PixlBit

Scourge: Outbreak is the latest shooter title to find its way on Xbox Live Arcade, developed by Tragnarion Games and published by UFO Interactive. It’s what you’d expect in a third-person cover shooter – except lacking any semblance of control, visual style, and polish.

Scourge: Outbreak tells the tale of a battle between two factions – one alien, one human. The game centers on the stories of Stonewall, Amp, Mass, and Shade, who collectively make up “Echo Squad,” the epitome of generic 90’s action movie with a hefty helping of meat-headed Gears of War hardass personality. The “Scourge” are a race of plant-looking generic quadrapedal creatures of varying size and shape, but share similar characteristics, such as sharp, pointy teeth, and a bizarre, muddy color scheme. They’re pretty much overgrown headcrab chia pets. They’ll make up the majority of the enemies in the game (hence being the titular “Outbreak”,) among the Nogari.

Every member of Echo Squad has a different variation of the same pair of abilities, those being Static Shield, which is a bubble shield you can create that stays stationary, and the Dynamic Shield that follows you as you move. Each character also has different stats, either focusing on dealing more damage or focusing on passive buffs and abilities. These stats effect which weapons the soldiers are proficient with – but in reality, not a single bit of this matters. Keep reading.

 You’re first given a weapons tutorial (if you so choose to take it) by a man with an Australian accent, because of course all weapons specialists are Australian – this is B movie tropes 101, apparently. After completing the weapons tutorial, you get to take another tutorial on using your abilities, and how your “Ambrosia Suit” interacts with the synthesized glowing yellow goop “Ambrosia.”

 Ambrosia is a powerful energy source that has fallen into the hands of the Nogari corporation – which is your standard evil, science fiction mega-corporation. Your first glimpse into the storyline is a briefing given to you by a man with a Russian accent, explaining that you must retrieve a sample from a meteorite. Did I mention Echo Squad is a mercenary group? The tropes were pretty apparent from the first five to ten minutes of gameplay, and completely negate whatever scintilla of legitimate story was trying to (poorly) claw its way out.

The combat is atrocious – the weapon spread is far beyond usable from the get-go. I would find myself burst firing an enemy with my crosshair directly over his head, and 1 out of 12 bullets would actually hit, so I’d have to compensate by getting closer, which completely negates the purpose of the cover in, you know, a cover shooter. The weapon selection isn’t great – with a rifle, a shotgun, a sniper rifle, an enemy-based rifle, and on occasion you’ll come across a turret or a minigun. The combat is reminiscent of the first Mass Effect, but only in appearance and camera view; the satisfaction, solid control scheme, and bullet spreads that makes sense? Yeah, those aren’t here.

The enemies have what must be Playskool’s brand of AI for children’s games. Bipedal enemies aside – once you begin fighting the “Scourge,” you’ll wonder what the hell they’re thinking – or if they’re thinking at all. The small Scourge, called Scavengers, absolutely love the taste of shotgun pellets, given their affinity for jumping face first into your shotgun’s barrel. I found myself walking into a hallway or room to trigger the enemy scourge to spawn, then I’d sit back at the end of the hallway, ready my ironsights with the shotgun, and just level everything as it leapt right into my firing cone.

There’s 4-Player co-op – but don’t get your hopes up. There aren’t any interesting co-op specific features, or a separate campaign, just the same mind-numbing cliche of a story, the same horrendous script, and the same buggy collision checking and random graphical anomalies. If that isn’t your forte, there’s also competitive multiplayer, but of course this doesn’t make the weapon spread any less horrendous. Trying to hit the AI in the campaign mode is just as difficult as hitting a stationary enemy player, who’s just as bewildered as you are as to why you’re playing this game.

To be a successful independent shooter in a marketplace teeming with generics shooters, you must either do something unique with the genre, or you must have the funds and time to create a clean, functional final product. Scourge: Outbreak has neither of these, as the story, characters, and level design are as standard as they come, and the broken controls and weapon mechanics that are key for a shooter to shine, ruin any chances of anyone being able to look past some of the smaller issues, as the core gameplay is flawed from the start.