The Outfit

 Armed to the teeth with a repeating repertoire  of cheesy insults and ammo, Aviator glasses, a never ending cigar, and one ridiculous name, Captain Deuce Wlliams looks like he marched straight out of the Generic Bad-Ass Soldier Creator. But that’s the thing, when was the last time you played as a bad-ass in a World War 2 game? In most you play as some speechless emotionless shell of a man, but in The Outfit, the characters are given life, emotions, and a long list of verbal obscenities. Accompanied by a corny story line that hits all the spectrums of violence, romance, and betrayal, things go pretty well.

The story follows The Outfit, a team of three run-of-the mill bad-ass American commandos, as they attempt to take down the presumudly evil SS General Victor Morder who’s hiding somewhere in France. On the way, Deuce and crew encounter a variety of characters from an untrustworthy Priest, a pretty rebel whom your squad member, Tommy Mac, falls in love with, and plenty of evil Nazi’s. I wouldn’t worry too much about the story, just turn your brain off and try to enjoy it.

The aim of each level is to wind through capturing spawn points while doing minor objectives, with the end goal being to capture the point at the end of the road. Most of the levels are pretty uncreative, just long windy roads littered with enemies and capture points. Each capture point will give you a different ability, for example the Motor Pool will allow you to call-in tanks and other heavy vehicles. The minor objectives or all level specific, and won’t result in a game over if failed, things like defend point the village and such are the norm.

At the beginning of each level and every time you spawn, you’ll have the option to decide which character you’ll play as. The Rocket Launcher wielding Deuce, Tommy Mac and his Machine Gun /Flamethrower combo, or Taylor and his Sniper Rifle. All characters can hold their own, and it isn’t really much of an issue seeing as the A.i. is pretty dumb. Some of the Tanks are overpowered, resulting in a total road-block of enemies that you just can’t get close enough to kill, making the abismal level design even more prelevant, but there’s always a way to rough on through it.

Probably The Outfits most notable feature though is Destruction on Demand, which allows you to call in a variety of Vehicles, emplacements, bombing runs, and reinforcements. Of course you’ll have to pay with Command Points which are earned via capturing outposts and killing Nazi’s. The most notable feature of the game being a rather uninteresting game mechanic with a name the PR people must have loved is pretty worrying, but when combined with everything else, it adds another layer of strategy and can be pretty helpful.

The Multiplayer is what you’d expect, the same thing as the story mode but with real people. The back of the box describes Intense Multiplayer Action, but I had the most fun jumping into a game with a friend and spending the entire time pushing him around in a wheelbarrow! When they said you could use any vehicle, they weren’t kidding. There are a bunch of Multiplayer achievements, but being a close to launch game, they’re either really easy or absurdly difficult. The Story mode achievements only require you to complete the levels along with their sub objectives.

Really, the Outfit is a pretty sub-par game, but what it does bring to the WWII table is some personality, something that a lot of generic WWII shooters should really take look at. At the moment, you’ll be able to find the Outfit for under $8, so go get it and have some fun.