Recent reviews by eggsandwich

UPDATE: Sony has reverted the PSN requirement for the foreseeable future, which is kinda funny, considering they picked a fight with a community for a game whos entire concept/design revolves around coming together as a community to prevail against impossible odds :)

I'll write a more detailed review once we take back Cyberstan



This entire situation of requiring a PSN account to now play stems primarily from Sony, with very obviously little to, or NO input or control from the actual developers, Arrowhead. Sony should not have the right to effectively nullify the ownership of products or have such vile and insane practices of harming consumers. This is not and NEVER okay.

Other than that the game's amazing, companies like Sony are a prime example of why publishers should not have absolute control of products/production and should let the products they invest into actually breathe.

One of my favorite games, absolute chaos and eldritch horror :)

I've been really hesitant on writing a review for this game as it has a special place in my heart despite its obvious failure. Please give it a read if you have the time! <3


I played this on Release with a few friends and we had a blast, the soundtrack is composed by Marcus Warner (go check his work out) and he has created possibly one of my most favorite soundtracks for a game by far. The sheer grandness and wonder that the music provides to the game fits it perfectly and really encapsulates the vast world that you are in.

The Ship building is by far the best I have seen in any of these Sci-Fi sandbox space sims, it blows games like Space Engineers out of the water with its in depth and complicated ship design, while it lacks many crafting systems like those games, that fact pales in comparison to how flexible your ships can be (since you aren't restricted to giant cubes). You can strategically study and balance how your ship integrity is across the entire vessel, finding weak points and reinforcing them with further bolts or beams, you can pinpoint areas that might tear during space travel and wiring your ship feels intuitive and cool while not over complicating things. You can build ships either by hand in the world but everyone used the in game ship editor (more on the in world later in review), which by the way, is one of the easiest to use systems I have seen for ship design in any of these games. It effectively gives you a developer ready editor that lets you free-cam around and construct your ship without any in world restrictions, it even can be done with multiple people in the same editor session! Its built right into the world and you can even test your creations, everyone jumping in together to fly it in a separated world from the current server instantly. You could then later provide resources and build it right from your saved blueprints!

The Visual style of the game is rock solid consistent, lacking any weird inconsistencies that other games may have, it feels good to look at and handles scale very very well. Its unique and memorable!

The first person combat + ship combat feel good, neither are stellar but they don't feel out of place, the mining from fps to ship is a great upgrade, and weapons feel powerful.


I had been following this game since 2019, I unfortunately did not make it into the beta but I had seen what was coming for release, and it was incredible! For example you could design stations in a similar editor to look just like the ones you spawned at, and if you really wanted to, you could even create them from scratch! This was an even further impressive detail that was growing from their showcases and beta experiences.

However when the release of the game came around it became abundantly clear what went wrong.

Unbeknownst to the Beta players (or so I've heard) they introduced something called 'Easy Build Mode', looking back at it this seemed like an in-the-moment choice for release as the system completely obliterated the game in every since of the word. This alternative building system could be done by entering a small plot in the building and designing your ship out of prefab pieces, sounds fine right? Well yeah, actually.. but it was clearly untested and caused so many issues including: Crashing your game, causing your ship build to be softlocked from removing parts or placing new ones, causing you to be able to edit someone elses ship briefly on accident, delete the inventory of your ship, and worst of all having quite the chance to just straight up eat your ship and delete it entirely. This system was also heavily abused, players were able to place prefabs en-masse and lag out regions and cause instant crashes (whoag who could've seen that coming) I'm not entirely sure as to how but I presume people found a loophole to spawn stuff.

This wasn't the worst of their problems, somehow the game would crash at random for a lot of people and the solution? Turning off the steam overlay. However this wasn't communicated and it seemed that the devs also had no idea that this became a problem as a lot of people simply stopped playing and left a negative review.

