Outcast: A New Beginning Review - A Social Outcast

While you may be forgiven for thinking that the days of the white-as-the-driven-snow pulp action protagonist are over, our Outcast: A New Beginning Review might make you think twice. 

If you're in the mood for a more story-focused game, check out our review of The Thaumaturge. We've also previewed Lightyear Frontier, a new craft-em-up that also sees you on a strange alien world teeming with life. 

What is Outcast: A New Beginning?

Outcast: A New Beginning is the long-awaited (by some) sequel to Outcast, a late 90s PC title famed for being a cult classic and beating GTA III to the 3D sandbox crown by a whole two years. This time around we’re trying to make lightning strike twice by giving us basically the same plot, of a human landing on an alien planet and starting to “save it” with little-to-no pre-amble. 

When you start out the game, you’re given almost no plot to follow. Your character wakes up with amnesia (woo-hoo) on an alien planet he vaguely remembers saving once already, and just starts shooting up the human-powered mechs that are subjugating the local population. Before you know it you’re taking down enemy bases and trying to win over the hearts of the people to prevent a complete genocide, because, of course, you are. 

A Blast From The Past?

If you’ve not played the original game, and honestly even if you have, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the plot is slapdash and doesn’t go anywhere. In truth, it’s such a rehash of the original that it’s almost not worth taking note of. The only reason to pay attention to the dialogue is to have a good laugh because the entire game has managed to retain the irreverent tone that the late 90s found impossible to avoid. 

The tone is a nice change of pace from the aggressively managed “wit” that passes for humor in most modern AAA gaming. In Outcast, you can go from dramatic “save the planet” stuff to a random guy screaming “I’m going to have a baby!!” when the giant monster egg we’ve been incubating is about to hatch, and I honestly didn’t notice a tonal shift in-between. It’s about as tongue-in-cheek as you can get without biting the sodding thing off. 

Doing Your Superman Thing

Most of the gameplay consists of exploring the lush alien world to find new activities and taking part in missions that get you to either shoot robots or do escort missions. Combat is fine but a little repetitive. The first time you use your advanced mobility to take down overwhelming odds it feels great, but by the 50th time I’d used the same two guns to take down the same handful of enemy types it had grown a bit thin. 

The biggest real positive to Outcast A New Beginning is found in the world design and the movement controls. Very early on you get your hands on a jetpack, and with only a few upgrades it becomes incredibly satisfying to navigate the world with this tool. You can glide across the ground like a speeder, jump multiple times in mid-air to achieve great heights, and even glide through the sky with a glowing wingsuit. 

Not only do these abilities allow you unparalleled freedom of exploration, but they also play into missions and combat. When you’re fighting lots of enemies, your main advantage over them is your ability to jump around and shoot from one end of an arena to another, though this advantage works less well indoors. It feels great to use these abilities to successfully take down a boss or a group of enemies, even if the aforementioned repetition takes the enjoyment down a peg or two after a while. 

A Sight for Sore Eyes

Visually, the game is pretty good-looking, though it stresses out hardware to an unseemly degree even on lower settings. It does a good job of showing off the various huge and open environments of the planet you’re on, and even on the lower-end of settings it still manages to look impressive. Outside of visuals, the gameplay and soundtrack feel like they’re stuck in the PS2/PS3 era of gaming, so unless you’re a fan of those periods in gaming, you might feel like the format has had its day.

There’s plenty to like in Outcast: A New Beginning, maybe even love if you’re genuinely not here for a good storyline. The unfortunate truth is that there’s plenty here to put you off too. It’s a bit buggy in places, with various missions ending in loops or becoming unfinishable, as well as featuring some of the most disorganized and repetitive gameplay that we’ve seen in a long time. It aims for freedom but ends up feeling more like being trapped into a repetitive chore whenever you’re held back from exploring the fantastic world to listen to mediocre story and slightly dull characters. 

Outcast: A New Beginning Review | Final Thoughts

Outcast: A New Beginning is going to be a divisive game. For hardcore fans of the original, and people with a knack for enjoying games with older design sensibilities, this could be a huge time sink. For anyone who wants a good storyline and some genuine innovation and polish in their games, you’re probably going to have a bad time. If you can throw away your thinking brain and enjoy zooming around like Superman, then you’ll probably enjoy it, but don’t expect to care what’s going on by the end. 

Outcast: A New Beginning was reviewed on PC Via Steam with a copy provided by the Developer over the course of 30 hours of gameplay - all screenshots were taken during the process of review.