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Not too long ago, gamers around the country waited in painful anticipation for the final chapter of the Ultima series. What they loaded onto their computers sent them fleeing, screaming for a game to quench their undying thirst for fun. Each person found their relief from the Ascension pain in their own way. I found it by turning to a game I had overlooked when it was released.

Outcast is that game. Do you remember Myst? Well, if Myst was any good with its almost complete lack of plot or coherency, then Outcast is amazing because it takes the same approach to creating a beautiful, detailed fantasy world and gives it a plot injection from the biggest syringe you’ll ever see.

Granted, this review is a little late, but I was so impressed by this game that I felt the need to write it up. It’s not without its flaws, of course, but the sum total of its parts makes for an incredible gaming experience. I’m trying my best not to gush about this game, so on to the review! Gameplay:

In Outcast you take the role of Cutter Slade, a Navy SEAL assigned to defend a team of scientists in a mission to save the planet. It seems that a probe that was sent to a parallel dimension has been damaged and the wormhole it created is now out of control and threatening to swallow Earth. As fate would have it, when you finally wake up on the other side of the dimensional door, you find yourself separated from the rest of your team and most of your equipment is gone.

One of the natives of this strange land brings you up to speed on the situation. It seems that the inhabitants of this dimension think you are a messenger from the gods, or yods as they call them. According to them, the yods have sent you to defeat the evil tyrant Fae Rahn who has taken over their world and is ruling with an iron fist.

Before you can save both worlds, you must complete the tutorial training missions. These missions take you through all of the aspects of controlling your character in the world, from swimming to sneaking. You can control your character from either a first person perspective or a 3rd person camera view. For running around I prefer the 3rd person view, but I always do my combat in the first person. Not every situation requires a fight, though. Often you can elude guards by using methods of stealth. Instead of using a magical radar like you will find in some games, the soldiers really have to see you to see you.

What makes Outcast such an amazing game is the depth of the characters and the way the story flows from quest to quest. The quests begin from the moment you awaken in the strange land. Initially the quests are merely a tutorial, but very quickly you begin to enter the plot. On each of the islands of this strange world you must complete a number of tasks for the local aliens, called Talan, so that you can acquire special objects called mon. Each of the aliens has a minor task for you to complete, such as delivering a message or retrieving a sticky gland to help patch a boat. By completing these minor missions you open opportunities for more quests and discover little pieces of the overall story. There are also four larger, region-based quests such as eliminating the food supply and the taxes, which help weaken Fae Rahn's soldiers and their control over the civilians. These are not required but can help you out a lot.

Although there are a number of townsfolk aliens who all share a set of dialog, there many aliens with unique personalities and voices. There are so many, in fact, that I’m not sure how all the dialog fits on one CD. Most of these unique aliens have one or more missions for you to perform, often offering nothing in return. By performing these missions of mercy, you improve your standing with the aliens. The missions aren’t completely charitable as you generally gain important pieces of information from the aliens you help.

All the Talan look alike to our human eyes, so one of the best features of the dialog is the Talan finder. You can walk up to any local citizen and ask him the location of any Talan on the island, and he’ll point you in the right direction. I can’t tell you how many hours of frustrating searching this feature saved me. It’s little details like this that show that the development team was really thinking when they made this game.

Combat is one area of Outcast that could stand to be improved. On my PII 450 the framerate often slows enough during combat to cause the game to be choppy. In addition, the 320x240 graphics mode makes it hard to hit enemies at any distance. On the plus side, the enemies have an excellent AI, adding to the richness of the game. The soldiers don’t simply stand out in the open waiting for you to shoot them. Instead they find obstacles to hide behind and when they feel the moment is right they jump out into the open and shoot at you, then quickly duck back behind their barricade. If a soldier does find himself caught without a place to hide, he’ll dodge your bullets left and right while returning fire.

Outcast contains one of the best quest systems I’ve seen. Some adventure games lay big goals on you that take forever to complete. Very often I find myself getting stuck at one crucial part of these mammoth quests to the point where I either have to look up the solution in a walkthrough, or get hopelessly frustrated. Outcast takes a different approach that uses a number of smaller steps to complete the bigger picture. These mini quests often sprout into sub quests, so there is plenty of detail and sense of direction to keep you interested.

Longevity:

Like most adventure games, you won’t play Outcast through more than once, so that first time has to count. That’s no problem for this game because the depth of gameplay is simply amazing. There are so many quests and puzzles for you to complete that it will require days of straight playing to finish Outcast. More importantly you won’t get bored while playing through the seemingly endless quests. There is always a sense that you are making progress in the game, and the plot is so engrossing that you will never want to stop. It has been a while since a game has given me time loss, but on more than one occasion I found myself playing until 4 am without ever realizing the time.

