outlast Trials, Invasion doesn’t actually add new content when it comes to the Reagents side. Reagents still play through the same levels, complete the same objectives, and hopefully make it out alive. Players invading these levels will take up the role of impostors, basically. These impostors will have to go around trying to kill the Reagents, albeit under specific conditions. Multiple impostors can not invade the trial together, but multiple impostors can be present when another’s timer is running out. If the Reagents complete all objectives, the impostors can do a last-ditch effort and invade the trial together, hoping to kill all Reagents before they manage to escape. That being said, if only one Reagant escapes, the impostors still lose.
The game mode is geared heavily towards the Reagants’ favor, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does feel heavily imbalanced at times. For example, when an impostor is able to take out one of the Reagents, they will have to return to the safe zone within a fixed time, or they will perish. When doing this, it’s possible that not a single impostor remains active in the trial, giving ample time to the Reagents to revive fallen players. Reagents also have a lot of ways to almost stun-lock an impostor by throwing items at them repeatedly, and even executions can be stopped indefinitely by just being kicked by Reagents and then running away over and over again. Of course, if they are too careless, an impostor can take out multiple targets. But, as stated already, Reagents have too many options to save themselves, to revive, and to still win with only one survivor. There has already been an update to make stun effects weaker against impostors, but we feel a lot more has to be done to actually add some balance to this mode.
Conclusion
The Outlast Trials’ Invasion mode is, even with all the negative remarks mentioned above, very amusing, but in dire need of balancing. We do feel like modes such as this one are already a step in the right direction to ensure player engagement so that the player base doesn’t dwindle too much. Even so, some dedicated original maps for the Invasion mode itself would also be a great incentive to lure players to the mode. That being said, we do hope for some updates in the coming months, allowing us to enjoy this new mode even more.
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