Scourge: Outbreak

What we have here with Scourge Outbreak is a 3rd person cover shooter that was released on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. It was released as a downloadable title and as a result, it is lacking a little bit in the overall quality department in terms of the presentation. The cool thing about this game is that it was made with the intent of playing with three of your friends in mind. It does allow you to play as a solo player, but the real fun is with your friends.

Saving The World

If you enjoy sci-fi stories then I think you will enjoy the story that Scourge Outbreak is telling. An elite team of badasses called Echo-Squad is sent along with Alpha-Squad to look into the massive energy company, Nogari corporation that has been using this meteorite and its properties to put a real stranglehold on the world.

You go to take them down, end up betrayed by Alpha-Squad, and if that was not bad enough, you have to deal with an alien threat too. You need to save the world and stop the bad guys. Sure, it is rather basic stuff, but I found it pretty fun.

Gears Of Scourge

Scourge Outbreak came out after the Gears of War series had made the cover shooter genre mainstream. You can play as one of four characters in Stonewall, Amp, Mass, and Shade. Each character has their own progression system in the game and each character has two abilities, one being a shield style ability and the other being a huge damaging ability. I liked the differences between the characters and thought they were all fun.

The cover shooter mechanics are fine, they are nothing special and it lacks that wow factor of a game like Gears of War, but everything works well enough. You have a nice selection of weapons to use too which helps make the combat fun.

Fighting With Your Friends

As I said earlier, Scourge Outbreak is a game that is designed to be played with others. If you play this on your own, the other four members of Echo-Squad will be controlled via AI. The AI does a decent enough job of keeping up with you, reviving you, and so on. However, to get the most out of this game you have to play with your friends. If you can communicate with your buddies, all working together, laughing, and having a great time this is a decent game.

Rough, But It Gets The Job Done!

I have to say that as far as the presentation goes, this is a tad rough around the edges. It is not a bad-looking game, but I do like the sci-fi world that they have created here. It is done decent enough, but some of the backgrounds and scenery has a real low-quality and jaggy kind of look to them.

Pros:

• I liked the story that the game told
• If you can play with people, it is a pretty fun experience
• Each character feels kind of different
• You can still play the Steam version online

Cons:

• The game is rough in most areas
• If you cannot play it with friends, it is rather lackluster