Outer Terror Review

Outer Terror is a top down twin stick shooter where players need to avoid the endless waves of the undead and shooting everything in their sight. As the genre implies, players move with the left stick and aim with the right joystick. The little addendum is this game features “auto attack” i.e. your character will attack at set intervals by default. It’s up to you to aim at the enemies.

When jumping in, you’ll first be prompted to choose from one of the three available maps. Each of them have their unique objectives to complete in order to clear them. And then you’ll have the choice of 10 playable characters whom unfortunately play very similar.

At the main menu, you can access a shop where you can buy upgrades thanks to the in-game currency earned through your bloody romp. As you roam wider areas, you’ll come across bodies to loot; some of them will contain helpful consumables such as health pack or an item than (very) temporarily keeps enemies at bay. The longer you last, the bigger the enemies became and the higher their numbers.

The way you can survive is that by killing enemies, there’s a meter that fills up slowly in the top left corner. Once full, you can the choice of three power ups assigned to a different face button on the controller. Things like mines, a flamethrower, a melee weapon, health pack; just to name a few. Melee ones and health pack are definitely a life saver.

The game does have a bit of unique flair with its Grindhouse-like presentation; we’re talking B-horror movie visual styling, something we don’t see often enough in the gaming sphere. The in-game visuals look like the good old pixelated goodness straight from the NES era. It’s color and diverse enough for each environment and enemies to be distinguished from one another. The soundtrack is fine for what it is; moody and slightly unnerving.

The biggest problem is the automatic shooting mechanic which restrains players from shooting whenever they want; when aiming to have to strategize things so that you shoot at the proper time and it’s quite irritating. It’s also very grind heavy. While the gameplay/controls feels counterintuitive and works against players, earning money feels like a drag. In roughly the first 30 minutes I had only amassed 70$… and the cheapest item is 500$.

To be honest, when I saw Ratalaika Games pop up on screen, I tempered my expectations, but when I starting playing the game, I discovered one of the most boring, tedious, games I’ve ever played. The fact that you can’t control when you shoot is a giant red flag leaving no control to the player. Trying to kill bigger enemies or figuring how to complete certain objectives (such as the Meat tower thing) is borderline as possible. This is the pure definition of shovelware. Pass.