Outland is an amazing platformer with a simple but great concept that is well suited for games

User Rating: 8.5 | Outland PS3
Outland is an easy game to get into, the mechanics are very simple in concept but become challenging in practice. The structure of the game is well made and will start out simple making sure you get the hang of each mechanic and power before moving on to new ones.

This challenging platformer will have you defeating enemies and evading tricky traps at every step. You get both light and dark powers, which are represented by colors blue and red. By shifting into each of those attunements you become immune to the same colored projectiles and traps but cannot harm the same colored enemies, so much of the gameplay is about using the colors effectively both in platforming and in combat.

The platforming works well, your character runs fast, jumps high and automatically grabs on ledges. Visuals are artistic and colorful, where black is everything inanimate like terrain and walls, and colored stuff are enemies and projectiles, but the backdrop comes in many different varieties.

The bosses play a big part of what makes Outland great, but there are only 5 of them. Each of them becomes more challenging and varied in attacks, but most of them play the same, you avoid their attacks and then strike them once they open a weakpoint.

There are about 20 levels to play across 5 different themed environments. The levels themselves are kinda short, but you will often stop to study the patterns of enemy projectiles and traps, so the length of each level depends on your skill. Outland isn't a particularly a long game but it also isn't a very short one, an average time to complete it is probably at about 6 hours. If you're into action/puzzle platformers, it doesn't get any better than Outland.