as a huge fan of the outlast series, this game checks all the boxes for me when it comes to design. i absolutely LOVE how unhinged this series is when it comes to gore and character design, and the outlast trials delivers. that old lady with the puppet duck is crazy scary, and i love the dialogue between herself and the puppet. hilarious even!

performance is excellent. on the high preset i manage to keep a constant vsync framerate at 1440p. no major bugs.

im very mixed on the gameplay though. the missions are just very long fetch quests, which doesn't bother me a lot since the atmosphere keeps me immersed. however what needs to be addressed is the difficulty - sometimes enemies hit you for a ton of HP, and i often find myself frustrated at an enemy's patrol path hindering my progression (most notably at the end of the 2nd trial.) this game also desperately needs a minimap. i frequently get lost and confused on where i'm supposed to go (the plain objective pointers don't help much.) the map rng is a little irritating too, and there should be an option to turn it off.

i'm also concerned about how they are going to approach single-player mode. i know that this has been advertised as a multiplayer game but seeing as the previous 2 games were single-player i'm intending to play alone. i think this game could really benefit from an offline single-player campaign that just includes the trials and storyline.

overall this is a great game in its current state but it needs a lot of improvement in difficulty and gameplay before it fully releases.