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        <h1><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b><i><a href="../../index.html">loonygames</a><br>
          <font size="1">a <a href="http://www.bluesnews.com">blue's news</a> 
          publication</font></i></b></font></h1>
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<p><a href="../2.1/shelf/index.html">&lt;&lt; Back to Normal View</a></p>
<p>URL: <a href="../2.1/shelf/index.html">http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.1/shelf/</a><br>
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<p>&nbsp;</p>Vol. 
                2, Issue 1<br>
                November 10, 1999<br>
                </b>
              <b> 
                </b>
              
                <b><i>The 

                  Top Shelf:</i></b></p>
                <b><i> 
                  Outcast</i></b></p>
                by 
                  Noel &quot;HB&quot; Wade</p>
              
              

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               What 
                comes to mind when you think of the term &#147;Adventure Game&#148;? 
                For most of us, these words are immediately associated with various 
                Sierra and LucasArts games. These games, while having fun and 
                a good story line, can be reduced to location-based puzzles involving 
                various props strewn about a defined area. However, <b>Outcast</b> 
                re-defines the &#147;adventure&#148; part of that tried-and-true 
                phrase; and old adventure games really <i>do</i> seem less grand 
                after playing Appeal / Infogrames' offering.</p>
              </p>
              The opening 
                story is clich&eacute; enough to bore most experienced gamers: 
                Scientists have been fiddling with the fabric of reality in an 
                attempt to reach an alternate universe. The experiment goes awry, 
                and triggers a black hole that is destroying the Earth. You take 
                the role of Cutter Slade, a troubled ex-Navy SEAL (whose career 
                was cut short by a mishap that you learn about both in the manual, 
                and during the game). Cutter is sent to the alternate universe 
                along with three scientists, to safeguard them while they try 
                to repair the damaged military probe that is the cause of the 
                whole mess.</p>
              
              
                 
                   
                    
                  
                
                 
                   
                     <i></i></p>
                  
                
              
              Luckily, 
                the clich&eacute;s pretty much end there with the back-story; 
                which gets itself out of the way enough for the game to come through. 
                The game starts with you arriving in Adelpha (the alternate world) 
                barely conscious, and with a horrible headache. What&#146;s worse, 
                you don&#146;t know where anyone is &#150; nor do you know where 
                the probe lies. This sets the stage for a breathtaking, exciting, 
                and sometimes hilarious romp around wilderness areas, across seas, 
                and through crowded city streets.</p>
              </p>
              As I mentioned 
                before, this game really is different from your &#147;standard&#148; 
                adventure game. To put it as simply as possible, <b>Outcast</b> 
                is a huge game of fairly free-form exploration and interaction. 
                This may sound boring; but the immersion, story-line, dialogue, 
                and a million other details make this every bit as engrossing 
                as the best games I can think of.</p>
              </p>
              The game 
                bills itself as being open and non-linear, and they did a <i>fabulous</i> 
                job of this. Obstacles and quests can truly be solved in different 
                ways; and are often given an equal chance of succeeding. There 
                are other things, too &#150; like events happening without a particular 
                order &#150; that really lend an &#147;open&#148; and &#147;non-scripted&#148; 
                feel to the game. Even conversations with characters are malleable; 
                and while snippets of them are scripted, your options on what 
                to talk about and how they respond is all dynamic. And cut scenes, 
                dialogue, and special events are all handled directly in the game 
                engine (much better than with previous games that have tried to 
                do this). In the end, you feel much more immersed in the game 
                because you get to do what <i>you</i> want to do, at <i>any</i> 
                given moment. No one thing forces you to go in any particular 
                direction or do any one thing (though there are times when you 
                are given really strong reasons for a course of action). Care 
                to run off and hunt wild animals for a little while? Feel like 
                ignoring your larger tasks and helping out individual natives&#146; 
                needs? It's all possible, provided you haven&#146;t been playing 
                so long that you pass out at the keyboard!<br>Jumping 
              from the &#147;weakest&#148; feature of the game to the &#147;strongest&#148; 
              (in my personal opinion), the music and sounds for the game are 
              the best I have ever heard in a game,<i> bar none</i>. The Moscow 
              Symphony Orchestra and Choir did an <i>amazing</i> job of performing 
              the musical pieces that were composed for the game. You can take 
              Disc 2 of the game and pop it into a normal CD Player, listen to 
              the music (which I&#146;m doing while I write this), close your 
              eyes (which I&#146;m <i>not</i> doing as I write this), and literally 
              imagine yourself back in Adelpha. The music is also dynamic, switching 
              between mysterious or awe-inspiring tunes and blood-pumping battle 
              rhythms as the situation demands. Add in ambient sounds and superb 
              special effects (though weapons <i>can</i> be a bit loud at times), 
              and you couldn&#146;t ask any more from a game as far as aural experiences 
              go.</p>
            <p></p>
            <p>
               
                 
                  
                
              
               
                 
                   <i></i></p>
                
              
            
