Review by Sinbomb

If you are hyperventilating in anticipation over what sounds like the latest fantasy cosplay title to hit the streets, know that The Outfit is something far more twisted. This oddity of a game makes flailing attempts at being an innovative action/strategy hybrid, but its obvious the developers lost interest halfway through.

Gameplay
In a move sure to offend everyone except skinheads, developer Relic Entertainment would have you believe Hitler's Third Reich were not as bad as they made themselves out to be. Rather, in the warped parallel universe of The Outfit, half the Nazi army are decent fellows and everyone and everything suffers from a serious Freudian preoccupation with size.

If the game mechanics were solid this might be a forgivable lapse in judgment, but the imbalanced, amateurish design ensures players stick to a formula that quickly grows tiresome. Taking cues from Battlefield and Mercenaries, each mission or multiplayer skirmish tasks the user with laying down enough firepower to capture strategic points indicated on the map. The much-touted Destruction on Demand feature allows for almost instantaneous reinforcement of your troops via stationary turrets and AT guns, armored transports, and offensive siege engines, but this is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Your effective offensive/defensive range is limited to the area in your immediate vicinity, reducing confrontations to the simple act of picking the correct weapon à la Megaman to counter your opponent. It doesn't help that vehicles can only be driven by the player and the controls are needlessly gummy. A combination of gun turrets and AT cannons is often more than enough to thwart any push by the enemy, assuming they haven't already done the same to you. After a few missions/multiplayer matches, you will have seen all there is to The Outfit's tactical depth.

Further embarassing the title is its thinly conceptualized single player campaign. When viewing the cutscenes are the highlight and sole motivation for plugging through a game, its safe to assume there is little to no value to be had here. Thankfully, these humorous intermissions display a level of refinement not seen in the remainder of The Outfit's excruciating tedium. The actual missions are a series of raids on Nazi installations, with the only difference being the number of toys available at your disposal. All equipment is purchased using FU's, which are points gained by capturing targets and defeating enemies. This formula grows stale even on the first mission, and the designers apparently believed everyone who played this game suffered from serious brain damage, so expect a multitude of popup messages detailing your exact tasks from beginning to end. Its like being spit on, then slapped in the face o expect anyone to find any enjoyment in the campaign, especially when it treats you like an infant. Even on the highest difficulty setting, victory comes swiftly and confers no sense of accomplishment.

Perhaps the only evident virtue to counter this onslaught of agonizing banality is the option to control one of a trio of one-liner spewing meatheads. Each excels at a different discipline (sniper, anti-tank, close range skirmisher), however their overall effect on battleground operations is minimal at best. Supremacy will not be attained by elite handling of your hero, but rather the aforementioned turret and AT gun emplacements. Their inconsequential abilities belie their true purpose of serving as the focal point for station capture and ordnance distribution. Despite this letdown, some genuinely entertaining moments are to be had, such as plowing through a brick wall in a tank to trample unsuspecting Germans, or ordering squadmates to lob tear gas at enemy gunners.

Graphics
More uninspired mediocrity can be found in Outfit's visuals. Though not ugly, Relic certainly did not strive to impress. Terrain is chunky and uniformly textured, character models are low res with sharp edges, and architecture is composed of graceless geometry. Nothing you will see is ever the least bit impressive, and some of it is remarkably second rate.

Usage of the Havok 2 physics engine adds some flair to the mix, with tank shells blasting accurate holes in buildings and stone walls crumbling into rubble, although some may remember similar effects were done in original Xbox titles like Mechassault. At least that game had some decent weapon effects and interesting lighting for its time. The Outfit just throws a cheap polarizing filter on everything to saturate the colors, then calls it a day.

Sound
Crank this puppy up and get ready for your dog to start howling and whining. It would be one thing if the explosions and gunfire sounded realistic, but each and every bullet uses the same shrill sound bite. When thousands of rounds are being fired off every second during a standoff, the resulting cacophany would be enough to make death metal fans hit the mute button in disgust.

Again, the cutscenes manage to salvage The Outfiit from absolute ruin in this category. Spoken dialogue is done naturally and professionally, and the jokes are utterly hilarious at times. There is a lot of characterization in the voices and demeanor of the axis and allies, bringing the otherwise D.O.A. game world to stuttering, Frankensteinian life. However, in no country or socioeconomic class is it justified to spend $60 on CGI movies, even if Sony tries its best to have consumers believe otherwise.

Multiplayer
Perhaps The Outfit would not seem so downright shoddy if the developers had cut the price in half and done away with the single player campaign. Everything about the gameplay screams multiplayer-only, preferably in 2v2 or 3v3. There are a handful of imbalanced maps displaying slight variety in the control point layout, but good luck finding someone to play with on Xbox Live, as the servers are usually so empty you can almost see the tumbleweed drifting across your screen. Its hard to recommend a game for quasi-decent multiplayer that is experiencing the throes of death so early in its shelf life. If you can find a dedicated group of players you might glean a scant amount of enjoyment from Outfit, but that's a tough sixty dollar gamble.

Achievements
Finally, something Outfit excels at. Too bad its such a tertiary enjoyment factor as to be meaningless next to the piles of gameplay garbage. There are 41 achievements, 26 of which are awarded for meeting certain performance goals in the campaign. The multiplayer achievements are ingenious measures of skill or lack thereof, with only a few deferring to the thoughtless win/kill tally seen in other games. Additionally, they are awarded only through ranked quick match games, making it more difficult for boosters to circumvent the system. While this definitely warrants praise, the lack of players on at any given time may not stop the most determined boosting achievement addicts.

Lasting Appeal
After trudging through the solo campaign doldrums and waiting futilely in a ranked lobby for an opponent to join, there is not much to keep The Outfit from becoming a shelf ornament or drink coaster. If you really have your heart set on giving it a shot make it a rental first, but remember if you break the disc in a fit of rage, you have to pay for it anyhow.

Final Score

• Cutscenes summon up big belly laughs from time to time
• Trampling Nazis in tanks is fun for the whole family

• Place gun turret, place AT cannon, rinse, repeat...
• Ingame sounds liken to the shrieks of demons rising out of the Abyss
• Solo campaign feels slightly worse than getting beaten up

Note: A rating scale of 0 - 10 is used, with 10 being the highest a game can score while 0 is the absolute worst. Each category has a point value associated with it and a final score is displayed at the end of the review. The opinions expressed in this review are not necessarily the opinions held by the owners of www.achieve360points.com.