Outcast: Second Contact
Though glitchy and sometimes clunky, Outcast is a grand adventure. It takes place in a detailed alien world, with tone and milieu reminiscent of those of the Stargate and Avatar movies, the former released 5 years before Outcast and the latter released 10 years after it.
Outcast's gameplay consists mostly of talking to colorful characters and exploring diverse environments, but also has some combat (or sneaking, if you prefer) and puzzle solving. It's important to be aware of this balance: if many hours of spoken dialog does not sound like fun to you, then this is not your kind of game.
The adventure is structured as an "open world," meaning that that for the most part you can go about as you please and complete the main storyline in whatever order makes sense to you. There are also a great many optional quests that complement the story and can enhance your combat ability.
The game's strengths are its world and its characters. It's sheer delight to discover a new area and meet new people, and to learn from them more terminology, culture, and global as well as personal history. The main story is not too complex; the joy of the game is in all the smaller stories comprising the journey to get there. As I moved around the world I got to know and appreciate it more and more, so that by the time the end credits rolled, I had already started missing it.
There are flaws. Firstly, there are glitches galore: in animations, in controls, in interface, in ... just about every aspect of the gameplay. Sometimes they are amusing. But far too often they require you to restart the game or force you to go back to an earlier save. Luckily (or likely because of the glitches) the game auto-saves very often, so you won't have to go too far back in case you forgot to save. In some cases a restart doesn't help and you have to patiently work around a glitch in order to complete a quest.
The clunkiness may be due to this remake staying close to the feel of its 1999 original. The character doesn't move around very gracefully; the terrain has a squarish blockiness to it (despite having high definition textures); the user interface is not that easy to navigate (with an Xbox controller, which is what I used). But I found that with some patience it was possible to adjust.
Actually, patience is an important quality to bring with you to this game. If you're serious about all the side quests, then you will be doing quite a bit of backtracking and busywork. I sometimes call games like this "errand simulations": go there, talk to him, bring this there, come back, now add this, etc. Many of the quests are fun and diverse, but there are also quite a few that are tiresome. Actually, one or two characters seem to know that they are annoying, and even the protagonist snaps sarcastically at their request to again do one more tiny little favor before they can help you... sigh...
Despite being a remake of a game that was 18 years old at the time, it's still not quite up to 2017 AAA standards. The world does look pretty enough, though, and I think the remake does an especially good job at adding a distinct atmosphere to each area in the environment. I haven't played the original nor the 1.1 remaster, but from video comparisons I can say that this version feels more immersive and perhaps matches more closely the vision of the original designers. I understand that the remake otherwise keeps the (clunky) original gameplay mostly intact.
It does seem, though, that this remake was purposely made to be easier than the original 1999 game. For me, who is somewhat experienced with shooter games, Outcast: Second Contact's combat was usually fun, but not very challenging. After some point it actually did become so easy as to be quite boring. Appropriately, it is not the main focus of the game.
If these negatives didn't scare you off, you are in for quite a feast with this immersive, expansive classic.