Outcast: A New Beginning is an open-world third-person shooter developed by Appeal and published by THQ Nordic. The original game came out in 1999, and several attempts were made to make a sequel, but those plans never came to fruition. However, a sequel has finally emerged, representing the franchise’s fresh start. Unfortunately, playing through the game feels like playing a dated open-world game, and at some points, it feels like playing an Avatar knockoff, but worse.

Returning to Adelpha

You play as Cutter Slade, an ex-soldier who winds up on Adelpha. He discovers that an invading force is taking over, and the world’s natives, the Talan, are trying to fight back. To get back home, Slade has to team up with the Talan and unite each tribe. Slade goes to each village and helps solve its problems to gain their trust and fight against the invaders. Each city has multiple quest lines for Slade to go on, which help progress the game’s narrative. Once you complete all the village quests, you get a pendant from the village chief that promises to unite with the other tribes. There are flashbacks to flesh out Slade as a character, but they don’t make me care for the main character. There are also these looks into the future involving Slade, which don’t add much value to what is going on in general.

Unfortunately, none of the characters are worth investing emotions into. Slade is a snarky soldier with dry humor and jokes that aren’t funny. Most of the Talan you aid aren’t characters you want to help. The performances felt monotone and emotionless, contributing to many one-dimensional characters. Overall, there are just a lot of characters that deterred me from enjoying the game and didn’t get me invested in the story being told.

Just Another Open World

Outcast: A New Beginning is an open-world game. The good news is that Appeal created a beautiful world with lush jungles, beautiful seaside landscapes, and planes filled with wildlife. The bad news is that the things you do in the open world are generic. You go to different bases and wipe out enemies, go on fetch quests, and do time challenges. Many revolve around completing tasks for the various villages in the game. Doing these will reward you with more health, new weapons, and experience points. Frankly, they are also boring to do, and it feels like something you would find in any generic open-world game. The fetch quests tell you to fetch ten objects, but only when you return to the village does the game tell you to return to the same place to fetch more objects.

The game’s combat is very lackluster. While shooting feels arcade-like, the enemy AI is very predictable. They have limited patterns to memorize, which leads to stale and repetitive encounters where every enemy feels like a pushover. Upgrade trees for combat include more damage, better shields, and weapon mods to collect throughout the game. The combat is serviceable, but the AI is too easy and makes the firefights boring.

The best part of the game is how you traverse the open world. Very early on, you get access to a jetpack, your primary way of traversing the world. There are a variety of ways to move around with the jetpack. You have an upgrade tree for the jetpack to unlock more movement options, which add more fun ways to move around the world. You also get access to a flying mount, which makes traversal across long distances easier. It’s disappointing that the game didn’t capitalize on the movement aspect because moving around and using the jetpack was my favorite part of the game.

A New Beginning?

Outcast: A New Beginning feels less like a new beginning and more like a generic open-world game that offers little to the player. At some points, it felt like I was playing a knockoff Avatar game. The game’s traversal options and beautiful setting are the best parts. Unfortunately, Outcast: A New Beginning is held back by its lack of character depth, generic plot, and horrible AI.

No Son Of Mine is a first-person horror game developed by Pleasantly Friendly Games. It has you solve a murder mystery as you explore various levels while consistently being chased by a monster. While the game is good at raising tension, its monster mechanic drastically interrupts the gameplay and turns the experience from scary to annoying.

Unfortunate Son

As a detective, you are investigating a murder, as shown in the opening cutscene. Soon, a giant baby appears that will chase you throughout the game. You pick up clues to flesh out the narrative as you explore the game. Unfortunately, these clues don’t leave you wanting more. The clues give just enough to get an idea of what is going on. While the game’s story is lackluster, what No Son of Mine does best is leave you tense as you explore the game. The game’s atmosphere and creepy music left me in anticipation that something bad would happen to me at any moment. In particular, some moments were incredibly chilling, and I had to put the game down to process what I had just seen.

Then there is the monster that you constantly have to fight. You can hide in closets spread throughout the levels or fight back with a stun gun to deal with it. Hiding in the closet can trigger a mini-game where you need to get a line in the center of a smiley face, or you will take damage. If the monster deals damage to you twice, you will die. There is an infrared scope that helps you see the monster, and various upgrades to collect that improve recharge time on the stun gun and the duration of your infrared sight. You can pick up various items such as instant recharge for the stun gun, health, and the ability to slow down time, which comes in handy against the monster.

Short And Not So Sweet

Unfortunately, while the atmosphere is on point, No Son Of Mine’s gameplay squanders it. The biggest issue is the balance between monster encounters and exploring the levels in search of clues. You can be close to finding something before dropping what you’re doing to hide or fight the monster. I felt the balance between exploring and fighting was off, and what started as a fun novelty became a huge annoyance after just a few encounters after having to backtrack to closets.

Fighting with the monster leads to inconsistent combat. I have been in situations where I thought I shot the monster, but then I die anyway. Hiding can lead to dead periods where it’s hard to tell when it’s safe to resume exploring. Hallways start to blend together, which can be confusing when navigating parts of the level, especially when the game turns off all the lights. Combining repetitive areas with encounters that aren’t super fun led to me not having a fun experience with the game.

No Son of Mine is a short experience that can be beaten in a few hours. The developers have presented some fun ideas that could have been fleshed out further with more time. For example, you get access to infrared sight early on. I could only use it to find the monster during combat. I wish the developers had applied this mechanic to solve more puzzles. Instead of constantly worrying about the monster, I wish encounters could occur during set-piece moments to create further tension. Instead, I have to fight with inconsistent combat or flee to safety away from the area I am exploring.

