The Outfit, a third-person strategy World War shooter, allows players to take control of one of three military commanders - Tommy Mac, JD Tyler, and Deuce Williams - each with their own distinctive characteristics and weaponry. Each of the main characters look like they've been taken out of the movie Small Soldiers, with their clean cut jaws, robust figures, and an attitude for war. The three characters have their distinct advantages over one another. JD Tyler is equipped with a shotgun and sniper rifle, Deuce Williams has a pistol and a bazooka, while Tommy Mac is equipped with a flamethrower and a machine gun. Once your character dies during battle, you arel be able to respawn with any of the three characters again at any of the key locations that you've taken over.
All of the main characters are exceptionally well presented, building up a great personality on the battlefield. They will often mumble to themselves about certain situations, or even say comical things such as "I hope I get a promotion from that kill". Each of the game's main characters have some talented voice-acting behind them too. Voice-actors such as Robert Patrick (most famous for his work as T-1000 in Terminator 2) and Ron Perlman (Halo 2, Hell Boy) lend their excellent talent in producing believable personalities.
In The Outfit players can command their units to shoot, move and secure key locations as you and your battalion take out any Germans that stand in your way to success. Rather than being your typical shooter, Relic has implemented a number of fascinating strategy gameplay features. Gamers will need to use their squad effective to avoid being belted by enemy fire. While you don't get to control your squad, these units have a similar importance as to those in Brothers in Arms, where your squad plays a vital role in taking out enemies, locations and manning vehicles. Gamers will progress through the level taking out enemies while also trying to secure key locations that'll help them either unlock more units or help them advance further through the level. In one of the levels we played, we had to secure the enemy radio station so we could call down some air strikes. Calling in tanks works in a similar way.
The game will also feature multi-squad tactics. These will allow gamers to strategically switch between two squads in the game at any given time, allowing them to take out different areas within the map, and later secure the final goal. These will also allow gamers to combine the strengths of both of these squads to tackle some of the tougher objectives.
One tank coming up. Would you like fries with that, sir?
One of the most important features of The Outfit is the game's Destruction on Demand feature, which allows gamers to call down reinforcements throughout the game. Through killing and taking over enemy locations, gamers will slowly accumulate more points that'll help them purchase new units to call down to the battlefield. These include anti-air craft guns, machine guns, more units, and even a number of vehicles such as armoured tanks and jeeps. By pressing the Y button the Destruction on Demand menu will appear, which will allow gamers to purchase additional units. These additional units will then drop from a bypassing aircraft, onto the location you requested them. From the missions we played, we were able to drop machine guns and anti-aircraft guns onto vital locations to prevent an incoming onslaught from the Germans. It seems that this feature will come into play a lot further in the game to fortify positions. The only issue I found with this feature is that it may become too unbalanced. If, for instance, you've stacked up a lot of points to use, there's nothing stopping you from calling down tank after tank to make getting further in the level much easier. Hopefully there'll be some sort of restriction on how much can be purchased in the final version.
We had the opportunity to test drive two of thirty game vehicles - the jeep and an armoured tank. The controls were a little awkward at first, similar to Far Cry, but after spending a few minutes with them we were driving over mountains, blowing up buildings and running over Germans. Rather than having you sitting in the drivers seat doing all the work, your squad will jump on the sides and even man the built-in machine guns and use them against enemy units.
The AI of your units is just as important as it is in Brothers in Arms. Your squad will run behind cover, find the best vantage points, and use any near-by machines to their advantage, and the same applies for the enemy AI. If you call down a machine gun for instance, and you don't man it, one of your troops will take over and use it effectively against any enemy in sight. The AI seems to be a pretty important aspect in the game, and playing to keep your squad alive will surely be much more important in further levels.
Speaking of AI, the version we played felt a tad patchy at times. The AI of your squad seemed to be quite solid, however, once coming across the enemy it felt ridiculously stupid. Enemy units wouldn't react until we were a few metres away from them, and they would often stand idle. Perhaps we were expecting something like Brothers in Arms, where the enemy uses everything they possibly can to exploit your weaknesses. And when questioning THQ about this, they mentioned that the AI will definitely be improved and will be a vital feature of the final version - we certainly hope so.
The controls of the game are fairly hefty, allowing a number of different options. Gamers will be able to sprint, jump into vehicles, throw grenades, use two different weapons and even buy additional units. The layout is done quite nicely, and with the comfort of the Xbox360 controller it feels that much better. Each of the main characters is equipped with two weapons. For instance, Deuce's regular weapon is the bazooka, however, gamers can quickly press one of the left shoulder buttons, equipping him with his pistol, ideal for closer combat.
Tanktastic
One of things that we were satisfied with was that this game really does feel realistic. Gamers will only be able to sprint for a certain amount of time until their character is out of breath, pretty much everything in the environment is destructible, and you can kill your own squad. It's surprising to see how much can be destroyed in the environment, though. Once jumping into the tank we were able to shoot the cannon at houses, leaving them to ruins, while we were also able to blow out big chunks from buildings. Also, once shooting a bazooka onto an enemy, chunks of body parts will go flying about.
One of the other features talked about was the game's achievement points. Throughout the game, gamers will be able to participate in different objectives to acquire these additional achievement points and will go towards upgrading different units, or added to your Xbox Live Profile. For instance, gamers might be required to take out a certain area without taking any casualties. Once successfully completing this gamers may upgrade their tanks, main character or other units to improve their strength or to add additional weapons.
The Outfit did look quite impressive. While the version we saw did have its problems, the game wasn't short of showing off some neat effects. Using your flamethrower, watching the debris fly off buildings and the smoke effects all looked incredible on the console. The characters were, for the most part, well designed, and the game's textures looked quite solid.
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