Customer Reviews

Outcast

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Personally, I am not an action gamer. I prefer RPG's and most of all games involving strategy and thinking (yes, some games do involve this). This game, my favorite game, does involve these things, and it is incredible. The soundtrack, performed my the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, is beyond good. The graphics are astounding. The storyline is worthy of a 90's movie, which doesnt say much, but for a game it is a great story. The dialogue is a little less than incredible, with cliché lines and the like, but that is to be expected. This game does not center around killing stuff, it centers around thinking, using strategy, being smart. You have to be a diplomat to an alien race, you have to sneak through an enemy base undetected, save the world (a minor achievement), and learn to trade with merchants, among many other aspects of the game. But it's the little things that make the difference. In the first part of the game, you are in a snowy area tucked away in a small mountain valley. When you walk around in the snow, you can hear the snow crunch under your feet, and you can see your footprints in the snow. This game is simply magnificent. It is a cut above the rest, without a doubt the best game I have ever played. I cannot wait for Outcast 2. I hope I've shed some light on this game for you.

In a country like the U.S. where first person shooters rule, Outcast is refreshing alternative from Belgian developer Appeal and French Publisher Infogrames which mixes decent action, problem solving, exploring, and interactivity all into a wonderfully entertaining and quite addictive package. I had a great time exploring the vast regions of Adelpha. It's a welcome change to not be wandering around in a bunch of rooms with only four walls and a ceiling. Outcast is set OUTDOORS on farmland, hills, valleys, temples, marshes, mountains and deserts. There are skies, clouds, moons, fog, and extras like lens flare as you face the sun, excellent shadows, and a stunning water rippling effect as you're swimming. The Artificial Intelligence engine works great as the games characters go about thier daily activities and soldiers change tactics in mid-battle. The dialog is irreverant, the orchestral score is epic and better than most films, and the 50-60 hours of gameplay will keep you entertained throughout the holidays.

Outcast is by far the most immersive game I have ever played. From the movie quality soundtrack to the superior character AI, it's easy to become addicted to this jem.

The graphics alone are worth more than the price of the game. Featured are realtime polygon deformation for characters(no more disconnected joints!), realtime water ripples and reflections, realtime ANTIALIASING (pixel smoothing), incredibly detailed voxel terrains, and even such small details as realtime footprints left in the snow.

This game will make you feel as if you're living a storybook fantasy. Just don't forget to pay attention to your wife now and then.

At first glance the find-the-items-to-save-world plot in Outcast appears just another simplistic game plot, however the rich environment and innovative gameplay create an exceptional experience that no one should miss. In your journey you journey though five main but unique areas, meet several dozen unique NPCs along with hundreds of others.

The story unfolds through the interaction with the NPCs and in-game cutscenes by which you are given tasks to perform. You slowly learn the game's vocabulary that's based on the language of the world you are in. Though a bit cheesy, you save the game by using a device called a Gamsaav, the language reminds you that you're not in Kansas anymore. And while the graphics haven't aged well overall, character animations are smooth and surprisingly realistic, voice work is also well-done.

While combat consist of the usual shoot-the-enemy, the enemies do have some rudimentary tactics of avoiding your fire that at least makes them hard to hit. Combat is a little too easy because your projectile weapons equipped with a laser sight that makes long-range sniping easy. You can also use stealth tactics using invisiblity, distraction holograms and even crawling to sneak around but in the end you have to kill most of the enemies.

Innoviate gameplay really makes Outcast stand out. Every enemy drops a bit of money and you'll need all of it. When you start out, you only have a handgun of course, but you don't find your other weapons laying around, instead you have to buy them from low-life merchants who have already found them lying around. You also purchase weapons upgrades too. And while a good amount of ammo is laying around, local craftsmen will make ammo for you. As you travel you find raw materials, like metal, that you give to the craftsmen who, given a little time make you more ammo.

Special tasks change your emenies. These optional tasks, like stopping food production or tax collections, will weaken or reduce the numbers of enemies you face.

Outcast isn't perfect. The third-person perspective can make it difficult to see targets directly in front of you and the semi auto-aim can make it hard to shoot what you want. The first-person mode does help a lot but switching mode often can be jarring. The laser targeting is also very dim so hitting what you want in a big fire-fight can be a problem. There's also dynamite available but you can't throw and it doesn't blow on it own reducing it's effectiveness. There's the usual issues too: You get hung-up on small pieces of scenery and the third-person camera sucks.

I played the game on Windows 2000 and had a couple problems. The startup and options dialogs wouldn't recognize every mouse click. I had to click in precise places for button to work. I also couldn't switch out of the game to the desktop. Returning to the game would cause it to crash.

Four-and-a-half stars.

First off, this game uses a Voxel space rendering engine, which is not hardware driven, its CPU driven. You need a fast CPU for this game (at least 900mhz) to run it smoothly.

Many ppl complain that voxels are dated technology and unattractive. My opinion is that voxels create much more natural looking terrain than polygons. And with processor speeds reaching 2.5 ghz these days, it is absolutely no problem to render enviros with voxels, perhaps as high as 640x480 res (even tho Outcast doesnt support so high a res, I think the limit is 500 something by something). Yes, its been a while since I've played, but the Outcast world made a huge impression on my mind after playing. Such an impression that I keep wanting to go back and play again and again.

