Outblast Impressions: Old-School Challenge Meets New-School Immersion

Developer Rhino Rock Studios brings side-shooter action to VR with Outblast, a retro sci-fi title that puts you in the role of a pilot charged with stopping a rogue intelligence.

Outblast can be played on flatscreen or in a VR headset, at least for the Steam version. Playing in VR gives you a 360 view of the environment, increasing the challenge as enemies can come from literally anywhere. Sometimes hazards fill the screen, other times you have to search the widened battlefield for any stragglers in order to advance to the next wave.

While playing with VR controllers, you steer your cutting edge C11-28 ship with the left joystick and fire by holding down the right joystick. While you can move in any direction, the weapons only fire left and right - something to keep in mind during the intense shootouts to come.

When starting Outblast, you have the option of playing through Arcade Mode, in which you attempt to clear through the game in a single run, or Stage Select, which unlocks after you clear the first level. There are five different levels, or “districts” for you to clear through, each ending with a punishing boss battle. The objective of each level is to shoot away each wave of enemies before they can annihilate your fighter.

You only have a limited number of lives, and you lose one whenever you are hit by an enemy or laser blast. Likewise, you are given a set time limit, but you gain extra time whenever you clear a wave. If you run out of lives or the time expires, the mission ends and your score is tallied and ranked on an online leaderboard. You can view the leaderboards for Arcade Mode and each individual stage in the main menu.

As you blast away the mechanized cubes and robot centipedes in your way, you collect data fragments that increase your score and build up your energy meter. Once your meter is full, you can spend it to unleash a special weapon attack with the left trigger. You can also use a boost with the right trigger. Boosting is handy while trying to move past the falling block enemies, and you can chain bursts for added distance by timing your trigger presses just right - just make sure not to crash into an enemy while speeding.

There are various power-ups you can collect that grant you extra lives, increase your ship’s rate of fire, or even cause data fragments to fly toward you with a magnet pick-up. Some of these power-ups are contained in a force field that you need to shoot at before you can safely access them.

Outblast’s graphics and visuals go for a Tron-like retro-future vibe, with cyberpunk backdrops, neon outlines and a synthetic soundtrack. Be warned though, it can be easy to lose track of your ship amidst the numerous glowing projectiles and the fact that your ship itself blends a little too well into the background. This is especially true when playing in VR Mode, and spinning around to get your bearings in a 360 space can get dizzying at times.

All in all, Outblast is a fun and challenging throwback to the arcade stick-shooters of old, with the added dimension of being fully immersed in the high-tech battlefield thanks to virtual reality. As I've noted before, the game is every bit as difficult to clear through as those classic coin-munchers, so be prepared to repeat the first district over and over again as you struggle to take on Outblast's swarms of machine enemies.