I am absolutely digging this game so far after picking it up for just £28 (versus £50) on Steam yesterday. Ended up playing the game from 7pm until 2am this morning as I was enjoying it so much.
The good news is that it runs better than the demo but still has traversal stuttering and some weird hitches from time to time but it’s not game-ruining or anything, at least not for me. I am playing on Ultra 1440p settings with a 120 fps cap using DLAA and the experimental DX12 mode. I’ve since added some Engine INI tweaks to the game that smooth out the performance further and this only makes the game even more immersive in my opinion.
First impressions for me was that this game looks stunning visually from the opening section in the temple with the cute little critter through to the jungle and eventually the village you reach. What impressed me was how detailed everything is and most foliage reacts and bends as Cutter walks through it, which isn’t something you see in many open world games in my experience. Characters models are less impressive in-game with some stiff animation and mediocre lip-syncing that betrays the game’s double A budget but it is yobvious to me that the developers poured a lot of love and effort into creating a beautiful and interesting world to explore.
I’d argue that this plays better than the recent Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora game from Ubisoft which it is has to be said looks graphically stunning but is just dull to play. Outcast: A New Beginning at least has humour; Cutter is blunt, rude and often direct, coming across as a bit of an arsehole, but the various aliens he meets all have interesting things to say and several of them are surprisingly funny from the village leader who objects to everything you do to an over-enthusiastic person who is excited and worried about an upcoming birth.
The game is also very story-heavy with lots of mostly well-done cutscenes (seemingly capped at 30 fps) and tons of dialogue options. You talk to key characters highlighted with an exclamation (!) mark but you can also speak to random villagers to and ask them about things and people you’ve discovered so far. It actually surprised me how much unique dialogue there is and the voice-acting is pretty much fine to my ears. The writing isn’t Shakespeare for sure but it is at least more engrossing than most of the banal drivel what Starfield had to offer! The combat is also serviceable and feels enjoyable enough but enemy AI is very basic. There’s resource collecting for missions and equipment/character upgrades, and traversal is great with a jet pack which you can use to quickly speed across open areas in and eventually upgrade to add a glide option. Missions so far have been reasonably varied, both main and side quests, and there are some fun mini-games to discover too that last no more than a couple of minutes.
Yes, the game can feel a bit janky in places and there are some minor graphical bugs such as floating objects but this is definitely a good, as in well above average, game in my book. As I said it is similar in terms of story to Avatar (humans invading an alien world with your character siding with the natives) but this game is just a lot more entertaining to play. Honestly, no-one is more astonished than me because while I liked the demo, I didn’t immediately ‘click’ with it and thought initially that it was just another low-budget open world with a generic setting. I couldn’t be more astonished at how good the full game is.
For me this is like the recent and amazingly good Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden in that it is a game that borrows heavily from other games, in that game’s case it’s God of War, but it manages to still offer enough in terms of unique elements, gameplay and story-telling to make for a compelling and memorable experience despite what those lukewarm 7 out of 10 review scores might suggest. Hell, I think some of these types of games are more impressive to play than bigger so-called triple A ones because they tend to be more ambitious even if not everything is as polished as you’d want. Thank goodness for publishers like THQ Nordic who put out these kind of games (I cannot wait for Alone in the Dark next week either) along with some stellar remakes such as Destroy All Humans! and, yes, SpongeBob SquarePants games!
Check this out even if it is only the demo (Kudos to the publishers for even releasing one) as you also might be surprised at how fun it is to play…
%201999-2015%20Fresh3D%20sarl%206_21_2023%2000_12_09.png)
