Review by: Michael Barnes

Somebody on staff at Finnish developer Housemarque, the folks behind Super Stardust HD and Dead Nation, had a brilliant idea. The concept would be to do a Metroidvania style platform adventure game crossed with elements from a bullet hell 2D shooter. So there would be the standard running and jumping but with elaborate and often intimidating patterns of deadly bullets blossoming across the screen. But they took this idea a step further and brought in mechanics cribbed from Treasure’s polarity-swapping masterpiece of the “shmup” form, Ikaruga.

To this end, the hero of the game has the ability to switch between Light and Dark aspects, granting immunity to bullets of the corresponding color and imparting the ability to damage enemies of the opposite one. It’s an unlikely combination of gameplay ideas, but the result is one of the best platform games in recent memory.

The framing story is told chiefly through a storytelling narrator and it is appealingly vague, seeming to draw on several world mythologies and cultural stories without direct reference. This sort of pan-folkloric take extends to its visual presentation. The settings, narrative, and images depicted are not quite Mayan, Egyptian, Native American, or Asian but an admixture of all of the above and then some. Reinforcing this non-specific, almost Jungian appeal to the collective unconscious is a silhouetted art style with black figures flecked with hot, neon colors traversing shadowy jungles, cities, and mountains against vibrantly colored backdrops. The effect is strikingly beautiful, punctuated by fluid animations and wonderful character designs including great bosses.

On presentation alone, Outland succeeds every bit as much as other recent platformers that have leveraged highly stylized visuals. But where it exceeds its competition is in its novel gameplay that could satisfy anyone from hardcore fans of Cave shooters to obsessed Super Metroid speedrunners. Essentially, its format is an exploratory platform game with areas requiring you to find a switch or a new ability to explore further into unvisited parts of each level. There are several regions that are interconnected with teleportation devices to aid transit. A Guardian Key must be found in each area to reach the impressive and diverse boss fights that close out a region.

Platforming is fluid, fast, and extremely pleasing with tight controls. The player character has a sword for melee attacks as well as 10 other special abilities including a ground slide and a beam weapon. But most important are the Light Energy and Dark Energy abilities, which enable you to change the color of the character as well as affect changes in the game world. This concept made Ikaruga a brilliant and singular shooter, in Outland it introduces some completely new gameplay ideas into the platforming genre.

Many enemies including stationary fountains spray the screen with elaborate, psychedelic patterns of red and blue bullets- far, far too many to dodge or run from in many situations. So you must switch—while wall-jumping—avoiding enemies, and not falling into traps between Light and Dark to absorb damaging bullets. This also affects which enemies, which are all also Light or Dark, can be attacked. Only opposites can take damage. What’s more, when you are in a certain aspect, it can make platforms of the corresponding color appear or matching lifts activate. This creates the potential for some truly brilliant puzzle-platforming that requires even the most skilled genre fan to think on a completely different level about the core competencies of running and jumping that are required. It can be extremely tricky when you need a blue wall to appear but you’ve also got a blue enemy in the way that you need to be red to kill.