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The Outforce

Score: 70%
ESRB: Teen
Publisher: Strategy First
Developer: O3 Games
Media: CD/1
Players: 1 - 8
Genre: Real-Time Strategy

Graphics & Sound:

The graphics in The Outforce are one of the game's few strong points. Bright and colourful, they represent a vision of space that is decidedly unrealistic, but quite gorgeous nonetheless. There's a serious problem with the sense of scale -- ships aren't all that much smaller than entire planets -- but as a general rule the game looks quite nice. The various units, especially the higher-level ones, are easily distinguishable, and the three different races have their own unique looks. And the game scales nicely to higher resolutions. There's the occasional odd graphical glitch, with pathing lines not being drawn or spurious white lines strewn across the screen, but they happened very rarely in my experience.

The sound in The Outforce is passable for the most part. The human units often have a bad case of misplaced accents, but they're certainly not unlistenable. The sound effects in the game are strictly standard fare, with explosions and whatnot, neither impressive nor repulsive. A special mention must be made for the music, however -- it's excellent. Reminding me a great deal of various 'demos' I used to see back in The Day (and a little research will tell you why), it definitely helps the game instead of hindering it.


Gameplay:

It's unfortunate, then, that such solid music and good graphics are wasted in an almost strictly by-the-book real-time strategy. Offering little that you haven't seen elsewhere, The Outforce may stave off some of those space RTS hankerings you have, but in the end feels a little too empty.

The single player campaign -- which is woefully short -- details the exploits of Humans in space, having encountered two warring races, the Gobin and the Crion. Of course, the humans aren't particularly interested in pissing off either group, but 'the best laid plans of mice and men . . .', and as the game starts all Hell is breaking loose.

The game itself is, for the most part, strict RTS fare. You make oodles of units, protect your base, and eventually launch an attack on an enemy base. It's ostensibly set in space, but there are some basic RTS structures in the game that make no sense in a space environment. Why can't you fly 'over' or 'under' a wall? Planets I'll accept as blocking structures, but nothing else should really get in the way of a space fleet. After a bit of playing, I gave up trying to think 'space-style' and returned to standard RTS methodologies. And, besides a few neat features, that's really all that The Outforce is.

There are a few neat things. The towing of objects is quite cool, especially when you remember some basic physics (although the fact that things slow down in space is rather bizarre) and start slingshotting things into the enemy bases that have no right to be there. Heh. You can also pull your enemy's walls apart, given enough determination, which is rather cool. But sometimes this only reinforces the fact that The Outforce is a normal RTS with pretty space graphics instead of a game that really makes sense for a space RTS, like the Homeworld titles.

The game is also over way too fast. You'll be completing the single-player campaign in the first or second day that you have the title, and hankering for more. You can play against the AI in Skirmishes, or you can play online against other folks. There aren't many people playing online, though, and the game does not currently support AI + human opponents. Urgh. And there's no way to put units in formations, which causes massive clumping and general mayhem. Since there are weapons that do massive damage to all units in a given area, you either have to make lots of different groups and space them out, or take a chance at getting blown to smithereens by a single well-placed shot.


Difficulty:

The single-player campaign isn't particularly challenging, although some of the later levels have you hustling to keep your camp alive. Careful resource management will, as in every game of this type, eventually show you as the winner. And the game is over a little too fast, not allowing you to really develop sweeping stratagems and see them put into action. I found that the 'consume and destroy' tactic worked amazingly well in pretty much every level, which was mildly entertaining but in the end rather dull. Hopefully some hu-man opponents will give you more of a run for your money.

Game Mechanics:

Controlling your ships is simple enough, both with hotkeys and a side panel of commands. The lack of true '3D space' is annoying, but if you ignore the setting, the game itself is pretty solid mechanics-wise. Things behave as expected, although I had a few instances of getting ships stuck due to poor pathing and similar issues. The menus, while sparse, are certainly simple enough to navigate and understand. A few of the mission briefings are a little confusing, but a perusal of the discussion board for the game should clear up any questions that you have.

The Outforce is not a bad game; it's just not enough of a game. With a pitifully short single-player campaign, lack of features, and a general lack of originality, the only things that this game has going for it is pretty graphics and the nifty towing ability that reminded me of Solar Jetman, one of my many soft spots. Those of you who are dying for a 2D RTS set in 'space' may well find this game a worthy purchase -- at 20.00 USD, it's not a major slam on the wallet. But low pricing does not redeem it completely, and The Outforce is, in the end, just another fair-to-middling real-time strategy game.


-Sunfall to-Ennien, GameVortex Communications
AKA Phil Bordelon

Minimum System Requirements:



Win9x/Me, P2 233, 16MB HD Space, 8c CD-ROM, 64MB RAM, mouse, keyboard, DirectX-compatible 3D Accelerator, sound card
 

Test System:



AMD K6-III 450 running Windows 98, 256 MB RAM, 6x/24x DVD-ROM, Sound Blaster Live!, Creative Labs TNT2 Ultra w/ 32 MB RAM

Windows Codename: Outbreak Windows Outlive

 
Game Vortex :: PSIllustrated