X-Out is a horizontal shoot 'em up with an unusual underwater setting and a ship-building system, released for the Commodore 64 in 1990 by the German studio Rainbow Arts. The game takes place underwater, and its distinctive feature is a phase before each mission where the player assembles their own submarine from various available modules - hull, engines, armor, and weapons - and only then heads into action against enemy forces hidden in the ocean depths and its underwater bases bristling with defense turrets.
This emphasis on carefully tailoring the ship before each mission set X-Out apart from most competing space shooters and made the player think as much about equipment combinations as about the actual shooting, dodging, and recognizing individual enemies' weak points. The graphical depiction of the underwater world, with richly drawn backgrounds full of coral, wrecks, and sea creatures, together with the music, gave the game a distinctive atmosphere, noticeably different from the space themes then common among competing titles in the genre. A poorly assembled submarine could sink even an otherwise experienced player as early as the first half of the game, so it paid to carefully think through the choice of weapons and armor before heading into action.
X-Out was among the more technically and creatively ambitious products of the German scene at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s and confirmed the reputation of Rainbow Arts, already built by earlier titles like Katakis or Turrican, as a publisher with a knack for imaginative genre design and quality craftsmanship. The game is still valued today, mainly by genre fans, for its unconventional take, ship upgrade system, and musical score, even though even at the time it was one of the more demanding and less forgiving entries in the vertical and horizontal shooter genre, aimed at advanced and patient players.
Why play it: For fans of vertical shooters looking for an unconventional ship-upgrade system - but expect higher, less forgiving difficulty than in competing titles.
Game 112 of 121 for Commodore 64
