Overall, Outlands single-player experience will be familiar to fans of action-platform games such as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. You start out with a limited skill set and gradually gain abilities and more powerful swords as you conquer enemies, uncover ancient artifacts and traverse previously inaccessible locations. But in addition to the sword-swinging combat, Outlands gameplay features a twist. A quick tap of the L2 trigger shifts you between blue and red (light and dark) energy alignments. If you shift to the blue form, youll harmlessly absorb blue projectiles but remain vulnerable to red projectiles, and vice-versa. Outlands most challenging moments tend to pack the screen with a dizzying number of red-and-blue projectile patterns, forcing you to rapidly shift alignments to survive. This is easier said than done, as many platforms are color-coded as well and require tricky timing to land.
We also learned new details about Outlands massive boss battles, particularly one encounter against the High Priestess. Armed with telekinetic abilities, the High Priestess attacks by hurling pieces of the surrounding environment at you. After a while, Sarasohn teased, the entire room breaks apart and starts falling, and youre jumping up pieces of rubble while you continue to fight her in mid-air. Then theres the final boss fight again the Sisters, hinted at in the beginning of the game, which will be particularly challenging according to Sarasohn.
In addition to the single-player campaign, Outland includes an Arcade mode that will challenge expert players to speed-run through scenarios with the highest score possible. But at PAX East, Sarasohn also revealed that Outland includes robust two-player co-op play in two distinct flavors: Story Co-op and Co-op Challenge rooms. When playing the Story mode with a co-op partner, youll occasionally uncover portals that unlock Co-Op Challenges. These challenges arent for the faint of heart. In the Co-op Challenge rooms, we mess with the existing gameplay rules of Outland, Sarasohn revealed. In normal co-op Story play, it doesnt matter what your partner does either player can switch between light and dark alignment as needed. That rule is turned on its head in one Co-op Challenge in which one player controls alignment switching of both players a tall order when the air is thick with red-and-blue projectiles and youre forced to watch your partners back. Then, in a sadistic twist halfway through this particular Co-op Challenge, the other player assumes control of alignment swapping. Like I said: its not for the faint of heart!
Though Outlands co-op modes are limited to online play, Sarasohn says its for a good reason. The reason we did online-only is because we wanted each player to have a full screen so they can see all the puzzles and not have to make blind jumps. Sarasohn explained that Housemarque experimented with a couch co-op mode that constrained both players to one screen, but that players found it frustrating because their movements were limited by the edges of the screen.
