Outpost 2: Divided Destiny

The Good
Sierra made a fairly bold move with Outpost 2: take a game that was by almost all accounts horrible, and make a sequel to it that would offer a more accessible, more complete, more functional, and more exciting experience. It might have worked, had it not been for a few major flaws.

The manual was good—attractive and fairly detailed. A professional sci-fi author was brought on board for the purpose of giving Outpost 2 an actual plot and providing gamers with some interesting backstory. I think the folks at Sierra wanted to redeem themselves with this title, and their effort did shine through in some respects.

The Bad
The graphics and sound were both sub-par. Worse was the fact that the game moved at a very sluggish pace, even at the fastest speed. I have never been a big fan of the tank rush-RTS game, but if Sierra had to make one, they could at least have delivered on the rushing part!

Combat was weak—not that you’d even necessarily notice. The single-player campaign had your planet dying on you, which rather bizarrely shifted the focus of the game away from fighting to a kind of Monty Python approach (“Run away!”) instead. Different from the RTS norm, to be sure, but still not much fun.

The Bottom Line
A mediocre blend of elements from Command & Conquer and Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, Outpost 2 failed to remove the bad taste from gamers’ mouths left by the first Outpost game. The RTS approach was an interesting idea, but it just wasn’t implemented well enough to save the franchise from extinction.