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.