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Outcast: Second Contact - Outcast remake

Burning Bridges

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Wow. Will be very interesting to see if a simple HD remake beats popamole. It could however end up in a universe of bugs especially I suspect they may have reused old code, which could be a desaster.

But if this works I would hope we see more remakes like Ultima Underworld for example.
 

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Hmm ok so this won't just be a graphical update: improved AI, new areas, visible reputation systems, modified weapons... Sounds great!
 

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Burning Bridges

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Reading a bit, and it seems this is not a remake. This is the old Outcast with new graphics.

I would not hold it against them that they did that and it means their original code must be pretty good but tbh for 2017 the price is very high for this.

Anyway, let's wait and see, it could be a nice game to play over Christmas which is traditional RPG month for me.
 

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Played a bit:

Looks pretty nice, reminds me of Fable, though, which is probably not a good thing.

Never played the original but the controls are mostly awful. I hope they can tune these up; it's not a huge problem but it is annoying that turning is clunky, jumping is awkward, etc.

Fair few typos, guessing the devs aren't primarily English speakers. Not really anything to worry about, though.

Options menu is really bare bones, not even an option to change the sound / music levels.

Don't think I'll refund, but £25 seems a lot to pay for the current state of the game.
 

Nevill

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
It was one of the first space operas in video game form, way before KotOR and ME.
Its gameplay holds way better than that of those two as well. I had to force myself to finish ME, and I dropped KotOR, but I've replayed Outcast back in 2013 and it was just as fun.

The game's pretty short, could be beaten in a couple of days if you know what you are doing and aren't grilling NPC's for lore, so I guess I'll take a look... once it goes on sale. The price is a bit too steep for Russian market.

I wonder what changes they've made for AI. For all the developers boasted of 'seemingly alive enemies', the soldiers were clinically dumb, running circles around the protag and missing point-blank shots. Or maybe the game wasn't prepared for players to melee them with fists...
 
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Junmarko

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Reading a bit, and it seems this is not a remake. This is the old Outcast with new graphics.

I would not hold it against them that they did that and it means their original code must be pretty good but tbh for 2017 the price is very high for this.

Anyway, let's wait and see, it could be a nice game to play over Christmas which is traditional RPG month for me.
Yep, it's no different than Homeworld: Remastered. Price point aside, a lot of work has been put into the restoration side of things - it's nicely done.
 

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http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-11-16-outcast-second-contact-review

Outcast - Second Contact review
It's back, ulukai people.

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recommended-large-net.png

Although its augmentations are selective and skin deep, Outcast remains a generous and uniquely captivating game.


Initially turned off by its stock 1990s action game protagonist and fuzzy voxels, I came to appreciate Outcast rather late in life. At the time of its original release I craved titles that would put my fancy new GeForce 256 to good use, for which I was spoilt for choice: a new Dungeon Keeper was atop the PC hit parade, which, together with Hidden & Dangerous, System Shock 2 and Unreal Tournament, effortlessly outshined Outcast's dull palette.

It wasn't until a full 15 years later that I gave Outcast the attention it had long deserved. This was at the time of the v1.1 release, an understated - and still worthwhile - remaster that, in facilitating an outpouring of affectionate reader reviews across GOG and Steam, stirred in me old curiosities and a dormant sense of guilt at having dismissed the original game so easily.

And so, after years of wilful ignorance (and fresh from having completed Far Cry 4), I pushed myself to fall for Outcast's charms. It took a fair while. For many hours Cutter Slade remained every bit the second-rate Korben Dallas I'd suspected that he was, but eventually his out-dated wisecracks broke through and the pudgy faces of the indigenous Talan, in delivering their redundant vowels in Parisien kebab shop accents, forever endeared me to their plight. Before long I was hunting high and low for fabled Essence Stones and the missing brothers of peasant farmers, plundering abundant resources for ammo and, slowly but surely, turning the culpable and often cowardly administrators of the harsh Adelphan regime into unwitting allies in my insurgent efforts to save two worlds.

And Second Contact, in spite of what little it offers in terms of fundamental change, has had me happily doing it all over again.

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It's easily forgotten while roaming Adelpha's various regions, but you were sent to save the Earth from being sucked into a black hole. Or, rather, find the missing scientists that know all about averting such things

For the benefit of those who weren't doing a whole lot of interacting back in the autumn of 1999, or, like me, had convinced themselves there were better games with which to fill their time, I should probably explain what the big deal with Outcast was, aside from an obvious aversion on the part of it's development team to fully embrace 3D hardware acceleration.

Outcast was, in short, an incredibly ambitious and moderately successful third-person action adventure, one that offered the freedom to explore an alien land from atop a twon-ha (space ostrich), while interacting with characters that seemed to go about their business regardless of whether you helped them or not. Despite genre hybrids being a thing at the time, there wasn't much else like it, certainly not in 3D Fuzz-O-Vision.

