izigame.me

I'm not going to lie, as great as some of the Outlast games can be, this one has a very weird Goldilocks effect on me.
Let me explain as someone that works a full-time job and trying to enjoy The Outlast Trials on my free time:
Playing solo can be obnoxious:
You can play the trials by yourself if you want to, however you are more than likely going to be spending over an hour on one trial. Most of which you are hiding in the same spot If you're being too careful trying to slowly inch the objective towards its destination. Because someone thought It was a good idea to have way too many enemies roaming around in some of the same locations close to one another. Making it so that if you have to hide in those spots it's nearly impossible to try to do something without getting detected. And the last thing I want to be doing in my free time trying to play a game is spending most of my hour and a half in our trial hiding in the same closet for a good half of the time trying to avoid detection. It's annoying and frustrating to get through these alone, and it's really apparent that Red Barrels Studios primarily focused this to be a multiplayer game rather than a single player. However...
Playing Multiplayer can be boring:
You have people that play this game waaaaay too much to the point where they know exactly what they're doing. So if you're coming in fresh and if you have someone that is at least five times the level that you are, prepared to get carried.
I have had a few games where I was struggling to survive and try to find objectives to help out, only for them to mostly be done because the other people I was playing with already nabbed the objective and solved it without me knowing. Making me feel rather useless in my endeavors and feeling like I've wasted 10 to 15 minutes of my time roaming around aimlessly in hallways while everyone is moving at the speed of a bullet straight towards the objectives. And given the nature and layout of some of the trials, I imagine that some of the objectives are hardly randomized, meaning if you've already completed that trial, you already know what to do and where to go to solve it.
How to enjoy the game "Just right":
So on one end you have trials that are taking too long, and then on the other you have trials there are finishing too fast. Both, to me at least, our very frustrating experiences when trying to enjoy this game.
The only way I can think to be able to enjoy it is to play it blindly with a group of friends who also don't know much about it. Meaning that way you all can start fresh, learn how the game works together and playing the trials at a decent length of time. From the few times I have experienced it, I believe two players is the perfect number to be playing with. Just you and one other person, four people may end up ending the trial a little too early, even if all people playing did not have previous knowledge of how to play it.
In conclusion, I would not recommend playing this game, at least by yourself.
Make plans to play this with someone close to you who hasn't played the game either and enjoy the fun and horrors together. I don't think I'm going to be able to do that now that I have knowledge of some of these Trials myself, and that some of my closest friends have already played quite a number of hours into this game.
That is my best advice to approaching The Outlast Trials, I hope some people found this helpful.