There’s a specific kind of joy that comes from strapping a headset on, expecting a quick five-minute go, and then surfacing forty minutes later with a stiff neck and a stupid grin on your face. That’s Outblast in a nutshell. It’s not clever, it’s not deep, and it doesn’t pretend to be either of those things. It just wants you to spin around a neon arena shooting stuff, and honestly, I’m fine with that.
Outblast doesn’t bother with a story
You play as Interceptor C11-28, a little ship sent to stop a virus called Typhon from eating a planet called Perseon-6. That’s about as much plot as you’re getting, and that’s about as much plot as you need. There’s no dialogue to sit through, no cutscene to skip, no lore codex to ignore. You’re dropped straight into the cockpit, the game tells you to boost, blast and bomb your way through five corrupted districts, and off you go. I appreciated not being made to sit through ten minutes of exposition before I got to shoot anything.
Boost, blast, bomb, repeat
The core loop is simple and it works. Your left stick steers the ship, your right stick aims and fires, and because you’re floating in a full 360-degree bubble rather than a flat corridor, enemies can and will turn up behind you. Your right trigger is a chainable boost that gets you out of trouble (or into it, if you’re not careful), and your left trigger unleashes a screen-clearing special attack once you’ve filled up an energy meter by scooping up data fragments. It’s a coin-op formula wearing a VR headset, and it’s every bit as punishing as those old cabinets used to be.
Each of the five districts ends with a boss, and the boss fights are where Outblast is at its best. Hydra, Gorgon, Minotaur and Siren all throw genuinely different attack patterns at you before you finally face Typhon itself, and I found myself replaying a couple of these fights purely because I wanted another crack at them, not because I was forced to. Lives are limited, there’s a time limit on the clock, and clearing a wave of enemies buys you a bit more of it. It’s stressful in exactly the way an arcade shooter should be.
Neon and a synth soundtrack carry the visuals
Visually, this is Tron with the serial numbers filed off, all glowing outlines, cyberpunk silhouettes and a synth score thumping away behind you. It suits the game’s arcade roots and it looks sharp for something that only takes up 0.6GB of storage. My one complaint is that your own ship can blend into the background clutter during the busier fights, and more than once I lost track of exactly where I was pointed while three enemy types were converging on me at once. A slightly bolder outline on C11-28 itself would go a long way.
Comfortable, mostly
Meta’s own listing rates Outblast as comfortable, and for the most part I’d agree, since you’re anchored in a cockpit rather than free-roaming. That said, the 360-degree design means you will be spinning to track threats behind you fairly often, and I did notice a bit of wooziness creeping in during longer sessions. Nothing that a short break didn’t fix, but it’s worth knowing going in if you’re prone to VR sickness. It’s a standing, single-player experience through and through, so don’t expect anything social here beyond the global leaderboards.
Short, sharp, and worth the price of admission
Outblast isn’t going to eat your week. There’s an Arcade Mode for a straight run at the whole thing and a Stage Select for going back and chasing a better score on a district you botched, and between the two I’d guess most players will have seen everything within a couple of hours. What’ll keep you coming back is the leaderboard chase and the simple fact that it’s fun to fly this thing, not any illusion of depth. For a game that costs less than a large coffee, I can’t really complain about that.
If you’ve got half an hour spare and fancy something that doesn’t ask anything of you except good reflexes, give Outblasta go.
