Neither a teeth-rattling action game, nor a highly cerebral strategy game, The Outfit tries to split the difference, effectively putting you in the role of both front-line grunt and field commander as you march across WWII-torn France. Cross-pollinating genres like this is tricky, and though it puts in a good effort, The Outfit doesn't quite pull it off, leaving both the action and strategy elements compromised. The multiplayer game copes with The Outfit's shortcomings much more ably than the single-player campaign, but it remains a game difficult to wholeheartedly recommend, regardless.

It's like GI Joe meets the A-Team, except that people actually get shot and die.

The titular Outfit is initially comprised of J.D. Tyler, Deuce Williams, and Tommy Mac, three "tough as nails" soldiers doing their part in the European Theater to quash the Nazi threat. They've each got their specialties--J.D. is good with a rifle and has a knack for detonating enemy vehicles, Deuce packs a bazooka (along with some sweet aviator sunglasses) and is proficient in hand-to-hand combat, and Tommy packs a flamethrower and can use tear gas to flush out enemies. Physically speaking, they're all striking figures, but they're all pretty much just salty, battle-hardened, Sgt. Rock types without many unique personality traits to differentiate them. Their story sees them hunting down blood-thirsty German generals and traitorous clergymen, as well as allying with Le Resistance and some unexpected German sympathizers, all the while proving their worth as practitioners of wanton destruction. The story itself is completely unremarkable, with its ability to fill time between missions being its greatest strength.

As a mission starts, you'll be given your choice of characters. At first, you'll be picking from J.D., Deuce, and Tommy, though your choice of playable characters varies as you play through the 12 missions that make up the single-player campaign. Each character is armed with two weapons and a limitless supply of grenades, but more importantly, they also command a four-soldier squad and can call in equipment reinforcements as is necessary. Your squad isn't particularly bright and can only be given a handful of very broad commands under pretty specific conditions. On top of these handicaps, you have to wait for a meter to recharge before issuing new commands, which can take a good minute to refresh. Still, when you tell them to provide cover fire, they generally do what they're told, and they do it well enough.

You'll immediately understand the necessity of the additional backup the first time you squeeze off a round--the characters' weapons are weak, overheat quickly, and have consistently poor aim. The effectiveness of your characters' weapons can improve over time, but since the game heavily conditions you to rely on your squad and air-dropped equipment, the weapon upgrades are of minor consequence. The vehicles you'll have access to, which range from a wheelbarrow (no, seriously) to a ferocious, rocket-mounted tank, are great for providing your character with improved durability, but whether you're on foot, manning a turret, or playing tank commander, you'll undoubtedly find yourself frustrated by the erratic aiming, inconsistent bounding boxes for pieces of the environment, and a notable lack of splash damage.

Underwhelming firepower and bad aim conspire against the actual action in The Outfit.

Save for the crosshairs on the sniper rifle, most of the weapons use somewhat archaic aiming reticules that take a while to adjust to, partially because reloading on most of the heavy weapons takes forever, but also because they've been purposely imbued with enough imperfections that it's hard to tell if the problem is your aiming or the equipment. Bounding boxes, the invisible geometry that decides the physical space an in-game object will take up, is another source of grief. You'll find yourself in some pretty war-torn areas that are filled with debris and obstacles, but unfortunately, you can't always shoot through empty space in The Outfit, and it is supremely frustrating when your 75mm cannon shell happens to catch an invisible edge. Almost more frustrating is the game's model for splash damage. Vehicle explosions will regularly take out soldiers that are standing right next to them, but shots from a bazooka or a tank's main cannon have almost zero effect if they don't bull's-eye the desired target. You'll realize just how ridiculous this is when you're sniping off a row of Nazis one at a time with a gigantic antitank cannon.

Though the game prefers to word things a little differently, the core objective in every single-player mission is to get from one area to another--a straightforward task, thanks to the game's extremely linear level design. Your path will twist and turn, going from narrow valleys to open plains, and on a few rare occasions, you'll have to backtrack, but the game always makes it quite clear where you're to go next. As you bring your scorched-earth campaign through beachfronts, quaint French villages, and heavily fortified Nazi bases, you'll regularly happen upon small, Nazi-military installments, which you can capture for your own ends. Some are simply "strategic objectives," which serve as spawn points for when you die--and you will die a lot. Your fighters are pretty fragile creatures, and the enemy is often a frustratingly good shot, capable of seeing you through a brick wall. Punishment for death is light, forcing you to hoof it back to where the action is from a spawn point of your choosing.