Outcast A New Beginning Review

Open world + Jetpack = Win!

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Platform: PS5 PC Xbox X|S

Reviewed on: PC

Developer: Appeal Studios

Publisher: THQ Nordic

Release: March 15, 2024

Time Played: 25 Hours

Genre: Adventure Shooter

ESRB: T

Intro:

Outcast A New Beginning is the sequel to the twenty year old game Outcast, following the same protagonist Cutter Slade, a former U.S. Navay SEAL who specializes in interdimensional travel, on the same alien planet Adelpha, helping the same alien race, the Talans. Outcast offers a large open world with a lot to keep you busy for a while. Before you jump right into the game though, stick around and allow me to fill you in on what you can expect from the game and give it a final rating, placing it somewhere on the shelves behind me.

Where it starts

After a fancy light show you suddenly appear on an alien planet with no previous memory of what just happened. Very quickly you run into some locals, who thankfully speak the same language, and you offer to help them with their current issues. You’re sent off on a rescue mission where you find some amazing gear to help you move around and fight off the evil androids causing a ruckus. Once equipped and better acquainted with the locals, you then have a mission to save everyone and the planet. Hopefully finding your own way back home in the process.

Can the kids watch

The game can be a little violent at times fighting off hordes of droids or packs of wild animals, but there wasn’t blood or limbs flying everywhere in combat. The language was clean for the most part, full of cheesy jokes and the occasional innuendo, nothing I would worry about. If there is a younger audience around while you play, they probably wouldn’t get any of the inappropriate bits anyway.

The Plan (main mission)

You are discerned as the foretold savior of the people, given two definite routes to save everyone. One way is helping the different villages come together by doing tasks and proving your worth for them. The other way is destroying giant factories full of dangerous androids, getting the precious White Helidium needed for protection. So go out, talk to the locals and help them with their problems. And take out some factories and androids, all in the name of a better future.

Finding work (side missions)

To accomplish your main task, you will need to go through a lot of dialogue with the local Talans in their villages, all in the hopes of hearing about a problem only you can resolve. Most of the time the problems are solved by fetching special items or just talking to someone else but do enough of them and the village will love you for it. Some missions involved gathering enough materials and having to wait for the Talans involved to finish their work with it, like actual real time waiting for it to get done. Final rewards would generally give you some new toys to play with in combat or traveling methods to move around the planet.

Glossary

When talking with the Talans, they will throw around a lot of special words or names that you may not be familiar with being new to the planet and all. Because of this there is an amazing tool at your disposal during conversations. There is a hot key available bringing up a small window showing a picture or small explanation of the different highlighted word in a conversation keeping you in the loop on everything. I found it extremely helpful with trying to remember who everyone is, I’m terrible with names.

Kind of crafting

While exploring the wilds, you will find plants on the ground and parts of beasts slain. These can be sold or used to make various potions. However, you won’t be able to create the potions yourself, you need to bring the ingredients to a special Talan, you can find one in each village, provide them with the ingredients and they will make the potions for you. You will also use specific Talans for increasing your inventory and other various needs. It felt a little tedious having to collect materials and track down the right NPC instead of doing it yourself, but you get to meet more people this way.

Fun Distractions

Besides an ever-present main path to follow you will find so many side activities to undertake. It was tough staying focused on the task at hand with the entertaining parkour tracks or small groups of corrupt creatures to take out on the way to a destination. Even though they may have been distracting, the rewards made the activities worth it. Depending on the activity you undertake you get extra health, experience, or some money to play around with.

Getting Around (jetpack)

The most exciting part of this game would be your jetpack. After the hour long tutorial mission the entire planet is available to travel. In the beginning the jetpack doesn’t offer much in terms of travel, but you can increase it’s capabilities allowing for higher jumps, gliding, and moving around so fast. Certain abilities will be required to complete some side activities, they’ll let you know what your missing when you come across them. You can still try to do it without, but it’s very hard if you’re not fully prepared.

Defending Yourself (guns/mods)

You will get your hands on a few different guns in the game, the two main guns are a pistol and rifle. They start out basic, giving you the ability to change them how you see fit using modifiers. The mods can increase fire rates, give the gun a scatter shot, or even heal you on enemy kills. Any mod can go on either gun, but they can’t use the same mod at the same time. You can swap your mods whenever you like and level them up if you have the proper skills and materials. The guns will consume green and red helidium as you shoot them, if you run out they still work, but they will be back to basic un-modded guns.

Increasing Abiliites (skill tree)

Cutter Slade will have to work on his combat skills and jetpack to better his effectiveness around the world. The jetpack skill tree gives new jetpack abilities and increases charges using a special blue Helidium, only found as quest rewards and from some side activities. The combat tree was much easier to fill out, using Nano, and macro cells, obtained from chests and taking out androids. The new moves gained from the tree made a huge difference when flying into big bases taking out armies of droids.

Outro:

So I’ve never played the original Outcast game, however I did go as far as reading the wiki page to get an idea of what Cutter has previously gone through. Some of the events from the first game were mentioned in this game, but not enough to break the experience if you have no idea what they’re talking about. This was a good standalone story that holds up on it’s own.

It was somewhat relieving to play a big game that doesn’t seem to take itself to seriously. All the characters have loud personalities and small bouts of cheap humor that I really got a kick out of, most of the jokes were based around Talans taking Cutter to literally when he would make small comments like “See ya later”. There was definitely a seriousness to the whole story, but it never got to heavy, keeping the mood light throughout the whole thing.

The open world was large and available to explore right after the tutorial, I wasn’t blocked by story to adventure anywhere and I could do the story in any order I wanted. That was really cool, the only problem I found was the conversations around the world were the same no matter what I did. For example had I already accomplished a big task or met someone important, Cutter would still ask who is that or have no idea how to start a task I’d already completed. The immersion was kind of broken in those instances.

I loved the jetpack mechanics in the game. The skill tree was minimal and I could really feel the upgrades as I unlocked them, taking me higher and faster, and they were very comfortable to use with mouse and keyboard, though I use a mouse with twelve buttons on the side, and I used a lot of them for this game, it might be better to use a controller. The various parkour side activities were a blast and some were a true test of the skills gained throughout the game.

As much as I did like this game I don’t see many replayability aspects. It was a lot of work to get the jetpack upgraded enough to really enjoy it, and there was a lot of tedious busywork involved getting through the whole story. A lot of the main missions involved real time waiting for tasks to be complete by the Talans, at the start it didn’t seem like much with everything I could do, but near the end when that was all I was waiting on I was a little bored. Not that the whole game wasn’t entertaining, I just wouldn’t want to go through it again. I may be tempted to hop into a nearly finished game to fly around, fight some androids, and knock out some more side activities, but that would be it.

Have you ever played this or the first Outcast game? Let me know what you think in the comments, and hit that sub, so you never miss another review.

Alright, let’s get this game rated and on a shelf

The visuals were alright, a little choppy, it’s getting a two.

The story was a little predictable, but entertaining, it’s getting a three.

Gameplay had it’s hiccups, could still use a little smoothing out, but still a three.

Due to the vast story and busy work, I’m giving replayability a one

I really like this game, it was almost reminiscent of old sci fi specials with cheesy acting and jokes that I used to watch all the time, and flying was very cool, I’m handing out a four.

Giving Outcast A New Beginning an overall score of 2.6 out of five.

I would recommend checking this game out, it’s worth the hours you’d sink into it. Now if your debating between this and another you may want to wait on a sale, I suppose it depends on the contender