Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Ron Burke

The Outfit is set in 1941 – the U.S. has just joined World War II, and the military has turned to specialized mercenaries to supplement their large army battalions. This is where The Outfit comes in. The Outfit is a secret elite force of specialized mercenaries who have been sent to the heart of the war to hunt down two high ranking Nazi officers, a Viktor Morder and a Hans Von Beck. In this alternate (although plausible) World War II scenario, Morder and Von Beck are trying to put together a Doomsday device that will change the outcome of the war. Both are terrible people with terrible agendas, and both have to be stopped at all costs. Your team of commandos must flush out these men and take them out at all costs before time runs out.

 

 

I really don’t know what to make of the visuals in The Outfit. The characters in the game are chiseled and hardened warriors, but it’s that same chiseled look that makes them look so damned odd. Similarly, some parts of the environment are well designed and fantastic, but it is constantly marred with dull and blurry textures for everything else. For instance, the trees in the game look great, but if you swing the camera behind them they become semi-opaque and drag the framerate to a below 10fps threshold. The interesting thing is that this performance hit serves only to reveal that the trees don’t look as good up close. It is hard to understand until you see it in action, but the game doesn’t look as good in motion as it does in the screenshots. Put plainly, it looks just slightly better than an original Xbox title, but not quite as good as some of the top titles of that generation. Thankfully, you can see for yourself by simply downloading the demo that is available for free on the Xbox Live Marketplace. Having a good voice acting team is almost a must these days. THQ and Relic pulled no punches when it comes to The Outfit. Your three characters are all voiced by great actors. Robert Patrick (The T-1000 in Terminator 2) voices the leader, Captain Deuce Williams, Terrance Carson (previously voiced Kratos from God of War) voices John Davis Tyler, and Ron Perlman of Aliens: Resurrection and Hellboy fame voices Tommy Mac. Their performances are perfect for the comic-like environment created in the game. The supporting cast ranges between good and shudder-worthy with their fake accents. The whole affair is absolutely corny, so you’ll either love it or hate it. I took it in stride and enjoyed it. What I didn’t enjoy was the J-Rock soundtrack. The soundtrack is generic and grating. The saving grace is that you can turn it off and play something else thanks to the custom soundtrack option. In addition, the sound effects are decent. There are some great weapons and vehicle sounds, with good use of surround sound. Overall, just like the graphics, the sound and music are a mixed bag of some great highs and some very low lows.

This game is a 3rd person action title (although you can use first person view to take an aimed shot) where you have to be able to do mid-mission resource management and control vehicles.  With the destruction on demand system incorporated into the game, a tight control scheme would be an absolute must.  Unfortunately, The Outfit steps on a landmine here.  You can put your reticule directly over a Nazi soldier, pour dozens of rounds at them from near-point-blank range and simply hit nothing but air.  The enemies are made of granite and can take a tank shell to the face and get back up.  Similarly, your support troops are stupid as a rock.  You can drop an awesome anti-tank gun and point your guy to it to cover a position and he’ll just completely ignore your orders.  Once you corral your shotgun-monkey to the gun and make him man it, he may suddenly decide that its time for him to randomly take a walk.  This seems to happen with an increased frequency when you need them most, such as during missions where you have to defend an objective.  You spend more time fighting your idiot troops than you do fighting the war. 

When you finally get into the vehicles, which represent a large part of the game, you’ll find that the ‘fun’ with the controls don’t stop with your troops.  Moving your vehicle is often slow and ultra-bouncy.  The tires seem to be made out of the same material as a Super-Bounceyball. When you get a tank, regardless of variety, turning the turret and moving is a slow affair.  Having been in actual tanks makes me a little jaded I suppose, knowing that the tanks of that age can run at 50 miles an hour and turn on a dime.  The vehicles make the game, but the way they control also makes the game frustrating.

Here is the control layout for The Outfit:

•  Left trigger – fire secondary weapon
•  Right trigger – fire primary weapon
•  Left bumper – switch weapon
•  Right bumper – sprint
•  A button – melee, jump, repair or confirm
•  Y button – purchase DoD items
•  B button – recruit soldiers or cancel
•  X button – enter and exit guns and vehicles
•  Back button – open battlemap
•  Left thumbstick – move and crouch (click)
•  Right thumbstick – Aim and zoom (click)
•  D-pad – squad commands

