Out of Time
Review
Time Warp
by Samuel Corey
reviewed on PC
Enter the Generic-verse
It always gives me a moment of pause when a game's concept is so impossibly vast that it could theoretically add any character, enemy, monster, or item into its setting and have it slot in seamlessly. On the surface, this might seem like a great thing. Imagine what a fun, vibrant property could contain the skeleton warriors from Army of Darkness, Night City from Cyberpunk 2077, and Robbie the Robot from those old 1950s movies. However, functionally, all this means is that the canvas these items are inserted into is so devoid of any personality itself that nothing clashes with it. Tofu is a wonderful ingredient to cook with, but I don't think anyone wants to play the tofu of Rogue-likes.
Unfortunately, Out of Time is exactly that. It's a bland, forgettable game with repetitive gameplay and a generic art style. The only way the game distinguishes itself is, paradoxically, in how undistinguished it is. It's a bit like the kind of game you would see playing on a TV in a background shot of a movie that didn't have the budget to license a real video game.
The game is set after some terrible chronological apocalypse called the Shattering that has merged all the different timeline periods and timelines together. This means that medieval knights, modern soldiers, and trans-human space marines are all slammed together in the same surprisingly small and sparsely populated city hub area. To make matters worse, the game does not confine itself to just historical settings and enemies, bringing in all sorts of fantastical monsters and sci-fi elements that make the focus impossibly broad and generic.
Now, it is not impossible to have a game about time traveling with a disparate cast of characters hailing from a variety of different epochs, and have everything feel like it belongs to a coherent work of art. Chrono Trigger managed just such a feat thirty years ago. However, Chrono Trigger was set in a coherent world with a shared history. Sure, Frog was a knight from the Middle Ages and Robo was a robotic construct from the far future, but at least both inhabited the same timeline! Moreover, Chrono Trigger was a coherent story that gave its oddball characters a chance to interact with each other. Out of Time is a multiplayer grind-athon rogue-like with little story and no characters to speak of. There just isn't any opportunity for the disparate elements to gel together.
The lack of identity is not helped by the game's art style, which could be charitably described as Fortnite-like. All the characters, settings, and enemies in the game look painfully generic. Nothing here stands out or gives even the slightest hint of personality.
Do the Time Warp Again and Again... And Again
A lack of a distinct visual style could be saved by a fun or at least engaging primary gameplay loop. Nobody ever said Tetris or 2048 were overflowing with personality, but they have both eaten up millions of man-hours all the same. Unfortunately, Out of Time only manages to rise to the level of intermittently fun. For the most part, it's just boring and numbing.
Your regular attacks are all done automatically; you just need to move your character into range with their melee weapon, and they will automatically swing, or point at enemies with your ranged weapon, and it will automatically fire. All you really can do is move the character around and occasionally spam out special abilities you get based on your gear. Enemy waves spawn steadily as you advance through the level, and about the only thing that varies is the placement of resources and the occasional special event on the map. There are a lot of different enemy types that spawn in, but other than having melee vs ranged attacks, or more or less health, they don't really feel different from each other.
The key to a successful Rogue-like is making each run feel unique from all the other runs. Randomized level design can go some way towards this goal, but randomly assigned weapons and abilities do a lot more. Hades remains fresh after a couple of hundred runs because each run sees you getting equipped with a new set of divine abilities that force you to use different approaches and strategies. In Enter the Gungeon, each run felt distinct because you would find different weapons from the game's huge arsenal. In Out of Time, however, your abilities are locked to the gear you bring with you before heading into each mission, so there is no real room to be surprised on each run.
That said, there is some fun to be had customizing your equipment and build in between runs. However, even here, it feels like you need to invest a tremendous amount of time into grinding to get better equipment. Ultimately, the game just feels boring and repetitive, and while there's some fun to be had playing it with a group of buddies, you would probably be better off with a more engaging co-op game.
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5.0
fun score
Pros
Lots of room to customize character with items and abilities
Cons
Generic art style, Gameplay is more numbing than engaging, Lacks a distinct personality.
