The Outer Worlds

I picked this up on a different service during a sale. My general feeling is that it could have been so much more. It tries to combine a shooter with RPG elements, with an effort at having a cool environment, and somehow the result is much less than the sum of its parts. The good: sound, voice acting, good humor, pretty decent writing, very stable with no crashes The "Meh": graphics -- very solid with a smooth engine -- but the artistic choices range from outstanding to garish / downright ugly. The ship you obtain (sadly) -- it isn't much more than another location -- it's kind of cool -- but it doesn't really serve much purpose -- you don't really need it for anything other than as a plot device to get between levels. You can collect a few things (trophies) that get scattered about the ship -- but no ability to customize it. The workbenches, etc are readily available all over every level, you don't need to sleep, and annoyingly if you board your ship while it is sitting on a planet, then go to a window, you are in orbit -- then you go back to the hatch, and boom, right back on the planet -- WTF? way to break the immersion. The bad: The bland generic nature of everything. The weapons, armor, etc are all very, very similar. The loot and health you collect has the same issue. The RPG elements are so bland its hard to even see how some skills differentiate your character that much. Steal with reckless abandon, hardly any repercussions. And the most annoying of all, level design itself obviously has a huge design toward a console type philosophy. Walk a little ways following a corraled path, encounter bland enemies, kill them, rinse, repeat. Some of the side quests are lifted right out of other games -- go to a house, they invite you for dinner, gasp! they are cannibals -- gee haven't seen that before. Bottom line: Meh.... Its an OK shooter, but it has been done better before in several other games. It became a slog the longer I played it.

I have heard this game compared to Fallout, and I suppose that could be, except the apocalypse is a solar system wide ... and it's yet to happen. This comparison would be imperfect at best. The game is closer in both theme and through many overt and obscure references to "Firefly" and "Serenity". That's largely irrelevant to the gameplay itself. The story is there, the problem is, most of it is so obvious what it's trying to be that it's verging on the painful. This game is trying to be "Firefly the Game" without the trademark, yet I don't feel like it's really scoring the goal. The stories are there, but to me as a Firefly fan, it just falls short. There's NPC interaction in your party much like you'd expect in Dragon Age, Baldur's Gate, or Neverwinter's Night, but much of it lacks the wit that keeps that back and forth engaging. The stories are at the exagerated extreme end of anti-capitalism fare, and the obviousness of the moral choices might as well stand up and scream "Pick me! Pick me!" while the other side suggests moral choices that would make the Robber Barons of the late 19th century cringe. It's an interesting play, I don't consider my money wasted - I bought it on sale - but it's not stellar based on the stories alone. Not a home run, more like a solid hit with no men on base. The game engine seems rock solid on my modest gaming system - Ryzen 3600, 32 GB RAM, AMD 5500XT 8GB, Intel NVME SSDs, with a solid 60 FPS at 1440p resolution at ultra detail. The RAM useage never seems to exceed 5 GB VRAM and 12 GB system RAM. It's never crashed on me after several solid days of play. I wish I could say this is Obsidian at its best story telling, but it's really a mediocre story RPG with a solid engine under it. They've had over a year of patches and DLC at this point, after all. My verdict: wait for a sale.

If you're looking for a Fallout clone, as was the hype, look elsewhere. This is a good game, but not when seen through that lens. If, however, you enjoy the humor of shows like Futurama and Firefly, set in a world similar to Firefly, then this is a game for you. With the exception of a first person camera, and a combat mechanic that mimics the VATS of Fallout, a fan of the Star Wars KOTOR series would feel quite at home

Sorry for my English! Good start, lasting about ~30 minutes. Then, everything starts to fail: The funny parts aren't funny at all, the absurd parts not even close to absurd, the main story is too short, not enough side missions, the role-playing elements are too simple, the gunplay are good, but the stealth mechanics are non existing, too few maps, and most of them are boring. The graphics are not that bad, just "meh"... Fallout in space? Definitely a huge, HUGE, NOPE.

Nobody can reinvent the Wheel. This game doesn't. And that's ok. It was a fun trip across a vast solar system. Its main enemy is corporate capitalism and human hubris. The action may be just okayish, but some of the science weapons were absurdly funny. The Storylines have ups and downs, but i found most of them entertaining. The price however... Yeah... Try to get it on sale.