Due to both of these issues, a supermassive 'graveyard' of ships appeared above most of the first few starting stations, my friends and I started on origin 0 on immediate release, this was the most crowded station. Now despite the sheer amount of ships the game still actually ran fairly well, but it was very clear that this issue needed to be fixed. Since you could salvage or destroy the ships as it was in a safe zone they remained for days before devs worked on cleaning them up/implementing a cleanup fix.

Mining was fun for the first few hours, that feeling of finally leaving the safe zone and digging for those extra rare materials to build your own station was great, especially with how crowded release was, however it was a very short lived experience. It became abundantly clear that pvp was the ONLY experience you could have other than ship building.

The market that we saw showcased from the Beta wasn't fully completed, only a few shops actually existed, the rest being community made ship shops which while not bad, was still not enough to keep people interested. The auction house was functional, at least for a while until it wasn't. I don't remember how it even broke, but they did fix it.

My team was excited to build a space station, however when we got around to finally establishing a spot we quickly discovered that the incredible station editor that was showcased previously in fact did not exist, and was merely the dreaded 'easy build mode'... This hurt because we had to manually craft every core prefab block piece by piece, which by the way you could not build those large pre built chunks of the starter stations anymore, you had to craft small girder pieces individually, etc. On top of this it was the 'easy build mode' which barely functioned, and struggled to even check if we had it active or not when trying to build.


I stopped playing after a week or two, I logged almost 70 hours in this game working on ship designs in the editor and helping to expand the space station my friend put up. Eventually we all stopped one by one.

At its core the game is phenomenal, its design philosophy for ships and stations is great, its visual style is appealing and its core mechanics for destruction and creation is unmatched. But its empty. It fell for the same issue that games like Space Engineers had (at least for me), where there isn't enough pve content to balance off the pvp, that while its a sandbox those who are seeking more aren't going to find anything beyond being able to shoot their friends (or enemies), and a few ships that may pass by.

This game has now been put on life support, development is completely halted until the devs get more money to work on it, which while I hope they will able to continue developing it, may not be possible. There aren't enough players playing to incite the idea of continuing development and that hurts to see.

Its so clear this game was built by passionate dev team, and the people who have been relentlessly insulting the devs should be ashamed. I feel bad for the team at Frozenbyte for seeing their game go through this, but I am not happy with the decisions they made. If you happen continue development again, at least you know what you can improve upon or fix.

--
Thank you Frozenbyte for creating this game, it will remain one of my favorites and I hope, even if you can't continue its development, that you enjoyed what you have created.
--

If you, reader, are looking to buy this game know that it may not be the best choice. Get it on sale if you will! But do not expect development to continue, nor for the game to encapsulate your attention for long.

This is a bit of a lengthy review but I couldn't help myself!

I played the beta back when it was available, and while we only had the first trial it was an absolute blast. Red Barrels really went all out with approaching Outlast from a multiplayer perspective and even with a full group of four players it is terrifying. I'm torn between absolutely loving the enemy designs and being utterly terrified of them, and they made sure to add all the small details that really bring these enemies to life unlike so many other horror games I've played in the past.

Examples:
Coyle checking the locker next to the one I'm hiding in, only to get visibly frustrated, leave the room and just when I thought it was safe I hear two light taps and he slowly opens the door behind me, or when Psycho (as I like to call him, gas mask guy) appears with his wonderfully maniacal laughter if you hit him twice with throwing objects he will go: "Alright alright you got me!" and scurry back to the 'spawn closet' instead of chasing you. Coyle obviously being aware that you are nearby but instead of searching he decides to take a smoke break while tapping on a glass door right next to your hiding spot. (This next one is during the beta) The big lumbering giant guy (I dont know what his name is) chasing us only for us to lose him between a hallway, rounding that hallway being chased by Coyle we spot him searching a tiny drawer for us and with all the commotion he gets startled and confused at how we got there, and then proceeds to join the chase.

