Outcast 1.1

Outcast is probally the second best product to come from Belgium, after beer. It has everything a game should have and offers more then most modern games in terms of gameplay and gaming hours. The only donwside is the low resolution, but you stop noticing that after 5min. At that point you're comletely sucked in by the wonderfull world of Adelpha.

What can I say? This game did blow my mind back in 1999 and it still has the same effect. The best parts are the general atmosphere and awesome soundtrack. You quite rarely tumble over a game that has such great soundtrack. These days I don't even pay any notice if games has or has not any music in them. But this one gets the chills run down by your spine with just the audio part. I love this game! PS. Yeah, there are some RPG elements with shooting, but heck... The soundtrack!!! ;)

This is probably one of the best games ever made. Sadly it has never been upgraded in order to work on faster CPU's. It just doesn't play well with quick machines. So if you have an older model computer with a slow CPU then you are in luck. Even the so called patch to make it work on faster machines doesn't work. Hopefully, someday, someone will redo this game and make it playable again.

If I had to make a top100 list of my favourite games, and if I added all the games I loved, including recent games, you could find old kinds of genres and great titles on various supports, from PC to PS3, including gameboy and super nintendo. The number 1 game would probably be Xenogears or Final Fantasy VII or IX, or Zelda, I don't know... But not Outcast. Why ? Because Outcast would have the Special place ! Not the 1st, but the one above, the one that never changes, the one that will always be on top ! Call it the 0 place if you want, all you need to know is that Outcast deserves it ! You like great stories ? You like FPS ? You'll love Outcast. You like Zelda-like adventure games ? You like puzzles ? You'll love Outcast. You like Stargate ? You like Sci-fi or Fantasy ? Lol ! The same ! And the list could be long, so the game touches many genres. It's a shame that you can't buy the french version here (if you're french, of course) : did you know that the voice of the hero, Cutter Slade, was the one of Bruce Willis in french movies ? Yeah, that's how you make a great game :) I don't know what I could say to make you buy Outcast, but be sure that the game deserves it; it is clear that this game was the best video game experience I ever lived at this time. Awesome graphics, incredible gameplay, fantastic story and universe. The game is very long, very exotic with a lot of villages and people to meet. You can go through travel gates or ride a Twon'ha. The villagers, the Talans, are almost intelligent. If you look for someone, just ask the others, and they'll show you the way ! No, really, I have to stop but I have so much more to say... And when I think that the Sequel Outcast 2 never released, I'm sick ! Come on, stop reading this and go get it ! You've waited too much already ! And for this price... My !

I know that title might not sit well with my rating for this game, but please read on and you'll understand what I'm getting at... I will always judge 1999 as one of my own personal landmark years in gaming. Why? Because this was the year that Outcast was released. I had been keenly anticipating this game for a long time, having witnessed videos of it on magazine cover discs (this was long before youtube or even decent broadband). I had just finished school and had a long summer stretching out in front of me, with comparatively little to do with my time. Outcast filled that time admirably. The world of Adelpha and its inhabitants called to me in a way few games had before and spent most of almost every day for three days solid playing it through to conclusion. Needless to say it takes a very special game to do that. As to why Outcast is so special, there are many reasons. Telling the story of a group of dimensional explorers on a mission to save the Earth from a man made Black Hole, you must step into the role of Cutter Slade. Unfortunate name aside he has stood the test of time as one of the all time great game heroes. His desert dry sense of humour and interesting (if cliché) backstory combined with his alarmingly camp run and poor taste in fashion all help to make him stand out from the crowd. With his team travelling through the dimensional portal individually, Cutter wakes up to find himself confronted by the alarming reality of his team having disappeared and that the locals who have rescued him are fighting some kind of guerrilla war against a despot named Fae Rahn. Worse still they believe Cutter to be their prophesied Ulukai, a great warrior who will lead them against the great dictator. The story is interesting if slow burning and some avenues of the world are left untapped (possibly to be have been addressed in the canned sequel Lost Paradise). The stage set, it is up to Cutter to travel to several different themed ‘worlds’ through various Stargate like portals dotted around the landscape, killing enemy soldiers, aiding the locals and generally making life difficult for Fae Rahn, all while searching for his lost team mates. In gameplay terms this boils down to a lot of third person running, jumping and shooting combined with some free form exploration elements around the games open environments. These environments were the star of the show around the games release in 1999. Outcast has an extremely unique look thanks in large part to its use of voxels to create its landscapes. Voxels were something of an evolutionary dead end graphics technology wise. A kind of 3D pixel rather than a polygon they were most commonly used in flight games of the time (and the early Delta Force titles) to render the landscapes. Since 3D graphics cards were only just beginning to grow out of their infancy at this stage, the capability to create lush worlds like the ones in Outcast was all but impossible to achieve with polygons. These voxel graphics were software only however, making no real use of the 3D cards. It is actually somewhat hard to believe when you see the game in action that it isn’t using a 3D card. While some what low fidelity by the standards of today, the game remains striking even now and can still conjure up fond memories of wandering through the worlds humid rice paddies, desert bazaars and snow draped mountain huts. Combine the graphics with top notch voice acting and a stunning live symphonic score (another uncommon feature since most games of the time were still using digitised music) only help to heighten the atmosphere of the game world. In terms of game play, Outcast was a tremendously ambitious game. An open world the likes of which was not really common at the time, it featured basic systems like locals going about daily tasks and soldier patrols with military bases that Cutter must frequently raid for supplies and the like. This is highly reminiscent of more modern sandbox shooters, although while these games rely on missions to lend them structure, Outcast does no such thing, instead offering a subject based conversation system and some very broad goals to achieve in each world. Using information gleaned about the world from the locals it is up to the player what they must do to save the world, and while some tasks obviously must be completed to progress the story, the amount of freedom left to the player is still substantial. The game is not without flaws however. The games combat is basic but functional, and animation is often stilted and awkward (again Cutter’s mincing run rears its ugly head). The controls are also stiff and occasionally a little clumsy. All of these could be seen as a result of the all encompassing nature of the game. It is at times a platformer, shooter, puzzler, adventurer, stealther and RPG. Outcast is the definition of Jack of all Trades gaming, but it is the way these myriad elements hang together that keep the game from becoming the train wreck it could very well have been. Ultimately Outcast was not a commercial success. It remains to this day a niche cult classic, regarded with great affection by those that lost themselves to its charms in the past. It was a game two steps ahead of the ahead of the competition, but those steps took it down the wrong road and into relative obscurity. Hopefully its presence on GOG will serve to shed more light on one of PC gaming’s forgotten masterpieces.