Форум коллекционеров видеоигр

First off, I feel it's important to note that Outtrigger is primarily a multiplayer game in the same vein of many PC first-person shooters. If you're not online, this experience will be a very short one. Still…

Outrigger drops players into a familiar world of frags, frags and more frags. If you're familiar with Unreal Tournament or Quake, you'll have no problem jumping right into the action. The premise? Well, I'm sure one exists, but it never actually came up. All you need to know is that you're a counter-terrorist and you'll be shooting a lot of bad guys.

The single player game is basically made up of Training missions and the multiplayer involves plenty of plain old people blastin'. Simple, straightforward, and to the point.

There are two types of gameplay modes for each experience. If you're alone, you'll have Arcade and Mission mode, but if you'd rather be fragging someone else, there's the Versus and Online Network Battle. Interestingly enough, the single player modes feel like practice for the online experience. Arcade serves as a control tutorial that helps you get used to combat and the Mission mode doesn't really feel like much of a mission at all.

Some of the missions include objectives like 'collect a certain amount of coins' or 'kill a certain number of terrorists' within a specific amount of time, but they all take place on multiplayer style maps. Others missions just have you running around the map trying to rack up as many frags as you can - just like the multiplayer game. There are 45 missions total, but you'll be done with them surprisingly fast. After all, most have a time limit between 2 and 3 minutes.

At least you'll unlock new characters, weapons and arenas, so it isn't a total waste. I wish the single player was more involving, but it is very apparent that AM2 designed Outtrigger with a group of people in mind. The lone gunman won't have much to do here.

Versus mode supports up to four players at a time via the split screen we've all grown to love and/or hate. You'll run, you'll shoot, and you'll do it all with amazing speed. Fragging friends is always fun.

The Online Network Battle runs pretty smoothly, this time supporting up to six players. It also runs at an amazingly fast framerate with only a split second of firing lag. The only bit of annoyance is the pause that interrupts the game if a new player joins.

Control in a first-person shooter is traditionally unwieldy on a console, but AM2 has managed to pull off a satisfactory scheme. For the most part, you won't really need pinpoint accuracy to put the hurt on your opponents due to the generous targeting assistance. Other good news comes in the form of a third-person option. First person is fine, but sometimes the action calls for an out of body experience.

There are also several different controller schemes for you to choose from and on top of that, PC aficionados are able to use the Dreamcast mouse and keyboard for even better control. You'll still encounter the limited range of "looking" (you can't see straight up) as in the controller schemes, but I'm just glad they offer the support.

Graphically, Outtrigger does a decent job and fits nicely into the next generation of video gaming. Nice explosions, detailed characters and clean arenas combine for a visual experience you'll enjoy.

One of Outtrigger's biggest shortcomings, though, is the size of the locations where your battles take place. They're simply too small. I'm not over-exaggerating when I say you can run around an entire map in just a few seconds. Even in a four-player game, the majority of the maps feel way too confining. This is not a game for claustrophobics.

Another glaring problem is the overall lack of depth. Even while playing the multiplayer game, you never feel like there's a strategy or plan of action beyond not getting shot. There's a lot of running and shooting and it just never ends. This is fine for awhile, but it won't take long for you to feel like it's same experience over and over again.

For a quick little frag fix, Outtrigger is not a bad choice. Its fast and furious action is a nice distraction for the itchy trigger finger. But once that itch is scratched, there's not much action left.

It can't be said that the dreamcast is a system which lacks a variety of classy first person shooters, in fact quite the opposite is true, with a multitude of first person quake ripoffs flooding the market. But hidden amongst the pyramid shaped pile of dreamcast CD cases, there are a few unexpected gems proudly sharing company with the two big guns( Unreal Tournament and Quake 3: Arena). Is Outrigger among them ?

That question is one that happens to be rhetorical in nature, but at the same time I recognise that many people reading this will be gunning for a yes or no answer. I'm sorry to disapoint the masses, but the answer is a bit too complicated for a binary logic gate to process. Outrigger you see, happens to be both a very good game and an unfortunately average attempt at the same time. But before I focus on the negative aspects of Outrigger, I would like to say that the negativity isn't really brought about through poor design, rather, it is the product of a lack of ground breaking features within a competitive, even flooded, environment. And the environment to which I am refering here is the single player first person shooter.

This concept has been absolutely butchered to death by God knows how many average titles. Consequently, the gaming public will only look at a single player first person shooter if, and only if, it is absolutely exceptional. Outriggers single player game is not exceptional. It's not bad either, just average. Among its myriad problems that prevent it from being exceptional are the fact that 1, the game has no story, 2, the missions are incredibly boring. For instance, in an average mission, you have 1:00 to find and kill ten bad-guys. Wow!!!. What an imaginitive extension of the single player first person shooter. Not. Or rather not exactly. Because, for some reason, this game works in multiplayer mode.

And in multiplayer mode, the tides are turned completely. Up to four people can play on the same T.V. using a split screen facility. Words can't express how much fun this game is in four player mode. Also, up to six players can compete online using the broadband adapter. So to surmise, Outrigger is an excellent multiplayer, but average single player first person shooter, and I feel it's score should reflect this. If Outrigger were multiplayer only, I would be tempted to give this title 90%+, but it does contain a single player component, so it gets a score of 81%.