Outland Review
Available for the XBox 360 and PS3
Outland is a hard game to categorize. There’s exploration and combat, platforming and puzzle solving, bullet dodging and bullet absorbing. The developers have taken inspiration from a number of gaming masterpieces like Ikaruga and Flashback, but is the final mix any good?
Outland starts out like any typical platformer but before long, the player unlocks the ability to change their character’s color between blue (balance) & red (chaos). When red, you absorb red energy and can damage blue enemies. When blue, you absorb blue energy and can damage red enemies. Switching between the two colors is essential to most of the game’s action as you desperately try to avoid getting hurt by off-color bullets while still being able to defeat enemies. Switching colors is also crucial to solving many of the game’s puzzles as some objects will only appear or activate when the player is a certain color.
Outland does a lot right. The visuals are gorgeous and stylized – forget XBLA and PSN, Outland has some of the best graphics seen in any game this year, digital or otherwise. The game controls fantastically with everything feeling just right. The levels are well designed and the boss fights are excellent.
Outland is a superb game, but there is one flaw that I would feel remiss if I didn’t mention. The pacing is all over the place. This manifests itself in a number of ways – the difficulty curve is too steep (early on, it’s a bit too easy, later on, it can get frustratingly difficult), the otherwise enjoyable score attack levels are overly long (shorter stages would work better for the replay mentality of leaderboard chasing), but most of all the slow, methodical searching for secrets part of the game clashes with the fast-paced action sequences with the result that the game lacks a smooth rhythm – the game is always either crawling or sprinting.
Howver, even with a few pacing problems, I still highly recommend Outland. It’s beautiful, it’s clever, it’s rewarding and at a mere $10, it’s even a good value as well.
This review is based on the XBox 360 version of the game.
