Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.Did you miss your activation email?
Our hero can switch between light and dark forms, an ability he\'ll need to exploit in order to murder the local monsters and avoid sprays of bullets. Just like in Ikaruga, he\'ll take damage from opposite-colored bullets but will be impervious to those of the same polarity. So if there is a platform you want to get to but it\'s being blocked by a stream of white bullets, just change to white and you can pass through unharmed. There are instances where you must rapidly switch back and forth to move through multi-colored sprays of bullets, much like Ikaruga. When it comes to battling enemies, you can only harm those of the opposite color. So you\'ll need to be white in order to defeat a black spider. You\'ll begin with an energy sword but eventually learn other abilities like a slide attack and an uppercut. Certain objects in the environment will respond to your polarity, too. Elevators will go up when you are dark and down when you are light. A hovering platform may only hold your weight when you are a certain color. Levels are large, sprawling areas with branching paths and secrets like extra health hearts to find. Each area is guarded by a boss and we got to see an early behemoth called Golem that stood the entire height of the screen. Golem is "dark," so you can only inflict damage when you are light. He carries a giant club and will periodically pound the ground, sending a wave of energy towards you. His club will become stuck, though, allowing you to hop up to his head and whack him a few times. When you\'ve dealt enough damage he\'ll start causing light and dark comets to rain down upon you, which you\'ll have to dodge.
There\'s something a little frosty about Outland\'s particular brand of mechanical brilliance at times, and it would be nice to find a genuine surprise amongst the skills you unlock. But brilliance is still brilliance, however it\'s dressed up. In place of character, Outland is never less than pretty; instead of originality, you get cold, hard intelligence. As with Super Stardust and Dead Nation, Housemarque has once again proved it\'s a fearsomely talented quick-change artist of a studio, able to take any genre and get to the guts of it quickly and with a chilly efficiency. Don\'t play Outland because you expect it to be charming and filled with personality, then: play it because of the swooping, speeding cleverness of its design. Play it because of the craft. [size=+2]8/10[/size]
