Outcast by Atari

[rpgcodexusername]

http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=3015

its gotten great reviews on amazon.com as well.
anyone played it?

 

[Raapys]

I tried it when it first game out, a demo which I really liked, but never managed to get a hold of the full game.

Warezed it a few months ago, but ended up being disappointed. Only played for a few hours, but in that time I basically just ran around shooting at stuff with the poor combat system. Not sure exactly what's so great about it.

 

[Jasede]

Great setting, great music.

This game was super hardware intensive back then on your CPU, due to voxels.

It looked marvelous back then, and still looks good.

[Never played it, just demo-impressions.]

 

[pkt-zer0]

Back then it was Infogrames.

I'd say it's a pretty good open world action/adventure game. And immersive, in a good way. It's been a few years since I've played it, though.

 

[Kingston]

I remember reading about it in a magazine and always wanting to play it. Its just stayed in the back of my head as a game I need to play at some point.

 

[Unradscorpion]

I have it...
I mostly shot stuff as far as I remember. It was a fine open world, but it didn't really keep me for long enough...

 

[elander_]

The game also has quests, puzzles, factions and you can talk to alien people and try to solve their problems to get them on your side. In other words it's like DeusEx but without the rpg elements that are worthless in an action/puzzle/adventure game and has even bigger hub areas than DeusEx with several conflicts or puzzles you have to solve before you advance to the next hub. There's some freedom in the order you can solve these quests (each hub is like a mini sandbox) but there's usually one solution only.

This kind of games started to become known with Another World and Flashback.
http://binarybonsai.com/archives/2005/0 ... her-world/

 

[Fyz]

I find it funny, that a guy who was never able to finish Prince of Persia, or Another World without cheating through savestates writes an article on it.

Back on topic, I've played Outcast about 6-7 years ago. I remember it's excelent music and graphics, however I couldn't get past at one of the combat parts early in the game so I threw it away. Probably I should(n't) give it another ago
Cock Doctor Pregnant Housewife Booty Interracial Pornstar Hungarian Dirty Suck Snatch Spy Drunk Asian-Teen Doggystyle Anime Femdom Facial Big-Cock Wrestling Young Bed-Sex Pornstar Beauty Creampie Only-Movies Blowjob Nipples Blonde Search-Vids Twins Topless Voyeur Wife Granny Cash Jerking Smokin-Movies Hot-Mom Dyke

 

[Gragt]

Excellent game, graphics were very good for the time. They choosed to use voxel so you wouldn't need 3D acceleration to play (not everyone back then had a 3D card) but instead it was taxing the CPU. They managed to do some very nifty effects such as depth of field, something I really did not see done well again until The Witcher. The water effects are also superb and the character animations very lifelike.

As other said, the game has you running around in different regions with each his distinct style: some kind of sunny fields with rice cultures and temples, a forest, a flooded plain, a big city, some kind of desert with mines.

You have to run around a lot and talk to people who will give you different quests (these can be solved only one way, there are no choices, unless you count doing the quest or not a choice) usualy of the "find me that item" "kill the guards there" "(de)activate that machine" "save my friend" variety with a required main quest for each region. There is plenty of stuff to do to keep yourself busy and most of it is fun.

Combat is very nice as well, you can use third or first-person to shoot. You start with a small gun but can find better weapons later and upgrades. The AI is very good, I was impressed how enemies tried took cover and tried to flank me, often one guy would distract me while his two buddies would try to get behind.

Sound effects are nice and voices are excellent. The music also deserves a special mention for being one of the first game scores performed by an orchestra (here the Moscow Symphony Orchestra).

All in all, Outcast is badass. You have a lot to explore and do, for the bigger areas the game offer you a mount of some kind (and yes, you can shoot when mounted though it is realistically very hard to aim if you are moving) and there is a lot of attention to detail that I regret not seeing more in today's games: Outcast tries to give a justification to everything, for exemple why you are able to carry any piece of equipment (like half a dozen weapons) without being burdened, why the aliens on Adelpha actually speak English (they still have their own language, you get a glossary and can try to understand what the talans are discussing between them) or even why one musician in the big city is playing the Star Wars theme (it isn't an easter egg, it actually has its place in the story though a very minor one). Other nice details include the fact that most character like to move around and to track them you need to ask one of the other characters where they are and they will point you to their general direction and tell you if they are close or far. If people dislike you because you have been killing civilians, they will actually send you in the wrong direction! Also if you ask for rumours about someone in particular who happen to be right next to them, they will whisper you that they can't talk now or else he will hear what he has to say. It's small touches but they do a lot to make the world believable and draw you in, something even Oblivion in all it's bloomy glory (?) did not manage to do a decade later...

