Outcast: A New Beginning Review – An Alien Planet Worth Exploring

Outcast: A New Beginning is basically the sequel to a sport you doubtless have by no means performed from 25 years in the past. That mentioned, this new Outcast is definitely price your time, even when it’s a bit tough across the edges.

The authentic Outcast got here out in 1999 and was forward of its time within the technological division. The authentic used an early model of Voxel expertise to construct out its open world, alongside the standard blocky 3D characters that had been acceptable for the time. And but, the sport had early implementations of lip-syncing and emotive faces with a powerful quantity of voice appearing.

That similar stage of ambition appears to have stayed with the sport sequence and will be felt in A New Beginning. In each video games, you play as Cutter Slade. Yes, I do know, the title screams 90s motion hero. Now, I used to be anxious that the tough edges that his 90s counterpart had would even be current on this new sequel. I imagined a brash Duke Nukem, however what I received was a way more reserved, considerate, and even variety dude with a pleasingly dry wit.

It was refreshing to see an ex-Navy SEAL interact with an alien race and deal with them as in the event that they had been human. It was a stage of respect that I didn’t count on and that was actually cool. Before I proceed, it’s essential to notice that you just don’t must play the primary sport to completely take pleasure in this sport. Outcast: A New Beginning does an important job of introducing you to the alien world of Adelpha and all of its colourful inhabitants.

These aliens stay in villages on this lush inexperienced planet with their very own distinctive and generally conflicting cultures. Every one in all them is absolutely voice-acted and has a lot of fascinating issues to say, which reveals how good the sport’s writing is. What’s actually neat concerning the dialogue system is that Outcast incorporates a dynamic glossary that updates in real-time, relying on the alien phrases utilized in each dialog. The alien folks of Adelpha always use alien phrases, so having a dynamic reference like that readily available always is unimaginable.

As Cutter Slade, you’ll be exploring the big and beautiful continent with a number of villages and cities, on prime of many extra factors of curiosity. At first, you’ll begin off with a easy vertical boosting jetpack, however because the hours fly by, your exploration skills vastly develop. By 20 hours in, I used to be leaping off cliffs to glide over huge swaths of land, utilizing my reserve increase to propel myself by the air after which transition to boosting on the bottom at extremely quick speeds.

That alone felt nice when the world that Outcast places you in is so large and extremely tall. Like, if the subsequent Elder Scrolls title has half of this sport’s geographical scope, I’ll be ecstatic. Mountains truly felt like mountains and that’s so splendidly refreshing. However, whereas the world itself is suitably massive and appears nice, the empty areas between factors of curiosity have little to interact with past enemy animal spawns and sources to gather.

Thankfully, the factors of curiosity are extra fascinating than the areas that separate them. You’ll be destroying massive industrial bases, raiding small outposts, and doing quite a lot of agility-based challenges. Doing these will reward you with foreign money that you should use to spice up your weapon’s capabilities, jetpack’s capabilities, and even well being. In reality, each massive inexperienced chest you open can reward you with weapon modules that you could combine and match in your two weapons—a pistol and a rifle.

Mixing these wildly totally different modules basically modifications your weapons into different weapons. I used a therapeutic, sniper, and first shot module on my pistol to show it right into a sniper rifle that does further harm each time it shoots and regains HP each time I kill an enemy. Likewise, my rifle had fast hearth, further harm, and would go away an AOE sticky bomb with each shot. The system is extremely versatile and enjoyable to experiment with. But what are enjoyable weapons and a cool world with out objective and story?

Well, with out going into spoilers, Cutter Slade finds himself on Adelpha towards his will and is chosen early on to carry the area’s many villages collectively. This is all whereas repelling his fellow human invaders from ruining the lives of natives by stealing the planet’s pure sources for their very own egocentric acquire. That’s all I’m going to say concerning the story and characters as a result of it’s all price experiencing for your self.

All in all, there are parallels that may be made to James Cameron’s Avatar films. Thankfully, Outcast’s story doesn’t relaxation on its laurels. What I’ll say concerning the story is the way it progresses, as a result of it will probably really feel repetitive. Each village has a handful of quests that require a number of steps that often devolve into speaking to the proper folks, going to gather the proper issues, and killing the proper enemies. You do that over and repeatedly, which is made worse when one quest requires you to finish one other quest, which requires you to finish yet one more quest.

These dry quest chains persist and generally is a drag on an in any other case fascinating story and memorable characters. To make issues worse, the construct of the sport I performed had efficiency points that may see my frames dropping from 80+ to lower than 40 pretty commonly on modest settings. I additionally encountered a handful of audio bugs, cutscenes lacking audio, and even a few crashes. Thankfully, the autosaves are beneficiant and I by no means misplaced progress.

There might be a big day-one patch that’s supposed to repair a few of these points, which I’m grateful for, as a result of this sport is one thing particular.