XBOX REVIEW | Outer Terror

“Grindhouse house horror lands on Xbox.”

Outer Terror is a roguelike horde auto-shooter featuring five comic book campaigns, each with their own unique style and theme. You also have ten different characters to choose from, each with their own weapon. While the gameplay remains the same in each of the five campaigns, you spawn on a map and start off with your character’s main weapon, fighting off enemies that are constantly spawning all around you. As you kill enemies, you earn experience points to level up your character. Enemies come in all sorts of varieties from monsters to toasters (yes, you read that correctly). In the second comic book campaign named ‘Kill Switch’, you must find an EMP and prevent an AI apocalypse! Every time you level up, you will have three choices which include the option to upgrade a weapon type. If you need a health boost, you can simply take some more health or body armour. Some enemies will also drop coins when you defeat them, and these coins can be used in the permanent upgrade shop located in Outer Terror’s main menu. Some of these upgrades include more starting health for your character, greater weapon damage, and various other perks which will greatly benefit you.

As you play, you will come across dead bodies lying on the ground, and some of these will contain items for you to pick up and use, such as health, an item that attracts all nearby coins, a chainsaw which spins around you when activated, and many more for you to discover. You can hold 2 of these items at any one time. Outer Terror also supports split-screen for two players.

Pew, pew, pew

Things I liked!

• Presentation | I really liked the presentation in Outer Terror, which has a very grindhouse look and appeal, with a great comic book style showing great detail to its characters.

• Simple controls | Very simple controls that are easy to master. Move with the left stick, aim with the right stick, left trigger to dash, right trigger activates your special attack, LB and RB are used to select which item you are carrying to use. X button to interact and Y, B and A buttons to make your choices when you level up.
  
  
• Content | With ten different characters and five comic book campaigns to choose from, you have plenty of combinations. I enjoyed trying out different characters, and while I preferred some of the comic book campaigns to others, there is still lots to do. While playing each of the campaigns, you will have to complete different objectives, from helping people you meet with tasks such as collecting comic books, to tougher objectives like finding a battery for an EMP bomb, which may be located anywhere on the map.

Nowhere

Neither good nor bad

• Sound | While the sound effects and music in Outer Terror are nothing spectacular, they do a decent job. The in-game music, as you play, is sometimes on a 10-second loop, but even so, it never really gets too annoying and is normally drowned out by all the gunfire and explosions happening as you kill the enemies constantly attacking you.

need water

Things I disliked!

• In-game graphics | The in-game graphics, while looking retro, are Outer Terror’s biggest weakness and can be quite ugly to look at. Even the animations are poorly executed. When playing, you are also faced with many invisible walls in areas that it looks like you can walk down, which did cause me to almost die on a few occasions.

• Non-skippable cutscenes | Every time you begin a new game, it becomes very frustrating that you cannot skip the first few cutscenes, which are presented as storyboards with slight animations.

How long did I play the review before publishing? 8 hours
How long to beat the story? 15 hours
How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 7/16
How long to achieve 1000G | 15 hours
You’ll love this game if you like these | Vampire Survivors, Army of Ruin & Brotato