The Outfit -- Page 2

Born to Die in Berlin
The Outfit may be ambitious, but it's definitely not perfect.

At its heart, a strategy game is about management. Managing time, managing resources, managing your enemies, managing the terrain, and managing offensive and defensive units. But even in a strategy game as streamlined as The Outfit, it's easy to be momentarily overwhelmed by information overload. So, as in any other strategy game, it's important that a game like The Outfit give the player the feedback he needs. There should be no second-guessing the orders you've given your units.

And feedback is where The Outfit sometimes falls short. Crucial visual and audio cues are sometimes curiously absent, which can lead to confusion and frustration in the heat of battle. The important process of reinforcing an abandoned turret, for example, is an annoyingly flaky process: you must move into close range, point very precisely at the turret, and press a button. That's tolerable enough, but because there's no visual indicator or attention-grabbing sound effect -- again, feedback -- it's tough to know whether you successfully called for reinforcements or you simply missed the target. Entering a vehicle or emplacement can also take a few seconds of trial-and-error button-tapping. Again, precise positioning seems to be the key.


Cremation is the better part of valor

Aside from those interface gripes, the core run-and-gun controls feel just fine...though we've noticed some minor collision detection quirks (particularly with Deuce's somewhat nerfy bazooka). The vehicle controls are also hit-and-miss, and as a whole just don't feel as tight and responsive as they should. And it's a shame that you can't adjust the analog stick sensitivity or remap the button layouts, as these should be considered standard features nowadays.

360 Degrees of Death
The Outfit's visuals aren't quite pixel-perfect, but they definitely look razor-sharp on an HD TV. Without a doubt, the sprawling, detail-packed environments are the biggest eye-catchers. Thanks to slick visual processes like normal mapping and anisotropic filtering, The Outfit's environments give you a tantalizing sneak peek at the supreme visual fidelity we can expect from the Xbox 360 in the coming years. And if you squint a little, you can even get a half-assed idea of what Halo 3 might look like...though we should mention that The Outfit's monstrous battlefields make Halo 2's Zanzibar seem like a dirty little mud puddle in comparison. Subtle details, like the lushly rendered 3D grass and foliage, give the game an undeniably next-gen look.

But that doesn't mean The Outfit doesn't hit a few visual roadbumps along the way. The character animation, for instance, could do with extra visual polish. We noticed that almost every character has the same canned animations for common actions, especially melee combat, which tends to give the battles a strangely robotic look. We also noticed a few distracting visual bugs involving the melee attacks -- shadow boxing, anyone? -- which is something that Relic and THQ can hopefully fix with a patch. And though the vehicle explosions look suitably spectacular, the kills don't look satisfying at all. Shooting a soldier with a rocket produces a little puff of ash and fire, and gunplay involves tiny clouds of blood. Frankly, it's hard to see exactly what makes The Outfit a Mature-rated game. It's not any more overtly violent than Call of Duty 2, a Teen-rated title.


The Outfit supports split-screen and Xbox Live multiplayer; both options are awesome

On a character level, the Outfit looks sharp but not spectacular. You'll see the requisite Havok-embued ragdoll physic effects, but don't expect much from the faceless grunt soldiers, who look more like cookie-cutter drones than the living, breathing computer-controlled troops you saw in Call of Duty 2. The hero characters fare much better, showing off tiny details such as reflective sunglasses and chromed sidearms. Still, the odd blurry texture here and there (look closely at Deuce Williams's bazooka) detract ever-so-slightly from the experience. As a whole, though, The Outfit's visuals don't disappoint.

The rousing soundtrack neatly compliments the stylized visuals, sounding something like G.I. Joe mixed with Saving Private Ryan. Booming explosions, chattering machine gun fire, and amusing but repetitive one-liners keep the action moving along nicely.

Comments [0]

post a comment

Post a Comment