Oh and I remember about how to cross a lake full of dangerous fishes: throw a grenade, wait for the explosion, see all fishes float to their surface with their belly up, cross lake.

So yeah, I recommend it. You might have troubles running it though or even installing it, I know that just at the time came out, a new release of direct x (6 or 7?) made the installer uninstall the game so all new patch releases had to be run before you installed the game, it served as a new installer plus patched the bugs. At least they released only three patches so you did not have to reinstall every week.

Edit: this made me want to reinstall it and yes, it works under XP!

 

[ghostdog]

...outcast rant...

QFT
Great game, you should try it.

 

[Gragt]

Oh my, replaying it, I can say it's a real blast. I forgot how goot the controls were, be it for running around, jumping, shooting or even swimming. Using a software engine allowed them to do effects the 3D cards of the time were unable to do or that were very taxing for them plus for a 1999 3D games the game isn't very blocky and uses a lot of curved surfaces.

My only real complain is that the screen size is limited to 320x200, 400x300 (the one I use) or 512x384 (that one is not supported by my monitor). There is a patch to run it to 640x480 but the HUD does not really scale and some effects are unavailable plus it seem to cause some small bugs so while I appreciate the effort I prefer to skip it.

I found a nifty little program called Outcast Lives Forever that allows you to explore the maps in a new 3D engine. It's fun and gives an idea of the quality of the level design and the art.

So to the OP, maybe you'll decide that it isn't a game for you but your thread certainly decided me to reinstall it! I heard it was impossible to run it on anything over win98 but it runs under XP and seems bug free so far. The only thing I needed to do was to slow the CPU with CPU Grabber else it gave me an error message at the start, I also read that if the CPU is too fast you might get errors in the game but so far with my CPU slowed down it just runs fine.

In case you decide to get it, you should get patch 3 (it contains patch 1 and 2 and is a new game installer) or the dvd patch. You can also try the unofficial resolution patch to get it running to 640x480 but as I said it caused trouble for me (you'll need to set compatibility for the 3 executables to win98, that is oc1.exe, oc2.exe and oc3.exe in the oc folder of the game). And you'll certainly need something like CPU Grabber if you want to avoid errors.

Yeah another rant, I know, but I just rediscover that game. It's almost impossible now in 2008 to not make a comparison to Oblivion (large territory, exploration, AI minding its own business) and Outcast for the most part did things a lot better back in 1999, so much for promises from Bethesda.

 

[Mareus]

Hmm looks good. I ll try it.

 

[denizsi]

It's also one of the few games with a working dynamic economy which again bears an obligatory reference to Oblivion and all the other similar games.

 

[Gragt]

Yeah, it's actually weird how when playing Oblivion or even when reading their promises (and actually I can take this back to Morrowind) I never realised that all their promises of a living breathing world had already been done in that game, maybe not with the grand scope they claimed to achieve but at least it worked in Outcast and worked pretty well.

Ah well... Another bad point for Bethesda?

Such a shame the game was a commercial disaster.

 

[elander_]

No matter how much technology advances they will always need a good game designer or the game will always look goofy. This is what the likes of Pete Hines are incapable of understanding with their moving games forward bullshit and then ripping their game play to pieces.

That's exactly what Outcast is, a very well designed game. It has it's flaws and a serious install bug that reminds me a lot what happened to Bloodlines and it's bugs. But once you fix the bugs these games are awesome.

 

[Noceur]

Interestingly, I tried the full game just the other week (I haven't played it for more than a few hours though).

The maximum resolution is 512x384, which might turn you off if you've got an LCD-screen with horrible scaling software.
The game still looks pretty awesome with depth of field and such, as mentioned it was pretty damn demand back in the day (not the case today, obviously). The music is also quite good.

I found the game very interesting, especially with how well developed the world is (at least from what I've seen). To some extent (I don't know how much) you can learn the alien language and pick up clues by listening to their internal dialogues (they talk english with the main character, but their own gibberish amongst themselves)... it should be noted that I haven't really tried this out. The biggest beef I have with the game so far is the mud which makes the main character move at approximately 1m/h.