While the graphics isn’t easy to quantify, the gameplay certainly is.  The single player missions in The Outfit are a cross between Electronic Arts’ Battlefield 1942 and Mercenaries from Lucasarts, and that is both a good thing and a bad thing.  Essentially, you are given a basic objective, and then you are off to play an advanced game of Capture the Flag.  You and a team of 4 AI support units run from objective to objective securing each one until you reach your final objective.  Rinse and repeat.  Now, it really isn’t quite that simple – The Outfit does inject something new, Destruction on Demand.  Kills and captures add up to Field Units (FUs) which you can then spend to drop (literally) new units, vehicles, and gun emplacements into the battlefield via the Destruction on Demand menu.  The objectives that you capture give you FU points, but they also serve as respawn points.  Much like the aforementioned Battlefield titles, you can respawn indefinitely as long as you don’t lose all of your objectives.  Essentially, that is it. Each level has a cutscene that explains the current situation and gives a rough overview of your next objective, but every level is essentially the same – capture the Armory to get the ability to drop upgraded gun emplacements, capture the depot and get the ability to drop in upgraded vehicles, and capture the radar station and get the ability to drop airstrikes.   The good thing is that it is very similar to the two titles mentioned above; the bad thing is that it is very similar to the two titles mentioned above.  The single player takes roughly 9 to 10 hours to complete, but basically you are playing the same game, the same way, but with different maps every level.  Combine this with a fairly brain-dead AI that rushes directly into the line of fire or wanders back and forth in vehicles and doesn’t often re-capture and it becomes plain to see that the multiplayer was the focus of development.  The single player game is simply a war of attrition and persistence. 

The Destruction on Demand system is used by spending your FUs via a rotary menu that can be brought up in real time during battle.  You can select smaller .30 cal machine guns, .50 cal machine guns, 40mm AA guns, 37mm Anti-Tank Guns, 57mm Anti-Tank Guns, 75mm Anti-Tank Guns, as well as those of the enemy when you can capture them.  In fact, there are over 30 weapons and vehicles that can be used and purchased via the Destruction on Demand system.  From half-track deuce-and-a-half trucks to Calliope 75mm rocket-tanks, you have quite a bit to choose from – if you have the FUs to spend.  You can also call reinforcements to man vehicles, emplacements, and your turrets for a small price.  

In addition to your choices in vehicles, you can also choose from the three characters mentioned in the sound section of this review – Captain Deuce Williams, Sergeant Thomas “Mac” Macintyre, and Lt. John Davis Tyler.  Each sports a different set of weapons and skills.  Williams slings a Bazooka, Mac carries a Grease Gun, and Tyler handles the light rifle.  All three of them also carry a secondary weapon and a throwable weapon such as a Molotov or a grenade.  As you progress through the single player game you can also upgrade these weapons.  Tyler's light rifle becomes a regular rifle, and then eventually a sniper rifle.  Similarly, Mac moves from the Grease Gun to a Sub-machinegun to a light emplacement machinegun.  Deuce gets a bazooka, a heavy bazooka, and eventually an anti-tank rifle.  You don’t really have to be particularly attached to a specific character as you can switch upon respawn.   Knowing which character to use for which situation is really the only major strategy.  Each character can also perform a squad attack in addition to blindly charging in.  JD can order a vehicle assault, Deuce’s crew specializes in hand-to-hand, and Tommy can unleash tear gas upon his enemies.  Within everyone’s command is the ability to also order a basic assault, or have your troops lay down suppressing fire.

Multiplayer is really where the game shines, and the character's special moves are retained there. Yes, it is essentially Capture the Flag like the single player game, but with 2 player co-op (you can play through the entire single player mission), 2 to 8 player system link, and up to 8 players over Xbox Live, you’ll be hard pressed not to enjoy the multiplayer aspect of this title.  While the single player game doesn’t offer up much challenge, playing against 7 other unpredictable human players each with their own strategies makes for a great time.   There are three modes to play, Deathmatch, Destruction, and Strategic Victory.  Deathmatch and Destruction are straightforward, either kill or blow up everything, but Strategic Victory is similar to Battlefield 1942’s ticket system where each side has a certain amount of points that count down based on the number of structures each side has captured. 

There are a ton of locked achievements – 41 in fact.  The simplest of them are for game completion, but 10 of them are reserved for performing well in online matches.  This can be as difficult as killing enemy players faster than 1.7 per minute to destroying 200 vehicles total in all your matches combined.  In the single player missions, there are usually 2 secret objectives per mission that are not readily apparent that also unlock achievements.  These are usually simple things that you stumble into such as destroying Nazi statues in a town, or blowing up search lights to weaken the Nazi power. 

As I mentioned, multiplayer is where this game shines, but does it shine enough to justify the price tag?  At the current tag of 60 scheckles?  No.  The multiplayer is fun, but with other 360 titles that sport solid single player and multiplayer in the same package, it is hard to justify getting only half the package with The Outfit.  Look for a price drop, or rent it and make sure you find enough in the package to justify it for yourself.

The Outfit was a title that a lot of our readership was looking forward to buying.  There are a lot of shining moments, especially in multiplayer, that make the game a lot of fun.  There is a multiplayer-only demo on the Xbox Live Marketplace so you can sample some of the best parts of the game.  Since this is Relic’s first move into the Next-Gen market, it does show that with a little more time, The Outfit 2 should be a solid performer.  For now, I’d recommend checking out the demo before you lay your cash on the counter top.

Gaming Trend Score

78

1. Graphics: 78
2. Audio: 80
3. Controls: 75
4. Gameplay: 80
5. Value/Replay: 75
6. OVERALL:78