            Control is a separate issue. Like all third person games, camera 
            movement can occasionally be a pain; but on the whole I believe that 
            they pretty much stay close to industry-standard quality. The interface 
            is a bit of an adjustment, since your primary and secondary actions 
            are context-sensitive (meaning that a button that dives you into a 
            lake one minute, may be the same one you press to ride on a creature 
            the next minute); but it is simple enough to learn and get used to 
            quickly. Keys are fully customizable as well, and the auto-aim in 
            the third person mode is adequate for most people who aren&#146;t 
            sharpshooters (or don&#146;t want to bother becoming one). You <i>can</i> 
            enter a first person mode (which enables a &#147;free-aim&#148; firing 
            mode); but it&#146;s a bit jerky, and the field of view seems &#147;wrong&#148; 
            if you have Cinemascope turned on (which effectively &#147;letterboxes&#148; 
            the game). The view is graphically correct &#150; but this option 
            makes the screen so wide that your brain has trouble reconciling it, 
            especially if you&#146;re used to playing first-person-shooters. All 
            in all, the controls take a little getting used to, but are good enough 
            to keep you enjoying the game quite happily. 
            <p></p>
            <p>As with all games today, 
              there are also a few minor bugs here and there (clipping and bounding-box 
              related for the most part). However, considering the poor state 
              that many of the industry&#146;s recent &#147;hit&#148; games have 
              had upon release &#150; this game is remarkably bug free. The few 
              that exist are minor annoyances, and do not interfere with the game-play.</p>
            <p></p>
            <p>Taken in total, <b>Outcast</b> 
              is one game that you should definitely try out. No game is for everyone 
              &#150; but the developers did a darn good job of trying to put a 
              little something for everyone in the game. It can excite you, whisk 
              your imagination away to far-off places, and even make you a bit 
              introspective at times. Give Outcast enough of a chance to get past 
              your initial reaction to the graphics; and you will be rewarded 
              with a rich, dynamic, musical, grand epic that immerses you for 
              hours &#150; no, <i>days</i> on-end.</p>
            
            <i>- Noel 
              &quot;HB&quot; Wade is a regular contributor to loonygames. Basically, 
              he<br>
              just wants attention. <br>The other 
                great thing is that the game continuously throws challenges at 
                you. Just as you pass one major hurdle, another one will get set 
                to present itself. However, these aren&#146;t bulldozed down on 
                top of you with no break; and I&#146;m quite impressed with the 
                pacing of the game, overall. With all there is to do, it's nice 
                that the game doesn&#146;t time you. Just because you didn&#146;t 
                take care of something immediately, doesn&#146;t mean that you 
                have to load an earlier game and try again. Don&#146;t get me 
                wrong, you <i>can</i> fail tasks or die (most of the time by doing 
                something dumb like trying to pet dangerous animals; or in battle 
                against soldiers) &#150; but because its almost always a result 
                of something you <i>chose</i> to do, it doesn&#146;t get you frustrated 
                with the game developers so much as yourself.</p>
              </p>
              
              
               
                 
                  
                
              
               
                 
                   <i></i></p>
                
              
            
          The quests themselves vary from a simple message-bearing request, to 
            killing a monster, to searching an entire landscape for an artifact, 
            to going around and trying to get a whole group of merchants to lower 
            their prices &#150; and the proverbial &#147;much much more!&#148; 
            The major quests in the game seem to follow a common theme, but each 
            one requires different sub-quests and activities; so they never really 
            get boring - though I will say that the entire explorable area of 
            Adelpha is <i>vast</i>; sometimes taking several minutes to traverse. 
            Throughout these quests (which, basically, comprise the game), you&#146;ll 
            constantly be dealing with the natives of Adelpha. The voice acting 
            for these characters is superb; and the sheer number of people you 
            run into breathes a lot of life into the game. I&#146;d venture to 
            say that a full 60 to 70 percent of the populace is unique and has 
            different knowledge, needs, requests, and so forth. They also do a 
            good job of sprinkling humor throughout the game; which not only provides 
            a break from the seriousness of some of your tasks, but makes your 
            character seem more &#147;real&#148; &#150; and less of a goody-two-shoes, 
            or digital puppet. 
            </p>
              It's amazing 
                that only a handful of people were used for the voice-talent of 
                these natives &#150; the digital processing and voice skills carry 
                a vast array of inflections, mannerisms, and tones that uniquely 
                identify them. Good variances in clothing and animation also help 
                avoid the &#147;cookie-cutter&#148; effect seen in most games. 
                There&#146;s some repetition; but its not so high as to interrupt 
                the enjoyment of the game. This brings us to the graphical elements 
                of the game. I personally think that a great job was done with 
                the graphics in <b>Outcast</b> &#150; nice particle effects, detailed 
                textures, and vibrant colors.</p>
              </p>
              The one 
                drawback (which <i>everyone</i> comments on) is the use of voxels 
                to render the terrain. While it makes for very detailed landscapes, 
                it forces the use of software rendering - <i>severely</i> limiting 
                screen-resolution (performance is almost totally CPU-dependant, 
                instead of video-card dependant). As a result, graphics are fairly 
                chunky and not very crisp in most modes (things seem to kick into 
                super-high detail during close-ups while conversing; which is 
                nice). While being &#147;ugly&#148; at first glance, I can remember 
                that only a couple of years ago, 400x300 mode was quite acceptable 
                for <b>Quake</b> and the like. And if you give the game a chance 
                (i.e. play it for more than 10 minutes), you will find that you 
                quickly become accustomed to it; and the graphics take a back 
                seat to the game-play and the story. As I mentioned before, however, 
                there is evidence that the graphics really <i>were</i> done well 
                &#150; as details and effects can be quite pretty, especially 
                in &#147;close-up&#148; mode. They also have included a bunch 
                of anti-aliasing and other rendering tools designed to &#147;nicen 
                up&#148; the graphics, even at their low-res., without causing 
                major performance hits - and they do help.<br><p>&nbsp;</p> 
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<p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Credits: Print CGI is 
  &copy; 2000 <a href="http://www.square8.com">Square Eight</a>. Used with permission. 
  Article is &copy; 2000 its original author. All other content is &copy; 2000 
  loonyboi productions. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited. You got that??</font></i></p>
 