It has been a number of months now since the release of The Outer Worlds on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Despite the excitement I had for the game leading up to and after launch I made a conscious choice not to play it until the Switch release was available. Let’s be honest, a game of this magnitude would seem inferior on Nintendo’s hybrid system after being played on a 4K capable machine. So instead of going into this review with that mindset, I wanted to see the game like a Switch-only player would and conduct my review from that standpoint. And finally, the Switch version has arrived and I have to admit the end product is an interesting one.

Story

To the residents of the Halcyon system, the colony ship Hope has been missing for almost 100 years. In actuality, the colony ship did arrive in Halcyon but due to an equipment malfunction it had to travel in normal space which led to the inability to revive its frozen colonists. So for a number of years the Hope remained a dormant legend out in space with its frozen crew. Well, that is until a scientist named Phineas Welles manages to revive one of the frozen colonists and sends them on a mission to gather enough supplies to reanimate the remainder of the colonists.

Gameplay

To me, The Outer Worlds is a cool mix of Fallout meets Firefly! Despite the intense futuristic setting, the game has a very westernish feel. As the game begins you head down to the planet of Terra 2 to meet up with a ship captain to accomplish the necessary tasks to revive the Hope’s colonists. Unfortunately for the captain, you end up crushing him to death upon landing and end up taking over his ship instead. The ship has been damaged so you need to retrieve a new power converter for it to be flyable. This is where the world-building of The Outer Worlds really begins.

The Halcyon system is, mostly, controlled by an organization known as the Board with a number of mega-corporations serving under its banner. Most planets and towns are Board run with specific procedures and expectations for its citizens. Deciding to be a complete rebel I had a blast just screwing with the Board in my playthrough. The first opportunity came from the game's first town, Edgewater. Heading into Edgewater to talk with the boss about a power converter results in him giving you a mission to cut off power from a nearby deserter camp. These are people who left the town in an attempt to get out from under Board control. No sooner had he given me this mission, and a partner to help out with it, I decided to just liberate the town in a more direct way by lopping off the dudes head!

Of course, the town citizens didn’t realize the benevolence of this act and immediately decided I had to die on sight which led to a rather unfortunate massacre of most of the population… whoops. After escaping from the town I went to talk to the deserters as originally assigned and learned more about their plight. Heading out to the power plant I then diverted power away from Edgewater to the deserter camp thus finishing the liberation of the city from the oppression of the Board! Upon returning to the town to claim my desperately needed power converter the remaining citizens, still not understanding how much I had done for them, attacked again without mercy leading to another unfortunate slaughter… double whoops.

It is this freedom of approach that I have loved most about The Outer Worlds. Each situation has a number of ways to go about them. I built my character into a very smart and charismatic sharpshooter who could talk their way out of any situation or just outright destroy anyone depending on how I felt. The game offers enough freedom that no matter the choice you make you can still progress to the end and I have enjoyed it immensely!

Along your journey, you get to recruit a number of allies who will join your crew. While nothing new for this style of game, I haven't really cared about the members of my crew in many games since Mass Effect. The dialogue options in The Outer Worlds and things you can do with them are up there with some of my favorites. It also helps make the world feel more alive and constructed which is always a plus in my book. As you progress through the game your crew can grow to like your approaches to situations or think you are outright scum and take off for good. As they level up through use in your squad, bonus perks can be unlocked for them to help you out in certain situations. My character isn’t the most scientific but thanks to keeping a certain squadmate with me I get a nice buff with that which unlocks additional avenues of completion for certain tasks.

The RPG elements to the game were enjoyable enough and easy to get the hang of. Each level up gives players 10 stat points they can place into different areas of their characters to improve them. Every 2nd level up also unlocks a skill point to help further boost the potential of your characters. As you unlock more skills, different tiers will begin to unlock with better perks.

Combat has also been pretty fun with there again being a number of ways to go about it. You can always take the stealthy approach to get around certain encounters or go in guns blazing to wipe out the opposition. A number of different weapon classes are available from melee weapons, pistols, shotguns, machine guns to snipers. Each weapon has felt great to use but I found myself drawn to melee and snipers in particular. On the Switch, aiming can be done with just traditional thumbsticks or through the use of motion aiming. I am not yet sold on motion aiming like many out there seem to be, so I left that disabled and had no trouble lining up shots on my Switch Lite, unlike other games on the platform. 

To further help in combat, The Outer Worlds has its own version of bullet time which will slow down the action on screen to help you land tactical shots in a brief window of time. I have used this feature to land a couple of consecutive headshots on stronger foes or to destroy a series of explosive barrels to wipe out larger groups before they could reposition. I love messing with it and am happy about its inclusion. The backstory of it being a side effect of being frozen for so long was also pretty clever to me.

Visuals

Despite enjoying the game quite a bit and purposefully avoiding the other versions to not get used to the better visuals they would produce,  it is easy to spot the Switch version's shortcomings. Resolution is pretty low, but thanks to playing on a Switch Lite never looked completely awful on that front alone. Sadly though, the rest of the graphical settings are also low and the game is not impressive to look at. Textures are muddy and bland with not much in the way of surface detail. Distant objects are also pretty distorted so you may not always pick up on where something is without the waypoints the game throws down for everything quest related. Looking at screenshots from the other versions it also looks like a number of trees, bushes, and grass have also been removed, leaving some oddly colored ground textures in their stead. Honestly, I didn’t expect much in the way of graphical fidelity for this version with it being a port from other consoles. If you have played DOOM 2016 or Wolfenstein 2 on the Switch you should have a good idea of what to expect here.

Audio

Playing through The Outer Worlds with a pair of headphones was a good experience. Voice work, sound effects, and music all came through clearly and I couldn’t notice any compression on my end. Despite the visual cutbacks, I am happy that it at least sounded great!

What It Could Have Done Better

The biggest thing I can criticize about The Outer Worlds on Switch is its load times. Each time you enter a new area you are met with a long 35+ second load. If you accidentally enter a building you didn’t mean to, that is an instant minute you have lost. I have also heard reports from other reviewers that they encountered buffering while out in the world. This isn’t an issue I personally ran across during my time with the game but I thought it warranted mentioning. For anyone susceptible to frame drops, larger fights will also leave you a bit underwhelmed as there are some dips.

Verdict

I have a strong belief that a good game is good even if it doesn’t have the best graphics and that is how I feel about The Outer Worlds on Switch. The game is really nothing impressive to look at but I have enjoyed my time with it and glad that I finally got to play through it. There are still a few things I hope get worked on with subsequent patches, like the long loading times, but overall I am happy with the released product. If you exclusively only play on Switch, The Outer Worlds can definitely give you a good number of hours of play across multiple playthroughs. If you have played the game on a more capable platform though, the downgrades in the visual department will likely be unacceptable to you. Either way, The Outer Worlds fills a void in the Switch’s library I am sure owners of the system will be happy to have filled!