Outcast: A New Beginning

Everything Outcast does, it does just well enough. That may sound like a knock against it, but I promise you it's not. It's incredibly hard to make a good game with any budget at any studio. What Appeal did is make a good game that does just enough to keep you playing. In a landscape where every game is either highly polished or barely functioning, it's great to see something that sets a goal and delivers. Outcast: A New Beginning is a prime example of why we need 'Double A' games. I have no nostalgia for Outcast as, as stated previously, that ship sailed long ago, but should you, intrepid reader, journey into its wilds? That all comes down to personal taste, but for me, I'm glad I got my chance to travel to Adelpha. It was fun and hopefully someday I get a chance to go back.

Outcast: A New Beginning lives up to the ambition the same developer achieved all those years ago. A captivating story, interesting characters, thoughtful world-building and slick action are only slightly marred by an inconsistent frame-rate, repetitive quests, bugs, and occasional crashes.

Outcast - A New Beginning is an excellent sequel with a lot of great gameplay elements that go a long way to make up for its need for further polish. Bugs are common, from an outpost with the robots stuck in the floor to breakable helidium crystals floating several feet above the ground they should be poking out of, and the conversation trees are in desperate need of re-ordering. Despite this, though, it's almost impossible to resist seeing what the next villager is up to and their relation to the rest of the world, following the dialogue and fishing out quests as an excuse to see and do more. The world is also beautifully designed, with each village having its own architecture and style while the world map is covered in points of interest and different biomes, providing gorgeous views from just about any spot in the landscape. Combat is also great fun, especially when stumbling on a particularly effective gun combination or figuring out how the latest upgrade fits into the flow of the next hostile encounter. It took over twenty-four years for Cutter Slade to return to Adelpha, but the wait has paid off with an epic adventure on an alien world.

The joy of Outcast – A New Beginning comes from the freedom of its nonlinear concept.

Times like these I’m glad I get to blindly jump into games like Outcast - A New Beginning. I admit, I’d never give a game like this the time of day if I saw it on a shelf or in a Steam list or whatever. But I urge people out there who like retro sci-fi or classic games in that 90s PC style to give Outcast a shot. It’s charming and silly without being corny, and has a pitch-perfect game feel when it comes to flying around the world and fighting. The storytelling doesn’t hit any home runs, but the sum of the other parts hold the game up regardless. It’s a good time, and bigger, more expensive games could stand to learn a thing or two from it at the end of the day.

There are lots of ways in which Outcast: A New Beginning punches way, way up. The world is elaborate and thoroughly imagined. Characters are interesting. Some of the game’s mechanics and elements will seem familiar, but in this case Outcast: A New Beginning can claim it was there first. Unrewarding combat and some bland mission design aside, Outcast: A New Beginning reminds me of many AA games that I loved despite their flaws.

A good sequel to a classic that too often forgets its own virtues.

Being the heir to the original Outcast is having a very big pair of shoes to fill. A New Beginning falls short, but is in no way a bad game. It could have been so much more, however.

Outcast: A New Beginning is the epitome of a "perfectly fine" game. It plays well, runs well, looks fine, and is a decent experience that never manages to go beyond that. The mobility options make it a delight to explore the open world, but it lacks the punch needed to keep the momentum going. If you're looking for a solid and by-the-book, open-world game, Outcast does everything it needs to — nothing more, nothing less.

Appeal Studios is far from having everything worked out perfectly. However, Outcast - A New Beginning turned out to be quite an original game, which is able to captivate with its old-fashioned story about a hitman who explores a beautiful mysterious world, albeit made in Ubisoft style.

We are not at the mythical levels of the first episode, it is evident. Outcast – A New Beginning is a sequel without infamy and without praise, net of a nostalgia effect which inevitably has its weight but cannot justify every shortcoming. Strengths and weaknesses are almost equal when it's time to take stock, appreciating it or not depends a lot on how much importance you give to both. This is one of those cases in which the price doesn't play in the work's favor, however with a discount it might be worth giving it a chance because there is only one Cutter Slade.

One of those rare games that can feel underwhelming and fun at the same time. There is a lot of good stuff in Outcast 2, like the incredible music, cool jetpack mechanics and a main character that we have really missed over the years. But Appeal bites off more than they can chew here: The world is vast and beautiful, but offers very little aside from monotonous side activities. There are no roleplaying elements to speak of, the enemies are boring and on top of that, the combat feels shallow and stuck in the past. The story however really has its moments, the villages are incredibly charming and there are plenty of fun conversations to be had. Is it a great game? Sadly, no. But we enjoyed it nonetheless.

A pleasant return to the roots of open-world adventures, which is as captivating as it is frustrating. Outcast: A New Beginning can be beautiful, but with clumsy animations. It adeptly weaves tasks together while filling its map with repetitive hostile camps. However, the important thing is that through its good action and brisk movement across the picturesque planet, you'll completely forget about its simplistic storyline and other flaws.

Outcast: A New Beginning revives the universe of its predecessor with new adventures, offering deep storytelling and engaging gameplay, albeit hindered by outdated mechanics and limited production values.