Chiefly inspired by Stargate, seemingly guided by the spirit of Edgar Rice Burroughs and with flourishes that invited fleeting comparisons with Ocarina of Time, Outcast also happened to predate GTA3 by a couple of years, which has led some to champion the game as establishing the principles of open world gaming. Personally I think it sat more comfortably alongside other prototypical efforts like Beyond Good & Evil, Captain Blood, Robinson's Requiem and Little Big Adventure - where their developers had established distinct and compelling worlds long before layering them with whatever passed for interactivity at the time. That all the above were also a bit weird, delightfully meandering, and, ostensibly, French, has only added to their cult charm.

And yes, before you rush to the comments, I know Outcast was conceived in Belgium.

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The old intro movie was pretty dated even for 1999, but the new one just feels cheap. Bringing Rolie Polie Olie out of retirement would have been more respectful.

In spite of the misleading subtitle, Second Contact is not Outcast's aborted sequel. In fairness, Appeal aren't asserting that it is. What it is claiming Second Contact to be is a "complete remake", which is also a little deceptive. In truth what we have is a renovation, with most of the work applied to the game's graphical exterior. In many ways that's a good thing, because while Outcast has mechanics that may to some newcomers feel hopelessly outdated, it would have been a massive loss had they been entirely replaced with something modern and ubiquitous.

I'm thinking specifically of the combat system, which in the original game was somewhat kludgy and not at all like any kind of shooter before or since, which was fine because Outcast was never much of a run-and-gun game in the first place, even though many people (myself included) had preemptively lumped it in with the equally alien and enticing Giants: Citizen Kabuto.

You only have to sink a couple of hours into any version of the game to realise that Outcast's combat has more in common with a twin-stick arcade game, a treacly third-person Robotron with enemies you can easily kite and weapons fire you can sidestep - thankfully without the infinite and instant enemy respawns. That may not seem very inspired, but it's actually quite refreshing to have targets to lead, which together with the game's explosive gadgets and deployable teleport pads, make for encounters than feel more like puzzles than realistic firefights. Movement is a little pacier in Second Contact and Cutter Slade's old ineffectual shimmies have been replaced by modern ducks and rolls, but none of it takes anything away from the spirit of Outcast's endearingly lumpy battles.

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The reinsertion of the original game's orchestral score is an easy win, retaining as it does a main theme to rival any of the variations on Elder Scrolls' Nerevar Rising.

While very little has changed in the guts of the game, it's a very different picture on the surface of Adelpha, where we can reliably estimate the vast majority of the developer's renovation budget has been spent. Not much landscaping has been done however, with towns, villages and all the various cut throughs almost identical, down to every winding walkway and character-snagging nook. For veterans the familiarity of each region is more than welcome, almost like revisiting a beloved teenage haunt that has barely changed (at least in the mind's eye), but newcomers will surely baulk at the sometimes unnecessary blocks placed in the world, such as the antiquated need to find some steps in order to exit water.

Perhaps Adelpha is a little less otherworldly now that it's displayed in Unity-O-Vision, but that could just be over familiarity getting the better of me. In any case the new colour palette is quite striking, with the just the right level of contrast and vibrancy to still seem distinct while hopefully offsetting the engine's ubiquity. The more verdant regions of Adelpha are considerably more thick with fauna than I recall, and while the world as a whole lacks the environmental detailing and dynamic effects we expect of a new release, the new vistas still manage to impress.

As for Adelpha's population The Talan are considerably less neanderthal than they originally were, and while their repertoire of animations is limited, they remain as likeable a bunch of NPCs as you'll find outside of Oddworld. And despite the fact that Cutter Slade has received a considerable overhaul in terms of his range of movement, I'm glad to report that he's retained a little of his marionette gait, which is rather fitting as he now looks a lot like Thunderbird 1's Scott Tracy after being assaulted with a pool cue. It's not a popular opinion among returning fans, but I prefer new-look Slade, who also happens to suit his old voice rather well

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Auto-aim just gets in the way. Turn it off and we promise you'll land more hits.

Which neatly brings me to my main issue with the game, the voices. Not that they're bad, since the audio is directly copied over from the original game. The problem is that legacy Outcast came with a lot of spoken word that had to be squeezed with all the rest of the code onto two CDs, and that, on the basis of what's here, would seem not to exist in any uncompressed state anywhere else. Unfortunately the voice track's already low fidelity is made noticeably worse by contrasting spectacularly with the newly minted HD visuals. To 21st Century ears it's like it was pulled off some old 4-track tape that was rotting in a shed for 20 years. You soon learn to put up with it - there's no choice but to - but some high range environmental effects would surely have helped mask the issues. In fairness, the voice track was something the devs wanted to re-record, not just to improve quality, but to update some of the script's rather dated cultural references. Had the original Kickstarter bid crossed the line, things might have been different.

