By Chris Picone, 01 April 2024

Outpost: Infinity Siege is primarily a first person shooter with a strong base management component.  However, it also boasts "tower defence" elements, scavenging and exploration, and an over-arching story including cinematics.  It's an extraordinarily ambitious project. Does it deliver?

First, the graphics are fantastic. Not perfect, exactly - the cartoony profile pictures are a bit out of place, the ground could benefit from some more texture, and combat can get a little messy sometimes.  But, generally speaking, the landscapes are picturesque, the weapons and special effects look decent, animations are smooth, and the cinematics and all the details in the base between missions are impressive.  There's a bit to unpack here in terms of gameplay, because the game tries to do so much.  In terms of the first person shooter element, the combat is interesting conceptually but very poor AI saps the fun out of it. In the base defence mode, swarms of robot enemies flood toward you as if on a rail track and then stop to attack each of your base defences without any sense of strategy. And about the only strategy you can apply is things like taking out the explosive robots before they take your defences out. Likewise, when exploring ruins for salvage, the robots guarding the place just kind of stand around until you shoot them, so the exploration missions feel quite monotonous and become a bit of a drag between the base defence missions.  The base defence missions I've already touched on; you still control your character during these but you also get to manage your base by adding new defences and turrets as they become available through research and acquiring resources. You also need to re-supply your turrets with ammunition and use the repair gun to try to maintain your defences through the bigger fights, which is where the game's co-op element comes in.  The story itself seems like it's going to become interesting further into the game but much of the dialogue seems forced and the huge grindy exploration sequences between each major plot mission drags the story out.

The verdict? Outpost: Infinity Siege has the capacity to become a top tier game but it needs a lot more TLC before it gets there. The good news is, the development team appear to be quite active still, listening to player feedback and rolling out fresh updates and bug fixes each day, so I definitely have hope for this game yet.  Just needs a bit longer in the oven.

 Links:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1566690/Outpost_Infinity_Siege/