When I started up Outcast: A New Beginning, I thought it was another remake of Outcast, the 1999 game beloved by those of us who still think of weird stucco-like peaks when we hear the word "voxels". I thought it was strange that they were doing another remake after Outcast: Second Contact (not to be confused with the remaster Outcast 1.1), but hey, we might be getting a second remake of Resident Evil 1 in the next few years. It turns out that A New Beginning is, in fact, a sequel, and it was originally titled Outcast 2 before being changed, presumably because they figured most people would not want to do homework by playing a 15-year old game.

I was under this impression until a few hours into the game, because early on, it sure seems like a remake. In short, Outcast is the closest thing to a Benjamin Sisko Simulator, wherein you play as a human guy on an alien planet, blessed by its extradimensional gods and designated as their divine savior. The general beats appeared the same, and I saw areas that looked like places in the first game. Eventually, it shows its hand and makes it very clear that this is some time after the first game, but your character, NAVY SEAL CUTTER SLADE, FROM THE MEAN STREETS OF CINCINNATI, has had his memories erased.

This is an interesting way of onboarding new players, as NAVY SEAL CUTTER SLADE is just as clueless about what's going on as you are. And you will be, because the Talan, native inhabitants of Adelpha, LOVE to talk to you about anything on their mind. They constantly use words of their language and, though there is a glossary you can pop up by pulling a trigger during conversations, for quite a while you'll just be going with the flow. Sure, the dolo-tai guardians got reverted before they could activate the daoka and now their haagen-dasz is in sankra. Whatever, dude.

This barrage of nonsense, along with the game's very strange tone (veering wildly between sardonic humor, outright silliness, and sincere sci-fi), doesn't make a good first impression. I was pretty iffy on it for a while, but eventually you unlock the two things that make the game really fun: Traversal options and weapon modules. You have a jetpack that can be upgraded, both to let you zoom around at high speeds and great height, and a Just Cause-style wingsuit to cover greater distances over the air. Your guns, a pistol and rifle, can both be customized with various modules that either alter stats or completely change their method of operation. Think Gunstar Heroes for the best comparison. Turn your pistol into a shotgun that heals when it kills enemies, or turn your rifle into a sniper rifle that attaches mines to enemies it shoots. You also unlock various melee moves that I didn't use much, but make it clear that somebody involved in this game's development really liked Vanquish.

So playing the game is fun, but what do you actually DO in Outcast? Talk to aliens, mostly. Your main goal for the majority of the game is freeing the 7 villages on this big-ass map from human control, so you do missions for them that often intersect. This place needs booze from this other place, and the booze village needs bombs from the desert village, and so on. It becomes a pretty interesting interconnected ecosystem, and many parts of it can be done out of order or without being directed to do so. I was just putzing around temples collecting tablets for no real reason, and then when I got to the mission that required them, NAVY SEAL CUTTER SLADE was just like "oh yeah I already have that." This sort of Emergent Questing can break sometimes, as I occasionally had a character talking about something that wasn't currently happening, but it's novel.

Outcast 2's biggest downfall is the shift in focus into an Open World Map Vomit game. I'm sure it's to make it more accessible to Gamers in general, but I don't think they're going to be getting a lot of new people in the door with this game's $70 price tag. The first game was a pretty unique action-adventure game, where you mostly focused on crippling the enemy's supply lines and weakening them, rather than powering yourself up, so 2 being dumbed-down is kind of a bummer. The quality of the activities in the game are variable: clearing bases and outposts are fine, because the combat is fun. Opening Essence Shrines to upgrade your max health is okay, as they have you follow a little ball around and the traversal is fun. Orym Trails, which are mostly the same thing, suck ass because there are 50 of them and they only give you a paltry amount of upgrade resource. Gork Eruptions are also fine, you just kill a few enemies near the Gork and then you collect the Gork to feed to The Gork. He's a weird guy in a cage, don't worry about it.

Outcast 2's SECOND biggest downfall is the performance. I would have rated this higher if not for the huge amount of glitches I saw during my playtime, as well as massive framerate problems. Within a few minutes, I switched to the 30fps mode because it was running anywhere between 30 and 60, with zero consistency, and it actually started to make me feel sick. The game also seems to have a memory leak or something, because during extended sessions it would start hitching more and more frequently, eventually hitching every time I jumped. Restarting the game fixed this, but yikes. Other glitches were all over the place, usually audio-related, but sometimes bouncy plants would be un-bounceable, making certain platforming challenges impossible. These were all fixed by just reloading a save, and you can save anywhere, so it wasn't a big deal. But this was on XSX, so I would say unless you have a really good PC that can brute force it into running well (because I doubt it's properly optimized on PC either) it's probably best to wait until the PS5 Pro comes out and play it there.

Your enjoyment of Outcast 2 will depend on how much you can tolerate this specific brand of jank. Personally, I don't mind it. It's not like Bethesda jank, where they're just too lazy to fix their shit that's been broken for decades. These are small, scrappy teams doing their best to realize their vision. Does this mean there are like 3 total models for the aliens, and some of them are voiced by the same people with comical "Witness Protection" pitch-shifting effects? Hell yes.

Get used to it, baby, this is all we're gonna have soon.

7/10