Outcast - A New Beginning

My first impression landing on Adelpha was pure arcade energy: a guy in a jetpack swapping neon laser fire with robots while the soundtrack swelled. That feeling carries the game further than its individual parts probably deserve. Outcast - A New Beginning is a third-person open-world action adventure, a direct sequel to the 1999 cult PC game, and it drops you back into the role of ex-Navy SEAL Cutter Slade, whose dry, slightly embarrassing dad-joke humor sets the tone immediately. If that pitch sounds appealing, buckle up, because the moment-to-moment play is genuinely fun, even when everything around it is uneven. The jetpack is where the game earns its keep. You get basic double-jump and dodge abilities almost immediately, and the upgrade path opens up fast: ground boost, glide, and eventually a near-full wingsuit mode that makes crossing Adelpha feel like The Rocketeer crossed with Just Cause. Critically, the traversal feeds directly into combat. Repositioning mid-fight, gaining high ground, air-dodging a rocket barrage, all of it clicks together once you have a few upgrades stacked. The modular weapon system complements this nicely. You carry two guns and can slot up to six modules each, pulling from over 30 options: homing rounds, explosive mines, overheat-boosted damage, kill-triggered healing, and more. Swapping loadouts carries no penalty, so experimenting freely is encouraged rather than punished. It is one of those rare systems where messing around with builds is actually fun rather than a spreadsheet chore. Where the game stumbles is nearly everywhere else. The story is a robot-invasion-meets-indigenous-alien-people setup that reviewers broadly compared to a blander Avatar. Cutter gets amnesia (a mechanic to ease newcomers in) and spends a lot of time running errands between villages, each with their own quest chains that unlock Talan-specific abilities like calling in insect swarms. The side content is functional but thin, and the open world, while visually varied with forests, ruins, and settlements, does not generate much organic curiosity. Objective markers do the heavy lifting. PC performance at launch was also a point of frustration for a segment of players, with some reporting inconsistent frame rates even on mid-to-high-end hardware. Boss encounters are largely forgettable, and the lack of a mantle mechanic means a misread jetpack jump will leave Cutter awkwardly stuck at a cliff edge. The game clocks in around 20 hours for a fairly thorough run, which is the right length for what it is. It does not overstay its welcome. For players who have never touched the 1999 original, the amnesia framing makes it accessible, though the world's lore is dense with alien terminology and rewards patience more than it rewards casual browsing. Fans of the original will recognize the spirit here, even if the execution rarely reaches the same level of innovation. Think of it as a midrange action game from around 2007-2009 that somehow got made in 2024, with all the charm and all the roughness that implies.

Alex · Scout Team

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