Outcast 1.1

Now, granted I've only played it for a total of 3 hours, but I've spent about that long trying to make it run correctly as well. There are a freaking TON of potential techincal problems for outcast. From the game itself having broken design, from the tiny resolution, from the flickering screen, to the failure to launch. From what I could play decently, the gameplay is a somewhat open-ended garble of sidequests and objectives nigh-impossible to keep track of. I'm only 3 hours in and I'm completely lost. Luckily there's the difficult shooting and the barely functional jumping to fix it. I dunno. I'm probably just not getting it. It still deserves 3 stars based on story and atmosphere and intangible gaming goodness, and chances are I'm just whining. Even so, buyer beware...

I literally have thousands of pc games since i started playing in thye early 90's and this game has been in my top 10 games of all time! If you like a game that seems to last forever, keeps you excited, and leaves you wanting more? This is it! I cant wait for the new updated version coming out this year, although the old voxel rendering is a thing of beauty!!! Its practically free for the price and you will not be disappointed.

Outcast, a unique game... When the game first appeared it was too expensive for my budget. Later, I started hunting for it, because I was intrigued by good reviews. [Gameplay] -Adventure The adventure part is a bit bland to my taste, with a great emphasis of errand-boy type quests that typically direct you from one end to the other end of one map, or in later parts of the game, to an entirely different "world". There are some more original quests that have more story elements, with explanations on the society and the world(s). Sometimes they can be engrossing like reading a book. Similar to Fallout 3, the automap system is hardly usable, because there are no descriptions of key locations apart from the teleporting beacons. The worlds are vast, but some areas especially the Temple and city area suffer from repetion., making it hard to orientate yourself. The tree world is quite beautiful and a real joy to traverse. -fighting The fights are intense and I'm glad that using tactics pays off as the enemy AI is quite good. Placing dynamite would really benefit from a bit more precision. for annoyances on fighting, see visuals below. [Visuals] The distance fogging works great and gives a good sense of immersion in a world. The objects in the game are quite crudely rendered against a much more detailed background. Though this game allows you to switch from a third person and a first person perspective, it frequently forces third person view on the player, which often leads to the ego rendering obscuring the target in a firefight. Annoying. On top of that there are extreme zoom-ins where an overview of the battlefield is crucial for survival. [User Interaction] The user interface is mouse intensive and would be more comfortable if the menu system could use the keyboard as well. The frequent clicks that are required put quite a strain on your hands and fingers. [Maturity and stability] the game plays, but some frequently discussed bugs are still around in this version supposedly compatible with WinXP and modern machines. The most grating one is the stuttering, fast forwarding sound. fortunately this can be easily circumvented, with the price of making 3D sounds impossible. At least one bug prevents you from completing a quest, without resorting to drastic "cheat" measures. An example is jumping to the lighthouse and not being able to get to the top platform. I can understand that some of these issues can simply not be patched, but I would have appreciated it if Gog had mentioned this in the manual, rather then having to search for this in the forums and outside of Gog.com.

Minor spoilers ahead. I wanted to love this game, unfortunately some problems stopped me from doing so. My main problem is the mission structure, which are not very creative, most of them are fetch quests which are made worse by two factors: travelling is not fun, you are slow and even with the 3 teleporters the game gives you, they are not enough since you'll need to traverse multiple worlds, and if your TPs are in another region, you will walk or use your twon-ha, which has awful drawn-out mount/dismount animations; and the other reason is that finding NPCs is a pain, I like how you need to ask around to find them, but in places like Talaanzar, the NPC list is so big, that you have to cycle dialogue options for literal minutes if unlucky to find the guy you want. Gameplay is barebones. There isn't a lot of enemy variety, and you can cheese a lot of enemies by just staying far from them. There isn't incentive to use the powerful weapons because even upfront, enemies are easy. The final confrontation would be a cool moment to use all your weapons in a climax, however the games takes most of your ammo and you can barely use them. That being said, there are also some great points to the game. The Soundtrack is beautiful, really sells the world of the game and makes everything sounds grandiose like it should. The setting is really well made, it is clear the devs put a lot of effort into making Adelpha a really cool alien world, with a different culture and unique world. The graphics, like the music, really help sell it. I liked the story, I liked the majority of characters and the antagonistic dynamic between Marion and Slade is great, although the final fight was bad in a gameplay perspective, in the context of the narrative, it was really well done. In the end, my experience with Outcast was worthwhile, however, exploration and combat which should be the main focus, are badly executed. While I hoped for more and the game didn't click for me, it might for you.

This is a good looking game in a highly developed and immersive setting, in a game world which dynamically responds to your progress and how you behave... Which is a shame, because the result is, at best, quite dull. Don't get me wrong, I love talky games (I'm a massive fan of traditional point and click adventures) and am usually very patient. But the dialogue, setting and story in Outcast bored me to tears. Part of the problem is that the gameplay involves large periods of limping camply across huge landscapes in order to hold painfully long conversations with NPCs who speak a mixture of boring English and bollocks alienese. The actual plot is ok, but then we could say that of a remake of 'The Shawshank Redemption' starring Nicholas Cage. In short, if you like Star Trek movies, you'll probably like this game. If not, it's still an ok action adventure, but bring a book along.