After noticing Outer Terror during my monthly trawl for new games, I was immediately drawn to its pulp horror aesthetic and irreverent tone. I missed it the first time around, when it landed on PC last year, but I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice, especially after reading the generally favourable reviews that are already out there.
After building up a bit of excitement for Outer Terror, I have to say that I was a little disappointed with the experience it delivered. As I’m a glass half-full type of guy, I’m going to try to find the positives, but ultimately this one didn’t click for me in the way I hoped it would.
Five times the terror
First up, the horror vibes are great. Outer Terror has tons of style and I LOVE the pulpy wrapper that this is presented in. This is an ode to b-movies and body horror and if you’re into the genre you might think it’s worth picking up for that alone. I love a good “bad movie” and I can tell that this game has been built by people who also appreciate tongue-in-cheek horror.
The game is actually a collection of five smaller, individual campaigns, each with their own mechanics and side-quests. This approach reminded me of a true classic: Die Hard Trilogy. This PS1-era title smushed together a trio of very disparate cinematically-inspired experiences and, despite being all kinds of janky, it delivered an unforgettable if somewhat cheesy depiction of the first three Die Hard movies. Outer Terror does the same but for horror tropes.
As mentioned, there are five campaigns, and each of them has two characters apiece. You can mix and match, but the narratives are only intended to fit the respective characters for each story. Picking the wrong one creates a narrative dissonance that undermines the comic-panel intros and even the missions themselves.
Discovering the differences between the five different stories is probably the best part of the game, so I’ll go light on details in order to preserve some mystery for you. I will say that not all of them are as good as the others, and one in particular ended up being a weird labyrinthine trek between two different dimensions and it didn’t fit the gameplay staples at all, in my humble opinion. Still, VoxPop and Salt & Pixel have made a big effort to differentiate the campaigns within the confines of the auto-shooter framework, and there are a few fun surprises in there.
Surviving robots, aliens, and even the odd vampire
I’m impressed that I’ve got this far without mentioning that Outer Terror is somewhat inspired by Vampire Survivors. However, beyond sharing the basic underlying principles of the burgeoning auto-shooter genre, some of the things that make me love Vampire Survivors simply aren’t as obvious here. The most notable absence: truly interesting decisions.
Of course, there are new weapons to pick up and items to aid you, but there’s just not enough variety and item synergy to make things truly compelling. At one point I was picking between two different kinds of axe, and another time I was just boosting the fire rate of my weapons again and again. I can see that the devs are trying to keep things within the fiction of each horror setting, but it left me feeling just a little uninspired when trying to create my build for each new run.
I do, however, love the retro aesthetic, and the various sprites are charming in a low-fi kinda way. The five different stories have their own enemies, so in one you’ll be battling Lovecraftian horrors, while in another you’ll have to deal with swarms of aliens. This much needed variety rescues Outer Terror from the pits of boredom, and while the progression isn’t all that exciting, the different settings and enemies are. The addition of couch co-op is most welcome, too.
An epic conclusion or the same old story?
I really liked the way the 2D sprites are rendered on a 3D plane; an approach the reinforces the retro vibes. Yet, given the low poly count and the pixelated avatars, I was very surprised with the amount of texture pop-in. Sometimes it makes sense, for example, when in a built-up area and buildings disappear to make things easier to navigate. Yet at other times, scenery would just disappear completely and never return, breaking the immersion needlessly.
I didn’t much like the audio side of things, and the melee-focused characters were particularly annoying with their constant grunts. That said, I would like to come back to saying how much I appreciated the overall aesthetic: Outer Terror knows what kind of game it wants to be and it revels in that identity.
There are some great ideas tucked away in here, but for me they didn’t come together to make the compelling experience I expected from a game with this much swagger. Having said that, I do think that there’s a chance I’m a bit jaded when it comes to games inspired by Vampire Survivors, and someone without any auto-shooters under their belt will likely find the meta-progression more interesting – ignorance may well be bliss in this instance. In my case, I felt like I was re-watching an old movie that I’ve seen one too many times before.
Outer Terror is out now on PC, PlayStation, Switch, and Xbox. I played the game on Xbox with a code provided by the PR Hound.