Outcast: A New Beginning is a game filled with ups and downs: on one hand, the freedom of movement granted by the jetpack and the speed at which you traverse Adelpha is exhilarating and somewhat refreshing, especially compared to many open-world games where even climbing over walls requires dedicated animations to consume time and inflate playtime; on the other hand, the inevitable burden of repetitiveness in some of the activities offered somewhat hampers the experience.

Outcast – A New Beginning presents an exciting adventure into the planet of Adelpha. While the innovative combat and environmental interactions are fun, the game is too similar to other open-world RPGs to truly stand out. Exploring Adelpha in its entirety is also challenging because several bugs hamper your progress, sometimes even crashing your game. The game may not break the barrier into greatness, but you can still easily have a good time if you look past the flaws.

Outcast – A New Beginning is a fun time and something fans of the first game may enjoy. It has some issues, but it's worth experiencing and protecting Adelpha from anyone who wishes to destroy it.

By default, Outcast is not all that challenging. I turned up the difficulty to hard after the first few fights didn’t provide much resistance, and while I almost turned it down again halfway through the campaign when I died multiple times on one tough fight (you just respawn nearby so you can whittle them down with persistence, but your consumable health potions are toast) it turned out I was just one weapon upgrade away from turning things dramatically back in my favor. The only times I died after that were when I neglected to keep track of my health items, since there are very few other options for healing on the go if you aren’t well stocked.

There's fun to be had in the shooting and gliding, but Outcast: A New Beginning is simply stretched a little too thin.

Outcast: A New Beginning offers an alien open world full of small, interesting stories. Too Little innovation and a humor that takes some getting used to, are contrasted by surprisingly fun and dynamic battles, entertaining missions and a pleasant flow when it comes to exploring the captivating alien world.

Middle-aged Cutter just doesn’t cut it as a hero. Everything about him screams that he’s old, he’s tired, and instead of going on an adventure, he would’ve preferred to spend the day playing Farming Simulator. [Issue#264,p.54]

A pleasing world and satisfying jetpack exploration aside, Cutter Slade's return is rarely out of this world.

A quarter of a century is a long time to develop a sequel to a cult classic and Outcast - A New Beginning certainly shows this in its outdated approach to mechanics, animation, and technical development. The sequel certainly contains a list of non-negligible shortcomings, however, its magical charm that combines a world similar to the Avatar movies and player freedom best known from the Just Cause series overshines many of them! The undying love of the series’ enthusiasts has respawned Cutter Slade for another glide across the stunning world of Adelpha.

Unlike the first Outcast game back in 1999, A New Beginning lacks characters and has not much to offer in terms of new ideas, mostly copying what we've already seen in standard modern open-world games.

The game’s star, Cutter Slade, is a wise-cracking jerk who’s trying to get back to his daughter while also apparently being the prophecied Chosen One. That doesn’t make any of it good, but if you’re a connoisseur of that very specific genre, there’s a reasonably good chance you’re going to love Outcast – A New Beginning. But again, appeals to a certain kind of nostalgia aside, it’s worth emphasizing that Outcast – A New Beginning is not a good game. Its predecessor may have been groundbreaking for 3D open-world games, but we’re definitely not getting that this time around.

While there are things that work in its favor, Outcast: A New Beginning ultimately feels like any other open-world game you could play this year or have played years ago. It retains the charm of the original and further explores the world of the Talan in unique and odd ways, but how you go about doing that doesn’t feel as revolutionary as it did back in 1999.

Outcast A New Beginning offers sometimes interesting alien settings, the backdrops to an overall enjoyable story, albeit lacking in peaks of excellence. In addition to the technical stumbles, the game combines cutscenes and dubbing that aren't always up to par, repetitive tasks that are generally very simple in structure, as well as battles that lose their bite due to the limits of the AI that moves our opponents. Furthermore, the progression thrives on phlegmatic rhythms, which do not go well with the fun exploratory possibilities offered by the use of the jetpack. In other words, this new Cutter Slade adventure could have done more.

Perhaps Outcast: A New Beginning was a bit too ambitious for the return of the classic IP, but even with its huge flaws there are still a lot of good things that are worthy of your attention.

Outcast – A New Beginning features dated storytelling, poor writing, and an overliance on tropes we’ve all seen a thousand times by now. If none of that matters to you, however, you’re in for a pretty ok gameplay experience, with some unique mechanics and freedom that thankfully allows you to bypass a lot of the game’s storytelling, no matter how confidently it seems to throw it in your face.

With movement and combat upgrades, Outcast – A New Beginning eventually comes close to being a decent open-world shooter, but terrible fetch quests, bland activities, tech issues, and narrative gaffes mean that the colorful world of Adelpha does not bear enough fruit.

Outcast - A New Beginning is a missed opportunity, abandoning the unique elements of its predecessor for a conventional open-world design that doesn't work well. With uninspired open-world exploration, clunky movement, lackluster combat, and mediocre quest design, it's a hard sell for everyone but Cutter Slade's biggest fans who wish to know how the character's story continues, as there are far superior titles on the market that have executed similar concepts much more effectively.

Outcast: A New Beginning does its best to invoke a sense of wonder as you jetpack 4 feet off of the ground in an occasionally beautiful alien world. Weak writing, terrible performance, and repetitive quest design work together to make it a dour experience in the end.

Technically, artistically and script-wise, we've seen much better elsewhere. All the same, Outcast: A New Beginning is not unpleasant to play.