The enemy AI is also some of the best you will ever find, save for maybe Thief. It appears so organic (as opposed to machine-like). Enemies travel in groups often, they dont easily spot you unless you are in plain sight for a while, something games like Soldier of Fortune 2... at (where enemies see you as soon as you are within seeing range no matter what). IF spotted and you go hide like on a roof or crawl into a shallow pond, the enmey, like in Thief, will blow horns, summon back-up, come looking where they saw you last, search around, and eventually, if they dont see you, give up and go back to patrolling or whatever. The physics are convincing, maneuvering in the voxel environment is reliable and easy, the game handles so well its a shame theres not a multiplayer component (that would OWN on this game!) THe game also supports bump mapped textures.

Each world has u interacting with key people (though u can talk to anyone) they will give u tasks or requests, and if you decide to do them you reap whatever rewards come (the most important being to advance the storyline) I think the game supports Aureal 3d sound (maybe eax not sure i forgot) but the sound effects are totally realistic and immersive. Heck i am going to go play the game again now just from getting psyched up writing this spontaneous review. Water effects are awesome, with reflections and large-scale ripple effects, the water blows away that of any other game! ANyway, the whole world is geniously crafted, the beings are perfect, I only stopped when i couldnt figure out how to progress anymore, but there are sites with help that i will go read. Great weapons, great AI, great use of voxel graphics, shadows, etc.. FOr the current price of the game (now several years old) it is WORTH it. I'd buy it again in a heartbeat, for a present to my cousins or whatever.

Outcast... truly one of the games that will live on in my mind forever. I remember purchasing it nearly TWO years ago for $X.XX because PCGamer gave it such a good review, and then not playing more than fifteen minutes into the game. School had just ended and I needed a quick fix--something Outcast surely didn't offer. I am glad, however, that it didn't give me what I wanted right then, for it was destined to provide me with more gaming goodness than any game ever has.

The voxel-based graphics, while not of your typical curvy-surfaced Quake 3 caliber, are wonderfully appropriate for the open-ended (literally and figuratively) gameplay. The sweeping farmland and detailed forest locales would simply not be possible with any other engine, and the voxel technology has a personality of it's own.

As for the music... I popped it into my pap's brand new DVD player and he thought we were listening to the soundtrack of some epic movie. I actually go so far as to blast the music in my car stereo whenever I pass by some fella cranking his rap...

The game itself is huge, covering four or five gigantic continents, each with it's own style and mysteries. Your character will traverse through a desert slave-camp, an ancient forest, and a middle-eastern-inspired city, teeming with hundreds of working citizens (each of which can be talked to). This game truly is an epic in it's own manner.

And for the price it's at now, there really shouldn't be anything stopping you from buying it. Don't make the mistake of rushing into it as I did; give it time to grab hold of you... and you'll soon come to realise that it's there to stay.

For a long time, I've wondered if I had become so jaded to video games that I would never again find one which really caught my attention/imagination. Outcast has erased all doubt of this.

Outcast is an engaging and immersive action/adventure set in a parallel universe. You appear in this world and are identified as the saviour of the beings you find. A reluctant hero, you agree to help them if they agree to help you on the mission which sent you here - finding a lost probe which is causing a rift between parallel universes which could destroy the earth.

Okay, it sounds hokey, but the fantastic voice acting, imaginative worlds, and sheer number of characters you can find and interact with really draw you into this role. It's very nonlinear, allowing you to pursue any of literally many, many dozens of different quests, some major and some incidental, at any time.

The action component is also well-done, using an AI that's easy enough to not seriously hamper your ability to concentrate on the adventures, but difficult enough that it doesn't get boring. If you're ever overwhelmed by the amount of stuff you have to do, or you just don't feel like adventuring for a little while, you can spend a few hours running around mopping up bad guys.

The voice acting in general is quite good. The story, while a bit goofy, is enough that you can easily get caught up in it. The combat is engaging, with the enemies hiding behind objects, coming at you from the other side around buildings, rushing you several at a time, etc. The character interaction is well-done and entertaining. All around, it's a top-notch game; One of the best I've played in quite some time. I dropped a few weeks of all of my spare time into this one.

My only major complaint is that even with the patch it was a bit 'iffy' on my system. I'm running Windows 2000, and although the site here lists 2000 as an OS for the game, it's not actually strictly supported. It does work, but it would every once in a blue moon just spontaneously unload, and I'd find myself stating at the desktop. I suggest making a real habit of saving often -- after you do any major thing. Also, relying on the computer notes are fine, but there are a few things it doesn't keep track of, especially in terms of matching names to jobs. If you speak to someone who you know you want to see again (ex. the region's recreator), take special care to remember their name.

All in all, I would highly recommend this game. Easily a five-star product.

Do yourself a favor and buy this game. Seriously. This game has everything I've looked for in a game and kept me plastered to the screen for hours until I beat it. The art of game making has long been lost, but every once in a while a true gem comes from out of nowhere and restores my faith in the industry. Just because you may not have heard of this game doesn't mean it isn't worth of a look. For less than $20 it'll be one of the best investments you'll ever make for your PC.

it's amazing game of my life
i waiting for new version

Deep and expansive in both gameplay and storytelling, this one draws you in and does not let up. Aside from somewhat weak voice-acting, this is an absolutely must-have game. You do not even need 3D accelaration for it to be beautiful! Don't Hesitate! Buy It!