Continued:
Its small moments like these that really bring to life these characters and you can see personalities within them that go further than just their voicelines and general demeanor. A really good example is with Psycho, who is very aware that he is playing this role of an 'enemy' in these trials, designed specifically to challenge the progress of the player. He clearly relishes in it, and when he comes onto the playing field so to speak he always opens with maniacal laughter. Its his time to shine and he is out there living it. Being that you get to know these enemies quite quickly throughout the typically long initial runs you gain this sense of cruel intimacy, you learn their patterns and behavior and you pick up on cues with how they behave, I mean Coyle can go on long rants about pistachios (yes, really.) and the bible and if hes into it enough you can sneak right past him without concern! While it is clear that the main 'big bads' of the enemy roster have a lot more work and detail put into them than some of the lesser knife or machete wielding enemies most if not all of them have little quirks or habits which, were probably so unnecessary for the developers to implement but in doing so, makes them feel so much more alive.

You can really take advantage of the AI with the right tools, get out there experimenting! Same goes for any in world traps that have been placed, a good brick can fix most problems.

Performance:
I don't have the most insane pc rig, but its not super low end either, with a fairly aged 1060 6gb and an i7k processor (SSD + 16gb ram included) I managed to get a steady unwavering 60 fps (I only have 60hz monitors) on default graphics settings (which I believe is medium). For me these settings were comfortable enough that I did not need to change them, and somehow out of all games I actually need motion blur on or I get a headache, take that as you will.

Dark & Light:
Small section but I really wanted to happily mention that I absolutely adore how they really gave every enemy true vision (as I'd like to call it). No weird can't-see-through-windows McGee here, standing in the light behind two layers of slightly frosted glass and you move an inch? They'll spot you, because you are still pretty visible, silhouette and all, even if they aren't entirely sure they still gotta check it out. Darkness is your friend in Outlast and playing between shadows and taking your time can help completely outsmart your opponent (as long as he isn't wearing his own pair of night-vision goggles...

The Trials:
The map design is incredible, its very easy to get lost if you are panicked and they leave so many nooks and small passageways that you can escape to (or from, as enemies can follow depending on their size). Each of the 3 core Trials currently available all have their own stories, with 3 separate difficulties and two unique side-stories that you can also do. The replayability is strong in this regard. The 3 total separate 'stories' for each one also use different routes and might open or close areas you have and haven't been to, it really feels like a stage where they set it all up before hand real quick. I don't really want to spoil much about these and I've only played the initial difficulty of the three in the session I had before writing this review, perhaps I'll update it further as I put in more time.

The Progression:
Back in the beta we didn't really get to modify much, and if we did I don't ever remember seeing it. However, the skill progression in Outlast Trials feels pretty solid, its a little weird having to spend a 'skill point' on being able to slide after sprinting, but as far as progression goes it does not feel out of place and comfortably scales the strength of your character with each unique unlock.

As far as the 'classes' go, which are more so just tools, each one has their own upgrade path with some seemingly a little overpowered the further down the upgrade tree you go, however as I spent all of my points on the former skill tree section I have not experimented with any of the tools other than the one I chose as my first.

Bugs?:
From what I encountered? None, however I did run into a few janky movement issues but that could have been from the fact I was repeatedly cornered by a tall naked man in a bathroom stall (while in pure panic mode mind you).

Conclusion:
In the end if you are a fan of horror games, have been a previous fan of the last two Outlast games that Red Barrels released in the past or are simply looking for a unique experience you can't exactly find then I strongly recommend you give it a shot. It fits comfortably for solo play and really scales up the chaos with 3 more. The thirty dollar price tag feels reasonable for what content there is to offer and they will continue to add more Trials as development progresses. I've been on the bad end of previous early access title releases (where I've bought into EA on their release, which unfortunately would go sour), and despite my now innate uneasiness with trusting a lot of new EA titles I had genuine faith that Red Barrels would be able to deliver on a fun, engaging and outright terrifying new take on the Outlast formula, especially after getting a taste of it with the beta, and was more than happy to buy into whatever little ball of chaos this game is.

I was about to give this some sort of #/10 but I've not played enough yet must play more so just yes for now.