Outernauts is a Facebook Game and It’s Addictive

A Quirky F2P RPG That’s Fun

by Arthur Kotsopoulos

©2012 Arthur Kotsopoulos

During the course of E3, I popped over to the EA Mobile Suite Showcase where they were demonstrating all of their mobile/tablet titles soon to be released on iOS and Android devices, as well as Facebook with Outernauts by Insomniac Games.

Many were shocked when Insomniac announced that their next title would be released on Facebook and published by EA. It caused quite a bit of a stir, and personally I never paid much attention to it because I usually don’t spend much time gaming on Facebook since many so called titles on there are just intrusive and laggy.

Outernauts, for lack of a better term, is quirky, addictive, and most importantly, fun.

Get ready to explore

Outernauts is a free to play title, featuring a vast galaxy with multiple planets to explore. They contain content so rich that you will need serious time management skills to fit in this game with your everyday life.

Each area features treasure chests behind rocks or bushes that may contain anything from coins and other various items which you can collect or salvage, as well as puzzles that will test your mind and patience.

The puzzles in Outernauts perfectly fall between the easy and hard mark, as once you figure out how a certain puzzle is solved, you’ll be hit with that “Ahh!” moment as explained by the developer from Insomniac.

This is a thing that gamers love and that’s why Outernauts will feature plenty of puzzles which will give you the same reaction and great satisfaction upon completion.

Showcasing the level, our hero (who you can name) needed to find another way to save a damsel in distress who held the key to finding the Stone of the Ancients. However, greedy space pirates are also hot on her trail making life a little bit more difficult.

Clicking on the area that she wished to walk to, our hero met face to face with our first space pirate and it was battle time almost instantaneously.

I choose you!

Battles play out much like Pokemon, Digimon, and Yu-Gi-Oh where you battle your opponents with beasts. In Outernauts each beast’s moves will automatically level up the more you use them, meaning that they will do more damage to your opponent and deal more damage to enemies.

The beasts themselves will also level up, evolving up to three times and unlocking new abilities as they get stronger.

Battles in Outernauts aren’t just about choosing which attacks to perform, though. Each attack your beast can do may not be as effective on a certain enemy.

With a marker above their head saying Weak/Strong you’ll know if your attack will be worth choosing or not, and potentially saving your turn by selecting something smart rather than wasting it.

Once you’ve chosen your attack you cannot undo or cancel, so you have to deal with whatever you’ve decided, hence why it pays to be patient since this is turn-based combat.

Three on three battles play out exactly the same with the exception of three different beasts to attack with and multiple enemies to think about strategically. Each attack again will have a different effect on various enemies, so you will need to play the game at a slow, steady and smart pace when it comes to battles.

When you start the game you’ll have the chance to choose between a male orfemale Outernaut and then proceed to choose one of the multiple beasts that are said to define you over the course of the game. You’ll level them up and grow to care for them as if they were your own, so make sure you make the right decision.

The game also features the ability to capture beasts if you’re not happy with your current selection. For a Free to Play game, there sure is a lot of content in the form of battles, experience points, story and secrets.

That familiar feeling

Outernauts features that quirky humour you’ve come to love from the Rachet & Clank series, and when reading the speech bubbles during cutscenes you can generally feel that the humour here isn’t forced or sloppy.

It fits perfectly into the world of Outernauts. From the unique art style to the vibrant colours of the game, I can’t think of a better developer to be working on a game like this.

I’ve been playing Outernauts in its current closed beta status post-E3 and I can’t say this enough: it’s an extremely fun and time-consuming game. If you have the patience, you can play this game without ever having to spend real cash to progress further into the storyline.

Sure, if you don’t want to have to keep coming back to the game every few hours for specific quests, you can skip them but this isn’t meant to be played in sitting for hours on end.

Since it’s a Facebook game, you play this for a good twenty minutes or so, waste all of your character’s energy, close it, come back, and continue where you left off.

There’s just so much content packed in here, and offers tons of replay value. I do recommend, however, that you have a system with plenty of ram, because this game isn’t going to run very well on a low-end machine.

Outernauts is set for release sometime at the end of this year and I hope that those of you who despise Facebook will at least give it a go, because it will cater mainly to the casual market, but as a hardcore gamer (I feel I am worthy of calling myself this) it’s addictive and fun.

©2012 Arthur Kotsopoulos

Filed under: Demo impressions, E3 2012, Oxcgn Special feature, PC Previews Tagged: | Android, Digimon, EA, facebook, Insomniac, insomniac facebook, insomniac facebook game, Insomniac Games, iOS, Outernaughts, Outernaut, Outernauts, outernauts game, outernauts insomniac, Pokemon