Resurrection: Codename: Outbreak
Prototype…
Resurrection: Codename: Outbreak
Continued…
Each has its strengths and weaknesses. Launching rockets and sniping sees you at your most powerful, but those ammunition types are scarse. The machinegun is useful, but loud, giving away your position to all nearby enemies. The laser is almost inaudible to the enemy, but its lack of punch means precision is key. Deciding whether to go in with guns held high, or creep in during the dead of night, is often to make the decision between survival and hideous death.
It’s the times spent carefully waiting behind cover, issuing orders and attempting to remain unscathed when Outbreak is at its absolute best, and when it’s so clearly prototyping the ideas that became Stalker. As with its spiritual successors, Outbreak is at its most suspenseful when creeping through the grass, using your scope to zoom in on the land ahead, carefully sidestepping the area where a pack of enemies are going about their own business. Its more traditional action sequences – particularly those indoors – are very much showing their age now. But in those outdoor moments, those wide expanses that Stalker went on to define, Outbreak is often magical.
Not the tightest fit
Magical and stupid. Beyond barmy. Returning to the game recently, I could not believe the soundtrack – a head-banging techno-goth-metal Rammstein-esque heap of nonsense that is so unfitting to the game. The script is just utterly, utterly terrible, and the voice acting so atrocious – to the point where you wonder if it’s all intentional. As certain other Eastern European games have proven, sometimes this strange lack of cohesion delivers something more remarkable than it has any right to be.
Outbreak’s quirks don’t quite have that effect. But then there are the long stretches during which there’s no dialogue, and the soundtrack drops out, and you’re bathed in an eerie silence, only the sounds of wildlife, wind and footsteps in your ears. And then you remember who made this game, and what they went on to make, and it all becomes so clear.
Because, in those moments, it’s Stalker all over. Or, rather, Stalker extracted those moments from Codename: Outbreak and crafted an entire game around them. Its linear but 
expansive outdoor levels, its bleak and desolate atmosphere, its masterful use of ambient sound (and even interface sound, for Stalker’s bleeps and bloops are almost identical to those of Outbreak) – they all combine to create something that is so distinctly a GSC Game World creation. Outbreak might have much more of a sense of humour than its successor – albeit a completely crazy one – but the threads running between the games are remarkably strong.
Almost a decade later, time has in some ways not served it so well. Visually it’s under-par even when stood next to others of its era, and the action, while complex, feels flaky and imprecise by modern standards. Yet at the same time, it’s precisely because of that complexity, and the shakiness that comes with it, that Outbreak remains tense and engrossing despite a whole host of incongruent elements.
This was a game well ahead of its time, one sadly forgotten and overshadowed by what its skilled development team did next. And while the Stalker series – particularly the most recent instalment, Call of Pripyat – deserves all the praise it’s received, I’m left with the nagging feeling that Codename: Outbreak should be taking some of the credit.
Pages: 1 2
GSC were genuinely gutted about the average-to-poor reviews this got at the time. One of the devs came over to Bath to talk to me about it and I thought he was going to cry, poor mite.
Great article, makes me want to install the game again even if I did replay it only a couple of months back.
What a well-focused article; it makes me want to play this thing again, it just felt too confusing back in the early 2000’s.
Mein gott – so I’m not dreaming every time I look at my shelf and see this game in its pretty green DVD case =)
A pleasure to have that little existential doubt rectified.
Moreso to know someone else has noticed how damn.. progressive, this game was. A lovely balance between fun and realism I’ve seen in -very- few games since. Actually STALKER is in many ways a less satisfying game, for the ridiculously endurant enemies and unreasonably weak, inaccurate weapons that plague the first many hours of a game. Not to mention the linear dungeons packed with scripted mutant attacks.
In short, Codename: Outbreak was good WITHOUT modding it, managed to implement functional co-op as a basis of the game, not a tacked on gimmick, and even indoors was a true sandbox for the most-part.
Oh, little memories. Those horrible alien beasties.
The voice-logs and details found around enemy bases, they were more ‘Deus Ex’ than Stalker, more System Shock. STALKER is in many ways embarassingly shallow in comparison. This was a subtler game, despite the truly incredible acting. Those deep robotic voices. The rather interesting Russian woman briefing you on the screens in the dropship.
Oooh, the camoflauge net! The proning! Accurate long range headshots! The transforming megaguns, the night vision.
Bloody holes in the bodies, allowing you to see how skilled your kills were when you go to loot the bodies ;>
The cameraview via your teammates eyes, allowing you surveillance via two screens at once.
Open world, rough guidelines in the mission briefings as to what you may expect, making tactical decisions every step of the way and never knowing what the very random, very ‘alive’ AI would do next.
Rather Freespace, actually.
Yes, in most ways STALKER was a step backwards. Pretty, but still as camp, still as buggy, and so much less ambitious. It was a triumph that STALKER ever crawled its way out of development hell, but they were a beaten, bruised, chastised developer by that point.
We can only hope their recent successes will give them the confidence to once again discover *ambition*.
– Jack
Well I’m definitely intrigued. For some reason I have the greatest urge to go out and buy this. RIGHT NOW. GSC, consider yourselves at peace.
I remember when I was travelling around the world for a year. Right near the end I went to a big electronics market in Hong Kong and all the screens were showing trailers for this game. It looked really awesome and I wanted to try it out.
But when I got back home a while later I discovered it had really average reviews, so I never tried it.
I think, looking back, that there a quite a few games in a similar position. Games that were, while maybe not perfect, so far ahead of their time in terms of ideas, that they got reviewed compared to the current genre – and so got reviewed pretty badly.
Outcast is another one. Playing it recently, in so many ways it was so far ahead of it’s time, and all it’s elements have now become accepted. But compared strictly against what was expected at the time, it didn’t fair well.
Well this article made me want this. So now I have it. Upon arseing around with it for an hour or so I must say.
Fuckin’ A.
It’s weird and the presentation of the plot is hilariously bad. But by Jove the actual meat of the Game surpasses most modern first-person shooters. I wandered, I shot future-cop men, I fell in a hole and it was filled with aliens.
It has most everything that I want from level design so far. If it doesn’t fuck it up to much…
Game of the year.
Hey guys I always loved this old game but I never had the full game. Recently I bought from play.com for just 3€! The game is so awesome, just like I remembered! So I created a Steam group! Come join and maybe we could arrange an online match! http://steamcommunity.com/groups/VenomCodenameOutbreakGroup