Unlike the campaign, multiplayer is a blast. In split screen you have three game types that are available:
- Strategic Victory has you capturing strategic objectives such as armories and radio towers. Once you capture enough SO’s your buddy’s command points drop. Once you’re out of command points you lose, so capturing the SO’s is key rather than the amount of kills you have.
- Deathmatch is of course “let’s see who can get the most kills” competition. While it’s fun, it’s not as great as the other two multiplayer options.
- Destruction is all about destroying everything you possibly can. When you destroy something or kill someone you get FU’s. The one with the most FU’s at the end of the game wins. Xbox Live is setup rather nicely and Co-op makes the campaign marginally better.
Graphically speaking The Outfit belongs in the lower tier of next-gen visuals, partly due to its cartoonish nature. The player models look as if they’re on the upper tier of Xbox graphics and the environments look next-gen without a doubt. Just about everything in the game is destructible however each building, bunker, vehicle, etc destructs in the same way which is ultimately boring. All of the in game animations are smooth and the cut scenes are done rather nicely. Occasionally after a melee attack the opposition will go from his “getting beat up” animation to his “normal stance” animation before dropping suddenly to the ground dead.
The Outfit uses the basic shooter controls with the right trigger as your primary fire and your left trigger as the grenade throwing option. During combat you can hit Y where you’ll bring up Destruction on Demand. You then move you thumb stick in a circle viewing the ordinance that is available for purchase and hit the corresponding button.
The vehicles in this game control horribly. You use the left thumb stick to move the vehicle and the right one to aim its weapon. The two sticks are not balanced out so you’ll constantly have to wait on the vehicle’s body to catch up with what you’re aiming at. Overall it controls solidly even though it’s at a slow pace.
The soundtrack is pretty good, having several military percussion instruments and guitar play. The voiceovers for the three main characters are great and fit the look and feel of the character. Sadly, the enemies are the complete opposite featuring fake German and French accents that can get pretty bad at times. Every other audio aspect such as gunfire is just mediocre.
Final WordThe developers have done a great job of creating a unique WWII experience. Even with great multiplayer the rest of the game is brought down by some major design flaws that mostly occur in the single player campaign. On top of it all the game uses exploding barrels… and I thought we had all moved past that already? I can safely say this game is not worth buying, but will offer up some fun if you rent it with a couple of friends.
