FTG Review: Outland (XBLA)

An interesting blend of puzzle platformer with a touch of Japanese bullet hell with a little splash of “Metroid-vania“ and that would be the elevator pitch for Outland. It is an intriguing concept and one that doesn’t make a lot of sense on paper. However, when you get a controller in your hand, Dead Nation and Super Stardust HD deveploper Housemarque makes it all sing for you.

STORY:
The story feels very tribal/native American in nature. A deep-throated shaman narrates your checkpoints with rumbling words of wisdom and lore about a pair of cosmic beings called the Twin Sisters who have created the universe by wielding the powers of light and darkness. Mad with power, they sought to undo their creation, but were sealed away for eternity…until, of course, they break free. It is now your job as a young, nameless journeyman, to gather the powers of light and dark to seal them in their prison before they destroy the world. At least, I’m fairly certain this is how things go down. While the game is soaked in atmosphere, the storyline is a bit threadbare and you are only given snippets of poems the narrator will hit you with at certain points within the game…but story is not something the developers at Housemarque are big on.

GAMEPLAY:
Where Housemarque does shine is their gameplay. Outland starts at a deceptively slow pace. As a basic platformer in the vein of a Shadow Complex or a 2D Prince of Persia, you basically start with the less-than-awe inspiring ability of “jumping”. However, as the game ramps up and grants you more abilities, the game starts to really take off quickly.

The main mechanic of the game is your ability to interchange between light and dark powers at the touch of a button. Once you have control of both light and dark powers, the game goes from stale, simplistic platformer to a bizarre Ikaruga “shoot-em-up” gameplay. The world is dotted with turrets and fountains which spew hundreds of “bullet hell” style bullets in patterns all over the screen. Red shots represent dark magic, while blue represents light magic. If you are using light magic, you can run safely through blue bullets, but red bullets damage you, and vice versa. Same thing goes with enemies; red enemies can only be injured with light magic, and again, vice versa. While this concept sounds simple, it can quickly get complex and decidedly difficult to traverse, especially when you also toss in light and dark activated platforms: will you stand in the light bullets as a light enemy is running at you, or try to hold out and switch to dark magic in the half second of open space you have to switch between magics?

The other stand out feature of the game are the boss fights. Some of the more unique bosses I’ve seen in a platformer, the four mini-bosses all represent powers who helped the Twin Sisters escape from their prison and it is your job to take them out. Each fight is a unique experience, using all of the powers you’ve learned up to that point, putting them all in a rapidly changing environment, with bullets flying all over the place. They make for an entertaining experience, concentrating all the best elements of the game into single area…even if the checkpointing is a little infuriating at times (the spider boss in particular).

SOUND/GRAPHICS:
There seems to be a growing trend of games lately that borrow liberally from the “backlit” artistic style of a game like Limbo. All your characters in the foreground are shadows, while the backgrounds are well fleshed out jungle environments and worn down Indian-temples. Of course, red and blue neon are everywhere, between on your character showing which magic he is using, to the flood of light/dark magic environments you’re traversing. Let’s just say that no one will confuse a screenshot of this game with any other game like it; it is a unique blend of vibrant neon reds and blues overlaid on jungle greens and temple browns/reds.

Sounds are nearly unnecessary in the game and are not memorable; because of all the neon everywhere, I strongly recommend playing the “Tron: Legacy” soundtrack over your gameplay, and you’ll feel like you’re playing a scrapped Tron platformer.

SUMMARY:
The game is great with doling out rewards and small bite sized sections of platforming where you’ve said, “Okay, I’ll go to the next checkpoint” for the fifth time and you realize you’ve been playing two hours. At no point during the game did any of the mechanics feel cheap or broken; when I was killed in game, every time, I knew that it was my fault because I was being greedy and tried to hamfist through a platforming section and paid for it.

Given the amount of gameplay, including the two player co-op challenges (which I did not try) and a full 6-7 hour campaign, Ubisoft would not have had to make a large stretch to box Outland up as a full retail purchase. Instead, not only is it downloadable, but it bucks the current trend of all major downloads charging $15 and only charges $10. Housemarque is proving they are more than just Super Stardust HD, and Outland is another shining trophy of a downloadable title they can put in their steadily growing trophy case.