Worth It?

No Son Of Mine is a short horror game that sets the tone extremely well but does not follow through on its gameplay. The mechanics are either inconsistent or not fully explored, and the monster is more annoying than scary. The narrative plays second fiddle and is not interesting at all. It is disappointing because there are some good and horrifying moments in the game, but the gameplay holds this back from being a truly great experience.

Final Factory takes the core factory-building and automation gameplay of Factorio and places it in a unique space setting. With its top-down view, players are tasked with managing an expanding their space stations, leading a fleet of combat bots into battle, and venturing into the mysterious dark fog to uncover alien relics as well as new resources. While Final Factory offers some fresh ideas and engaging gameplay mechanics, it falls short in certain areas, resulting in a mixed but enjoyable experience. Anything in this review is subject to change as the game is currently in early access and to my knowledge the developers have been very active rolling out updates to their project.

At its heart, Final Factory shares the addictive loop of resource gathering, automation, and factory expansion seen in Factorio. Players start by harvesting space resources like asteroids and rare minerals to kickstart their cluster of space stations. The reason I say cluster is due to the fact that these space stations will heat up and become unstable the more components you add to them. Luckily very early in the game will present to you the possibility to create hauling bots that essentially replace conveyor belts. The top-down view provides a clear and strategic perspective for managing your sprawling space factory, and setting up automated production lines.

Combat in Final Factory is also mostly automated. Players lead a fleet of combat bots that follow and assist them. These bots can be upgraded through research as well as increasing how many bots can join your fleet at any one time. Whether you’re defending your factory from alien attacks or venturing into the dark fog to find alien relics, your combat bots are your trusty companions in battle.

The exploration aspect of Final Factory is basic, Out of a space game I would hope for more out of a space setting or but unfortunately it just isn’t as colourful or interesting as some other games in the factory building genre. The player will venture into the dark fog-covered areas of space finding alien relics hidden within, but also they will come across asteroids containing resources necessary for expanding your operations. The alien relics are used to slowly upgrade you ship’s stats like speed, health, mining speed and other basic stats.

While Final Factory introduces some innovative gameplay mechanics, it also suffers from lack of depth in certain areas. The combat can feel repetitive and too easy over time making it fairly unnecessary at later stages. The research tree, while expansive, doesn’t always feel rewarding or impactful enough to justify the time investment.

Final Factory successfully captures the essence of factory building and automation gameplay in a space setting. The top-down view provides a strategic perspective that’s well-suited for managing and expanding your small cluster of space stations. Building and optimizing production lines, laying down docking ports for hauling bots, and automating resource management offer a satisfying gameplay loop that will appeal to fans of the genre.

While the game introduces some unique combat mechanics with a fleet of combat bots and exploration elements with dark fog-covered areas, these aspects may not be as refined or impactful as the core factory-building gameplay. The combat and exploration add variety but do not hold up to others in the genre.

If you’re a fan of Factorio and looking for a new challenge that emphasizes factory building and automation in a space setting, Final Factory delivers a solid and enjoyable experience. I would definitely recommend picking the game up as it is still extremely easy to lose yourself for hours upon hours as you make a mess of your space station and start again and learning new things every time.

The indie developers, Orangutan Matter, are off to a great start with the release of their first game, Unleaving. In Unleaving, you take the place of a young child who explores a surreal and mysterious world. While there is no dialogue, the story is told through its surreal visuals and text which appears in various sections. This 2D Puzzle Platformer isn’t a combat-focused game you occasionally have to face hounds. You don’t engage in combat but are more focused on trapping or tricking the hound into their own death. The game is one continuous process which isn’t split into levels. The main mechanics are based around grabbing things and basic jump mechanics. The general feel of the game is very similar to Limbo.

The visuals are what stand out the most in this game. It has an authentic hand-drawn style. With the previously mentioned lack of any dialogue or narration this gives the unique drawings an ability to tell the story themselves. The first act of this game in particular do such an incredible job of creating a melancholic feel. To match this, there is an incredible sound design that adds an eery yet mystical atmosphere. When the music does come in, it’s very impactful however I would’ve liked to hear more. It does feel like the non-musical periods of the game go on a bit too long where the game can feel a little bland.

The Gameplay is very simplistic to learn, you jump and grab things, as well as occasionally climbing. Most of the game will include finding puzzles that obstruct you from continuing the journey and finding a way to overcome them. I found some of these puzzles extremely difficult to work out. Yet when you do advance in the journey, it is a very rewarding and satisfying experience. However, I felt a lot of the platforming was unnecessarily difficult for my own taste. There was one instance that despite knowing how to get past the puzzle it would require extremely precise skill and coordination. The Autosave was generally great, I would almost always load into where I had exactly left off.

Narratively, this game didn’t do much for me, though I don’t think that was the main focus of the game. I didn’t really care or have much reason to care about my character or their journey. I wasn’t too interested in what was going to come next for this character or where the story was going. I think due to the puzzles taking quite a while to get through it led to long periods between seeing text, so I felt a bit disengaged.

Overall this game is a great opportunity to pick up and play whenever, it may be quite difficult but it’s generally quite a short game. The art style alone is fascinating enough to recommend this game alone. The storytelling is very ambitious but overall wasn’t very engaging and I would have liked to hear more of that beautiful soundtrack. Altogether, I’m still very excited to see what Orangutan Matter makes next.