Controls:

The controls of Outcast are fairly simple. Running around is accomplished using the arrow keys, and the two mouse buttons control your actions. The problem with this approach is that the effect of the main action button is determined by where you are. For example, at the tops of the temples in Shamazaar, it’s very difficult to jump on the altars when an idol is in the altars, because the game sets the primary action to removing the idol instead of a jump.

Depth control during swimming is also annoying. There are often items at the bottom of pools, but swimming along the bottom is difficult. Instead of gliding along an incline, you bump into it and have to use the mouse buttons to increase and decrease your depth while maneuvering exactly over the item.

Graphics:

The graphics in Outcast are a double-edged sword. Unfortunately, when Outcast was released computers didn’t have the horsepower to display the graphics in 640x480, so Outcast is in 512x384, making it look like an old VGA game. That’s really the only bad thing that can be said about the graphics, though because every other aspect of them is amazing.

Instead of using ugly polygons for the landscapes, Outcast uses a procedural method of display that results in beautiful, smooth contours and bumps that look good no matter how close you are to them. The beautiful landscape combined with the twin-mooned sky make playing Outcast a breath taking experience. Jump in the water and you'll get another surprise - beautiful real time ripples! Like all good science fiction, the fantastic landscapes are based on the real world. The climates range from desert to marsh and each features a number of animals from its ecosystem from the tame twon-ha to the dangerous sankaar fish.

All of the characters, buildings, and objects are polygonal and are of decent quality given that the graphics are at 512x384. A number of small details serve to add richness to the atmosphere from flies around dung heaps to crumbling roofs of buildings. It’s unfortunate that higher resolutions aren’t available because it would be nice to at least be able to see the sights at full resolution. They’re so beautiful that even if I could only get one frame per second, they would still be worth it.

Sound:

Sound is the one category where I can find no faults in Outcast. The music is played by Russia’s symphonic orchestra and is absolutely breathtaking. If I had to make a complaint I suppose it would be that a single CD can’t hold enough for me. The music was so gorgeous and added so much to the atmosphere that I wanted to hear more! Despite the fact that there is a limit to the number of songs in the game, the music never gets repetitive or dull. Every song is so wonderfully crafted that I could listen to them for hours on end, which is exactly what happens when you play Outcast.

Some people complained that the dialog is either too cheesy or too lengthy. I disagree on both counts. Cutter’s dialog is supposed to be cheesy because of his character. He is a macho Navy SEAL thrust into helping the job of helping a group of very eccentric aliens. I find Cutter’s lines to be a hilarious addition to the game. The aliens, meanwhile, are completely serious. Each of the unique aliens has a distinct voice and personality. They’re so serious about their eccentricities that you’ll find yourself making sarcastic remarks right along with Cutter.

The voice acting in Outcast is of the highest quality, well most of it is. Except for the intro movie, all of the dialog is brilliantly acted. I never once got the feeling that I was listening to some dumb actor. I always felt like it was a character talking, even when Cutter was the one speaking. Outcast has some of the best vocal talent I’ve heard in a game, and they deserve big congratulations for it.

Installation:

Installation wasn't too bad, but required a patch. Once the patches were applied, Outcast became one of the most solid games out there. More kudos go to them for quality work that was released when it was ready. The first CD installs in its entirety to your hard drive, and the second CD contains mostly music.

Overall:

When you tie all of the aspect of Outcast together what you get is one of the best gaming experiences to come around for a long time. Outcast dares to be a little different and the payoff is clear. Unfortunately, the graphics engine is just a little too advanced for the average gamer’s system to display in 640x480 or better. Nevertheless when all of the aspects of Outcast are put together, they create a completely immersive and engrossing experience. Running around on the foreign terrain with the soundtrack playing makes Outcast feel more like a movie than a game, and that sense of quality filters through to the overall gaming experience.

Most importantly, Outcast gives a very good example of what it takes to succeed at creating an amazing game. Each aspect of Outcast was clearly crafted with detailed care and imagination. While not everything about this game is incredible, the end product is because of the level of effort used to create it. Very often I get the feeling that certain parts of games were overlooked by developers because they perhaps didn’t consider them important, but Outcast shows quality even in the parts that aren’t perfect. It’s like a home cooked meal from a parent during a once-a-year visit. Even if it’s not the best food you have ever tasted, it comes from the heart so you love it. That’s Outcast in a nutshell.