Sigh. Another dark corridor, another twisted and mutated beast to pump full of plasma, lead or shrapnel. No doubt when I get off this level I’ll be treated to a brief trot through a courtyard or maybe a field, before being forced back underground into the “mimsy” darkness. Sound familiar? Well, don’t fret. There is a cure for gritty first-person shooter overload in the guise of Outrigger – a counter-terrorism themed FPS from Sega-AM2. The only “Rainbow” in this game is in its use of colour.

Virtua Cop?
It might not seem like much, but the Virtua Cop-style visual cues the game uses really help the player to not only locate and track opponents within their field of view, but also provide an indication of an enemy’s readiness to attack in the single player modes. As the reticule changes from yellow through to red, be prepared for some incoming.

Ported from Naomi arcade hardware to the Dreamcast, the game was always destined to be a polished showcase of the DC’s capabilities. The vibrancy and pace of the game (even in four-player split screen) is breathtaking, but Outtrigger’s arcade roots run deeper than surface polish and presentation. In general, FPS games tend to be drawn-out affairs laced with pockets of intense action. In translating the genre to the arcade, AM2 made a number of canny decisions and concessions, essentially stripping away all of the fat to leave behind a concise treatise of everything that is great about the genre.

Video - CPU dies

For starters, Outtrigger’s arenas are compact and yet intricate in their design, making good use of the three dimensional space to ensure that peril and sanctuary can be sought with the minimum of travel. Should you wish, the entire game can be experienced from an over the shoulder, third person perspective giving the game a more accessible viewpoint for those who aren’t FPS initiates. Weapons, too, are economical, with each of the four characters starting with three default weapons straight out of the box – a rapid fire gun for close quarters combat and shooting down rockets, a more powerful (but slower-firing) ‘launcher and some form of grenade or bomb. Additional time limited weaponry and power-ups are available, including a neato set of thermal imaging goggles that allow the player to see through walls.

John Kettley
The game sports some pretty weather effects including snow, rain, thunderstorms (including lightning) as well as day and night illumination. Playing in the dark makes the acquisition of the “Noctovision” goggles a top priority. The Dreamcast can’t quite handle all the visual icing in split screen play so most of the neat stuff has been dropped to keep the game running at a steady sixty frames per second: a small price to pay.

A lot of these features aren’t unique and can be found in plenty of other FPS games, but it’s their combination here that works so well in conjunction with the game’s unique scoring system. Theoretically, it’s possible to win a match of Outtrigger without firing a single shot, since a point is awarded for a kill and an additional point or two for collecting the medals dropped by dead adversaries. It’s this scoring system that completely shifts the emphasis of the game away from the ground occupied by the traditional stalwarts of the genre and the reason the game is misunderstood by a lot of die-hard FPS fanatics. In Outtrigger, camping and sniping strategies don’t pay dividends, because killing from a distance means you miss out on the additional point for the dropped medal. Instead, blindly running in guns blazing, trying to snag a coin dropped from someone else’s kill, is the order of the day, and it makes for a more full frontal and personal experience all-round.

Video - 2 player 1 sided

There’s no doubt that Outtrigger is geared towards multiplayer gaming, but lone players haven’t been forgotten. Aside from the eponymous “Arcade mode” the game sports a quite passable one player mission mode which draws together a variety of challenges, ranging from dodging missiles to sniping gunmen on rooftops, as well as the more usual match-ups against CPU- controlled ‘bots’. It’s here that the game shows its second clever little innovation, in the guise of the combo timer. The timer is reset after every kill and combos are earned by killing again before the timer runs out. Hardly original, but it adds a dash more urgency to the already heady cocktail of adrenaline-rich kinetic action.

Unlockables
Playing through the mission mode unlocks additional arenas, character models and weapons for use in the multiplayer game. It’s the unlockable weapons though that provides the most scope for variation within the multiplayer game, and deciding which three to outfit your character with can totally change the way the game has to be approached.

Sadly there is one fly in the ointment. Infuriatingly the game doesn’t allow for a fully customisable control setup, eschewing this in favour of a host of predefined, control layouts. The good news is that the game support’s the use of the DC keyboard and mouse for one or two players, which is the preferred and most enjoyable control option.

Video - Intro

When this game was released, the European version had the online functionality stripped out (thanks, Sega Europe). Still, that hardly matters now that the servers have died. Thankfully, the game is still great through split screen and - despite its detractors - stands as a shining example of AM-2’s design acumen; concentrate hard enough you can imagine Hiroshi Kataoka (AM-2’s then president) flipping a brief but smug “V” sign to the West, saying “anything you can do, we can do better”.