There are other, lesser issues, mostly around the lack of graphical and control options: There's no way to mousewheel your way out of zoomed in skull when you're surrounded by scenery, for instance, which rather irritatingly is usually when under attack. Similarly, given the vast amount of gobbledygook in the game, subtitling is an initially welcome option that rather goes overboard with its inline translations, so much so that you'll quickly turn the feature off. Finally the inventory screen is hopelessly basic, especially with regard to quest and lore information. There doesn't need to be more of it, it just needs to be better presented.

For the most part Second Contact is a glorious remaster, essential for fans and a worthy introduction for newcomers who want to sample an open-world adventure that requires a bit of thought and patience. It's a notable effort for leaving much of the underlying game and it's 90s soul intact, while switching out the original graphics for visuals that, whole not bleeding edge, are a generational triple jump beyond even 2014's overdue update. One or two legacy features could have been dumped without taking the game too far out of its place in time, and some meaningful supplementary content would have been welcome, but it's only really the untouched soundscape that stands out as a missed opportunity to make Outcast feel truly refreshed and relevant.

Y'know, I almost wish I'd held on a few more years to play what is now the definitive edition of Outcast, but I realise now there's only so long you can hold out and 15 years was probably long enough. Which reminds me, I should probably get around to Final Fantasy 7 one of these days. I hear it's quite good.
 

Dexter

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Got it on Steam, it was -45% Off or something till 28. Nov since I apparently already had Outcast 1.1, and that entails me to a discount? So I bought it for 19€. Will give it a try after finishing ELEX!
 

passerby

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From a steam review: "The beautiful autumn feel of Okaar is scrapped for an identical tropical feel to Shamazaar."

Decline, it was the most beautiful biome in the game.
 

Outlander

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First patch is out.

Outcast – Second Contact Patch 1 Release Notes:

  • Controls have been enhanced and inertia of movement lowered.
  • Constraints on jumping have been relaxed in some areas to avoid the occurrence of “invisible walls”.
  • The responsiveness of jumps has been improved.
  • Slight adjustments to jumping behaviour when in air.
  • The triggering of dodge rolls has been adjusted in order to prevent interference with sprinting.
  • The contents of ammo boxes have been rebalanced.
  • A rare bug that could occur when purchasing the Magwa in Shamazaar has been fixed.
  • Fixed a bug that caused some characters (for example Zokrim) to get stuck in bodies of water, and sometimes blocking progression.
  • A display issue that caused Naarn to not properly display in some instances has been fixed.
  • Added a “vibrant colors” graphic mode. (Thanks to Dmity Andreev for this feature)
  • Implemented true full screen mode (as opposed to the default borderless windowed full screen) as an option in order to alleviate stuttering that appeared on some PC configurations.
  • A target frame rate option has been added.
  • Ultra-widescreen support (21:9) has been implemented.
  • Implemented automatic surround sound support, in cases where adequate hardware is detected.
  • Audio options with separate volume controls have been added to the options menu.
  • The audio mixing has been rebalanced.
  • Snowfall animation at high frame rates has been improved.
  • CPU usage has been optimized to allow for better frame rate when multiple characters appear on screen.
  • Multiple crash fixes, in particular when using Daokas, have been implemented.
 

Alienman

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If only they could fix the UI when targeting NPCs. That issue alone makes me not to want to buy it.
 

MediantSamuel

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Played a bit more this morning before work with the new patch: controls are much, much better. Thank you, devs.
love.png


I'm also being deafened less by the voice acting now they've rebalanced it.

Good shit. Enjoying my first playthrough so far.

Oh, maybe I'm retarded, but how do you use keys to open doors again? :oops:
 

Nevill

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Oh, maybe I'm retarded, but how do you use keys to open doors again? :oops:
In the original, you select a key as an active item, walk up to a door, and use it via left-click.

Also, if it's your first playthrough, make sure to use the hand teleporters. They improve travel times immensely, and I didn't notice they existed until after my second playthrough. I forgot the details, but I think you can either find or buy an extra from a merchant, to ensure full map coverage.
If only they could fix the UI when targeting NPCs. That issue alone makes me not to want to buy it.
What's wrong with it?
 

Alienman

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The smiley faces that pop up when you get close to NPCs. Everything else is fine.
 

v1rus

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Also, if it's your first playthrough, make sure to use the hand teleporters. They improve travel times immensely, and I didn't notice they existed until after my second playthrough.

Hand teleporters?
 

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