It's unfortunate, then, that such solid music and good graphics are wasted in an almost strictly by-the-book real-time strategy. Offering little that you haven't seen elsewhere,
The Outforce may stave off some of those space RTS hankerings you have, but in the end feels a little too empty.
The single player campaign -- which is woefully short -- details the exploits of Humans in space, having encountered two warring races, the Gobin and the Crion. Of course, the humans aren't particularly interested in pissing off either group, but 'the best laid plans of mice and men . . .', and as the game starts all Hell is breaking loose.
The game itself is, for the most part, strict RTS fare. You make oodles of units, protect your base, and eventually launch an attack on an enemy base. It's ostensibly set in space, but there are some basic RTS structures in the game that make no sense in a space environment. Why can't you fly 'over' or 'under' a wall? Planets I'll accept as blocking structures, but nothing else should really get in the way of a space fleet. After a bit of playing, I gave up trying to think 'space-style' and returned to standard RTS methodologies. And, besides a few neat features, that's really all that The Outforce is.
There are a few neat things. The towing of objects is quite cool, especially when you remember some basic physics (although the fact that things slow down in space is rather bizarre) and start slingshotting things into the enemy bases that have no right to be there. Heh. You can also pull your enemy's walls apart, given enough determination, which is rather cool. But sometimes this only reinforces the fact that The Outforce is a normal RTS with pretty space graphics instead of a game that really makes sense for a space RTS, like the Homeworld titles.
The game is also over way too fast. You'll be completing the single-player campaign in the first or second day that you have the title, and hankering for more. You can play against the AI in Skirmishes, or you can play online against other folks. There aren't many people playing online, though, and the game does not currently support AI + human opponents. Urgh. And there's no way to put units in formations, which causes massive clumping and general mayhem. Since there are weapons that do massive damage to all units in a given area, you either have to make lots of different groups and space them out, or take a chance at getting blown to smithereens by a single well-placed shot.
