The last tests is excessively nasty and lewd – appropriate, given that it’s developer Red Barrels’ first follow-up in six years to his, in the best way, odious Survive to survival horror series. Since his Early Access Version on May 18, Bloody Multiplayer was swipe up steam chartsmaking me nostalgic for a return to gross horror of the last decade. But the game, at least in its early access form, is often more frustrating than scary at full steam.
It’s a shame, because a polished commitment to maximalism is what made me so obsessed with the original. Survive to a decade ago. This game balanced an overwhelming, animal fear (being overpowered, being trapped in the unknown darkness, cannibalism) by pulling it thin and long, like spun sugar, until it felt like you weren’t going scream only because of the suspense. Protagonist Miles Upshur could never fight back. He just gasped, hid, and watched, shaking, as monstrous people searched for him in the pitch blackness, bone shears in hand.
Like the original game, The last tests delights in making you feel weak. In the first person, and without the ability to fight back, your freely customizable The character stumbles through several gruesome “tests” that the dark Murkoff Corporation tricked them into playing human guinea pigs. “Let the miracles of science give you purpose,” said the cheerful pink flyer. “The world owes you everything.”
Welcome to the real world
Yes indeed. The world locks you in a haunted house and waits for you to die. I experience this during my two or so hours of gameplay, which begins with a tutorial “trial” that tasks me with shredding boxes of my public and private folders in a hissing meat grinder. I navigate the tutorial house alone, though later trials let me add up to four players to complete tasks, like kidnapping a snitch amid police torture or finding antipsychotics beforehand. my violent hallucination sucks up my entire health bar. In multiplayer, losing your grip on reality can also lead to you seeing a teammate’s doppelganger, who is, unfortunately, armed with a knife. Abound with stains and imposters, Trials is disgusting Among usI realize soberly.
In the first few minutes I spend in the tutoring house, I hesitate to take turns and open doors, wary of what I might find. It’s a Survive to game, you know? What if a debauched Mormon in rubber waders came and slit my ass with a meat hook?
And then the moment I dreaded happens: my Murkoff-issued night vision goggles run out of battery after I failed to find another one, and I prepare to descend into twilight terror.
But it turns out the goggles still work pretty well without power, and after pushing myself to keep exploring, I realize that in the turns, there’s only more turns. Except when a lo-fi hellraiserA character that looks like it’s bumping my head after I accidentally step into crusty glass (“What is that,” he mutters before finding me), I don’t am not afraid. Nothing so serious is happening.
I’m starting to have fun with the game’s many campy attempts to terrify me. The house is filled with stiff animatronics holding knives, and a lady with a skin mask and a duck puppet hums a huge drill in my hand. After she feeds another screaming Murkoff test subjected to the meat grinder, I step into red smears of cartilage on the floor. Cute.
Trials tutorial finished
The real trials are also exaggerated but lack tension. After completing the tutorial, a static television tells me that I am reborn. I head to the slumber room, a glorified pig pen with custom cells (for 100 in-game currency, which you earn every time you attempt a trial, even if you don’t complete it, you can adorn your walls with a The thin blue line attach). I head to the pharmacy, where other online gamers are congregating, only to learn that I don’t have the necessary level of therapy to interact with. Go figure.
From the Sleep Room, you can select thematic tests to perform alone or in a group. Since the trials only unlock after completing the one before it, my only option is “Kill the Snitch”, where my goal is to “Silence [a prisoner’s] lies” before he supposedly tells the cops about Murkoff’s barbarity. Unfortunately, the cops are weird too. As the trial loads, it shows me a fantasy cutscene where a police officer pleasures himself with a taser that flashes blue pins of electricity. I laugh. It sounds like something that might play on the concert screen during a Diplo set.
Once in the trial, I find myself immediately setting off flashing red mines that release mind-blowing gas and electricity traps, before running straight into the HIV-positive cop. Oops, none of that was there during the tutorial.
But because there is SO a lot to avoid, I don’t have enough time to be afraid. When I scream, it’s frustration, especially when the cop runs after me with his taser (“hope you washed that first”, I feel like telling him) and corners me despite me being crouched in the dark where the bad guys are I’m not supposed to see you. My stamina gives way easily, so I can’t run away either. Instead, I die too many times and get kicked out of the trial, earning $100 and an “F” grade.
“F”, “F”, “F”, reads a hallway lined with accusatory televisions. “You failed, because you are a failure,” a floating voice informs me.
So I’m trying again with multiplayer, hoping maybe we could divide and conquer. But one of my teammates gives up immediately upon entering the room, and when a hellraiser spawn impales me unceremoniously (despite my fiery attempts to hide from him), I’m embarrassed when the game tells my only remaining teammate that I’m bleeding.
I’m being offered the chance to see the game from their first-person perspective. I make the switch and watch them approach me with a regenerating syringe. But then they hesitate and choose to quit the game instead. Oh okay. I’m going to fuck myself now.
Any kind of social commentary Trials maybe try (in life we constantly struggle, only to earn enough money to slap a The thin blue line displays on our cells) feels stifled by overworked level design and lackluster multiplayer. The game does not immediately encourage you to be a good partner. It’s too cynical and concerned to ask, “aren’t you so afraid? Is not it raw?”
Of course, yeah. It is. But its enemies are unfairly relentless, and the game is often visually overwhelming (especially since it has no accessibility settings to turn off flashing lights and migraine-inducing aberrations). But although it seems far from the horror of the first game, The last tests is at least entertaining in its absurdity. Of all the claims a horror game can make, this certainly isn’t the worst.
