In the near future, a meteorite has impacted the Earth, and wouldn’t ya know it…alien parasites were discovered within. And of course scientists have decided to tinker with them, so it goes with out saying that the experiments have gone awry. If they didn’t they wouldn’t would need saving and we wouldn’t need a bad mamajam Marine like you! The aliens grown by the scientists have gotten loose. They appear as sort of a cross between Aliens and the creatures from The Puppet Masters: They spawn out of eggs, but they anchor into a human’s neck to control their actions. Now that everything has gone wrong, they have called you in to clear up the mess.

The game offers a great range of variety for play, utilizing many of the options made popular by games like Ghost Recon. From the beginning, you can select to go the missions alone or bring along a partner. This partner is smarter than the average NPC you drag along in most games. He has a sharp eye for enemies and always has your back. Also if your main character goes down in a firefight, the game automatically switches you to your other teammate. During gameplay you can switch between the two members of your assault team to get a better angle on that pesky sniper or to redistribute weapons load. Outbreak also offers real interaction with an assault team of other players in multiplayer mode.

The player is equipped with a single slick space-age carbine. The gun’s central chamber revolves to switch out ammo types such as SMG, shotgun, sniper and grenades. You’re also equipped with night vision, though you rarely need it, and telescopic vision, a must for those stealthy incursions. The character can also move along in kneeling or a prone position. The moment the character goes prone he is instantly covered in a camouflage screen.

Outbreak balances itself between slow stealthy creeps to fast-paced gun battles, requiring you to sit patiently to get just the right shot on that sniper in the tower or to act fast as the area is swarmed by infected Marines. Experienced FPS gamers will find this a challenging game to play through. There are no cool big guns to grab or huge health packs. Your Marine may grab extra ammo and find a medkit or two, but on more difficult game settings these become very limited.

The game uses a sense of realism in the way it is structured. Your assault team is sent out on each mission and fed updates from HQ. There are no big bads at the end of the mission to beat and the environment is set up for realistic flow. Terrain is constructed very open-ended to allow for flanking moves or more importantly to avoid a patrolling tank. The enemy AI is top-notch: They run for help, use flanking movements and seek cover while laying down a line of fire. In the more difficult game settings you’ll find them to be very tough adversaries.

All in all the game plays smoothly and looks great. If you want to get the feel of creeping through the hills as part of an assault team this gets you pretty close. And like many FPS this game really rocks when you go into multiplayer mode.