Gaming Target - Dreamcast: Outtrigger

Written by Daniel Pelfrey on May 29, 2001

First Impressions: Oh, shoot!

Take the FPS (First Person Shooter) genre, mix in Sega's brand of goodness, sprinkle in some Dreamcast graphic capabilities, and stir well. Spread liberally on one GD-Rom. The FPS genre hasn't really evolved much since the days of DOOM. You take your weapons of mass destruction, run around shooting anything that move looking for bigger guns to pick up (in order to shoot anything that moves better).

While it's hard to improve on a tried and true formula, that's what Sega's Outtrigger tries to do. Your typical FPS is light on plot, and this game isn't going to be an exception to the norm. Something about terrorists, maybe some agency called Interforce. But really who cares. You just want to pick up the controller and blow stuff up. You definitely get to do that with Outtrigger. After selecting your character, you go on to a training level. This is nice, because people used to the old mouse and keyboard setup for online FPS games will need a little time to adjust. And that seems to be about all of us, because the home console market is still figuring out just how to work out how FPS will work with controllers.

Single player is mission based, with lots of detailed levels and liberally generated power ups. In order to get to the next level, you have to accomplish you mission (see, mission based) usually something to the effect of taking out a certain number of enemies within a certain amount of time. Some of the power-ups strewn throughout levels not only include med kits (for those of you who dare get hit) and more ammo (for those of you who can't shoot straight) but clocks as well, to increase the amount of time you have to accomplish your objectives.

But not many people get a FPS game for the single player experience. Multiplayer is where this genre is at, and Outtrigger promises to bring home that specific flavor of bacon as well. Several modes of multi-player online play will be available. Oh, didn't I mention this title is online? This is a Sega title, pioneers of the home console online play. SegaNet will have a chunk of space set aside for Outtrigger's online multi-player game modes. Some of these will be team co-op play, or plain old death match.