Underrated, Underrated, Underrated. One of the more unique types out there, and simply said, Tons of Fun
The problem with the first year of a new gaming generation is once you have finished all the A list titles for the new console, you enter a dry period where you can go back and play all your last gen consoles as one last hurra, but after burning through my pile of PS2 RPG's I found myself looking for something. After a few hours of thumbing through reviews I came across the Outfit, which was voiced by Ron Perlman (Hellboy) and Robert Patrick (T1000) and at 29.99 even if it was terrible its a small investment. I am a very hardsell when it comes to Military style games, I enjoyed COD2 but just to get an understanding of me as a gamer, it hardly recieved 10 hours of single player play before it was put aside as a "multiplayer" game. I tossed in the Outfit expecting this game to be nothing more then a bus wreck that would kill my time for an hour before I started on the multiplayer aspect which most reviewers agreed was by far its best function, yet after four hours I found myself really enjoying the game, the fact that most of the enviroment can be destroyed means that you cannot hide behind the wall of a building for cover for too long while you formulate what you are going to do about the two Nazi tanks on the ridge which found to be really entertaining. There is nothing like standing behind the wall of a stone building with bullets and shells zipping by as you try to figure out the best way to beat these guys and all of a sudden the building starts to shake and you have to run for you life to assure it will not fall on you. As for the gameplay, I found the storyline to be interesting. Nothing that is too deep, and nothing you really need to think on. You are a team of Americans who want to kick Nazi Butt and take out an evil general who keeps moving around France. It did its job to keep me interesting and justified why I was doing whatever I was asked to do within each mission but was not a Shakespearean masterpiece in terms of plotline and depth of story, and for this sort of game I am more then fine with that.
The controls themselves are simple, at any given time you will be in control of yourself directly, and in indirect control of the troops with you. You have the means to issue the troops orders, but normally all you want them to do is lay down fire while you figure out what you want to do so your position is not overrun, over the course of the first 5 mission I issued them a command once, so they generally do not become a high maintence item when it comes to gameplay. Where the gameplay really impressed me is the DOD (Destruction on Demand) basically as you kill the enemy you build up FU points (Yes FU I get it very funny) and then press "Y" to select from any number of units that you can have air dropped into your battle field which pretty well ranges from a stationary machine gun unit, to anti-tank canons, to a full out airstrike. You can also order yourself up a jeep, tank, or "Bazzoka truck" that you and your troops can load into as you gun it through enemy lines. There is no limit to how many troops you can have on the field (at least I have not run into one) and your only limiting factor is the FU points which you get anytime you kill the enemy. A word of advice, anytime you take an enemy armory, air tower, etc you add it as a "respawn" point in the event that you die, now the tricky aspect is that the Nazi's will try and take back these buildings and if they do you can no longer respawn there meaning you have to spawn earlier on the map, so my best advice is to leave a few stationary machine gun troops positioned around these buildings just incase, this way if you are informed the Nazi's are trying to take it back your troops will normally hold down the fort while you make your way back. Another upside to this is that if one of your earlier respawn points is guarded and you lose it its not a huge deal because you can respawn further, but if you leave troops around the buildings they will continue to fight and get you FU points for their efforts, a nice bonus. The maps have their twists and turns and generally are interesting, there are a lot of unique items for you to hide behind, and a pretty large selection of Nazi tanks and trucks you can repair and steal if you are in a pinch. It should be noted that Nazi Armored trucks are excellent to provide cover from enemy fire. The old stone buildings of French Villages adds a very nice artistic flare to the layout and really does make the levels pretty to look at. When we discuss the graphics it should be noted that if you are looking for a beautiful GRAW style of presentation this is not for you. It still looks excellent, but it is not by any means a "benchmark" in terms of graphic beauty. The units all look good, the buildings, ridges and marks in the ground when a shell explodes look next gen no question, but I could see some gamers taking issue with most of your soliders all looking the same, one gunner looks just like the next, one anti-tank gunner looks just like the next, and the same can be said for the enemies its generally just re-runs of the same looking soliders over and over, but I am fine with it because normally you are killing them from 80m's away and I really am indifferent to what they look like on the ground. The units themselves look very good, except for the plane that comes in and drops the units off which looks almost like an after thought, but more often then not you eyes will be on the prize and not on the sky looking at the delivery plane. I almost find that some of the Nazi equipment looks better, it has less of that brand new look to it, and that makes it seem a little more true to life of war, or at least thats what I take away from it. The surroundings and the levels look wonderful, full points should be award to that, it does however lack the subtle details of some other military games, but I have a hard time holding that against The Outfit. The sound aspect really is the tale of two games, when you are being fired at it normally requires you to rely on the on screen indicator to tell you from where fire is coming from, the game makes no use of the 5.1 surround feature in the sense that the you cannot narrow down from which direction gunfire is coming from which is something that really forces you to look all around before you enter a new area so there are no suprises. It should be noted that buildings exploding sound better within this game on 5.1 then any other game I have played, the loud "booms" really come off very well. There have been some complaints from other reviews that your main weapon sounds underwealming as do those of your support troops, I guess I can understand that complaint, but it seems like such a nit pick especially when more often then not the majority of your weapons fire is drowned out by the larger weapons of your DOD weapons which are usually on screen. Where this game truly has its sound "bread and butter" is distance in relation to sound, as you move closer to weapons fire it really is something that sounds true to life in terms of the increase in the sound, as well as the sound being muffled when you are behind a rock, or building. The soundtrack is pretty good for a game of this sort, Military themed in some places and sort of a tecnhoish blend at other times it works really well within this gaming enviroment.
As for the Value of the game, as in all my other reviews I try to break it down in terms of "play value" and "replay value". From a Play Value stance, the storyline is good and good enough to make you want to play through the whole game, its hard enough to challenge you but not to a point where you want to put your controller through the TV in rage. The Achievement system is normally tied into "Medal" oppertunities within the levels, meaning you don't get freebies for beating level one, you need to work to get those points. Its normally tied into things like destroying Nazi statues or blowing up search lights etc, its enough to keep you playing the level a few times over if you are a points junkie and entertaining enough otherwise to make you want to play it again. As for Replay Value: This may be one of the most fun games I have played online in the last few years because everyone seems to have their own system when it comes to battling online, so you cannot walk into battle with a standard game plan you really need to think on what you want to do which makes every battle very challenging and very fun. There is nothing more annoying then trying to take out all the enemies DOD weapons to find out that he snuck up and planted a machine gun right to you left. Couple that with the in level achievements and you have yourself a few hours if not days of gameplay left once you have seen the credits roll for the first time. Overall much like DeathRow was for the original Xbox this is one of the better titles that no one will play because it was release around the same time period as a game like Oblivion which assured that this game simply became an overlooked underview title that liters EB's Shelves as the price drops more and more so they can get rid of it. Simply said, if you want to be entertained in single player and online mode, rather then simply sitting back and enjoying the fact that graphics in game X are so detailed you can see a crack in the sidewalk then this is the way to go, and at 29.99 its a pretty low risk high reward situation. -Z