Also, as already mentioned, the combat handles real well and the AI is quite good in combat.

This is more of an action/adventure game though, isn't it?

EDIT: Or in short, "quote Gragt" ... also, even saving the game is brought into context within the game through an artifact called a gaamsav that captures the players spirit, or some voodoo like that. It works on XP... if you have problems installing or patch you can enable Windows 98 compatibility for the .exe... one of the few times this actually works.

 

[Kingston]

Ooh, a remake on the crysis engine (they switched engines) in the works...

http://www.openoutcast.org/

Edit: Oh wait, no, its a sequel. Ehue.

 

[Gragt]

EDIT: Or in short, "quote Gragt" ... also, even saving the game is brought into context within the game through an artifact called a gaamsav that captures the players spirit, or some voodoo like that.

Yeah it is actually a nice touch: you can use the gaamsav any time you want but you need to stand still for 10 seconds while it powers up. It also produces a light and a sound that might alert enemies to your position if they are close.

 

[Fez]

One of the problems with Outcast for some people was that it could be a little hard to get into or bewildering at the start if they weren't used to that sort of game. Well worth sticking with though.

I replayed it a couple of years ago and it's still good fun. Gragt covers the game well there. I did appreciate that the developers put some effort into making the game and the world it was in feel somewhat logical and those populating it more than simply props or something to mine for loot and exp. The fact that they combined NPC routines and the ability to ask people around you the location of other NPCs made it less of a chore.

 

[pkt-zer0]

Edit: Oh wait, no, its a sequel. Ehue.

It's kind of a shame that the originally planned sequel got cancelled.

 

[MetalCraze]

I just only recently read a review on AG.ru about it. well there's a rule - if it is not RPG (they suck at RPGs) and AG guys so extremely fap to it (90/100) - then it is most likely a great game.
as I take it it is an action (shooter) with strong adventure tones and quite an interesting world.
and also one of the first games to feature bump-mapping and real-time shadows if you graphic whores still care about that.
in 2000.

the graphics however most likely will turn you off if you won't kill that g-ho inside you before playing. also it is possible to play the game in 640x480 as well - but only windowed.
I guess if you will switch your desktop resolution to 640x480 it will be ok.
well not ok but still better than 512x384

 

[Fez]

Although it will be considered crude and primitive by today's standards, the art and design was good. The combat and adventure parts (with some puzzles) were well balanced. You'll be spending some time on both. It isn't just a couple of text boxes "YOU MUST KILL THE DEMONS" and then another ten hours mowing people down. Try to avoid too many spoilers if you can.

I'll probably end up installing it again now.

 

[MasPingon]

Finally an Outcast topic :] It was my most anticipated game since the time I played a demo in 1999. Man, that was something unbelivable - they gave you whole Shamazzar with 1500 secounds of timelimit. That region was so beautiful I could spend hours just running trough it without any purpose. I can't remember how long I was playing it over and over again, but after some time I could make a progress with my eyes closed. Then there was another demo - the begining of the game with a wonderful snowy region. I was sold. This was the game I was dreaming about(yeah, I know).

Shit on me, it wasn't released where I live, so I didn't play it until 2005 - but when I finally did, it was one of the best gaming experience I have ever had. I mean, shit, I could play Outcast without a timelimit! And there were 3 more regions to penetrate! Two days later, half dead, I finished it.

Yeah, it's my favorite game to this day. It has so many things I just adore in it - beutiful gfx, incredible Moscow orchestra soundtrack, non-linearity, freedom and this unspeakable another world feeling. If you like Gothic series you wil surely like Outcast - those are the games from the same genre, the only difference is that Outcast has no PC stats. It's not action game with adventure elements, if so, you could say the same thing about a Gothic series. Shame that so many people didn't have a chance to play it, it's one of those "special" games that was so underrated and forgotten. A must play for everyone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwHB9LEn9kI

 

[Thor Kaufman]

I killed the aliens in the first town and autolost because of that so I stopped playing. :/

 

[Zinc]

I played this about 8 or 9 years ago, so I can't remember much, but I remember that I quite liked it, although it gets quite difficult towards the end, so I think I gave up. I was only like 12 at the time.

Spoiler

At some point in the game, you find out that the bald asshole guy in the cutscene at the start turns out to have been going back and forth to the alien land for a seemingly long time, and has convinced the aliens that he is some kind of God

I thought that was a pretty good twist.