Thanks to ININ Games for the review code
Title: X-Out: Resurfaced
System: Steam (PC)
Price: $19.99
Release Date: 02/21/2025
Story
In this remake of a classic Rainbow Arts shooter from the Amiga, you must take down an underwater alien force! Containing similar euro vibes to other titles from Rainbow Arts, this is yet another game that focuses less on the plot, and more on the game mechanics. All you need to know is that the alien forces are underwater compared to high in the sky, and you have yourselves a typical horizontal shooting adventure!
Presentation
Being an Amiga title originally, X-Out definitely has the visual hallmarks of games from the platform. Curvy sprites, strange looking environments & enemy designs, along with sound design that is unlike most typical console games. Thankfully with the original X-Out, the composer of Turrican and Giana Sisters was hired and did some great work, leading to a soundtrack fitting of the underwater depths.
So, how does the remake translate the original game into a HD style? Being unfamiliar with the original X-Out before this review, I found that comparing the two side by side, Resurfaced absolutely improves a lot and adds more modern menus and other touch-ups to make the game a lot more appealing on a visual front. I’ve played other Amiga remakes like Gods Remastered and Speedball 2 HD, and compared to those catastrophes X-Out got a stellar treatment, with my only presentational gripes being with the sheer amount of bloom applied to everything with no way of disabling it, along with the sound effects being replaced even if you go for the older OSTs. (since you can toggle between average sounding remixes, the great Amiga OST, or the weird sounding C64 soundtrack)
It would have been real nice to be allowed to tone down that bloom to make the sprites pop more rather than everything looking like it’s trying to light up a dark cave, but I guess in a sense that fits the underwater setting. All in all, a pretty looking sprite based shooter that nails that amiga vibe.
Gameplay
In this horizontal shooter, you start off by going to a shop menu, where you must pick your submarine and customize it using the limited amount of credits you have. You’ll start off with a basic shot even if you skip buying any upgrades, but these upgrades are incredibly helpful and offer lots of different ways of taking out the enemies, such as charge shots, multi-directional shots, and subweapons that can be used in limited amounts. Of course, it helps that there’s more than one submarine type to choose from, although they get incredibly expensive and will require that you save up currency gained between levels to afford the best equipment.
Once you pick a satisfying loadout, it’s off to the depths! You have a simple control scheme, moving with the left stick/D-Pad and firing with the A button, or a rapid fire with R2. You can use your subweapons with B and switch between them on the fly, and can even adjust your speed with L1 and R1 and being how this was an Amiga game originally, being able to use more than one button for weaponry is a much appreciated improvement in Resurfaced. You go through the stage, firing at foes and taking on minibosses and bosses along the way, and will more than likely die.
Back to the start of the game if you do! Yep, there are no continues, and this game is incredibly brutal in an old-school fashion. I’m not bothered by old school, tough as nails shooters, and I enjoy memorizing patterns to get better at them, but X-Out did bug me in a few ways which mostly stems from the sort of jank you’d see going back to computer games of the era. See, while enemy patterns are simple to recognize, the level layouts aren’t particularly ones I’d consider well-made.
Nothing bad mind you, just pretty lackluster compared to other shooters from the late 80s, and I’d even say Project X had a more enjoyable set of levels if we’re sticking to Amiga stuff. The main thing bumping this game’s fun factor down for me stems from just how cruel the level geometry can get if you aren’t already anticipating it. You can tank a few hits from enemy projectiles and really get good at dodging, but if you so much as brush up against a wall, you’re dead, and with seemingly only one life and no way to continue, that can bring the game to a screeching halt if you happen to not notice a tiny stalagmite coming your way. Yes, it still adds to the trial and error gameplay, but when most of my deaths ended up coming from the environment, it really began to grind my gears after a while, and will likely turn off players who are more used to extra lives and continues being a common feature.
Which is a big shame, since eventually I did get better at the game to the point I nearly made it to stage 3. Especially when I was able to save up credits and use those credits to buy a secondary submarine, which acts as your extra life. Of course this means you can encounter the issue of your first ship being super powerful and then you end up with a wimpy ship upon death, but then if you play your cards right, you’ll be able to use that spare life to do more damage than your original ship. So there is merit to the shop system and it adds a bit of strategy I had fun with, enough to keep at the core game for a while despite the sheer brutality. I honestly feel that if the bloom wasn’t crazy in this remaster, then I’d probably have no problem avoiding some of the environmental obstacles, outside of the classic “this is your first time ever seeing a stage and you’ll end up inevitably messing up until you memorize it” syndrome some of these early computer shooters loved doing.
You’d think with all of these gripes and frustrations with the weird difficulty curve, that X-Out Resurfaced would be a game I outright despise, but surprisingly no! Yes, the eurojank is a thing, and your limited resources do add to the difficulty, but I still found myself enjoying this game more than I thought I would for a few reasons; the customization of the ships, and the great soundtrack. If I ever messed up, I at least knew if I tried around and maybe threw on some different equipment, I might be able to get a better outcome, especially if I managed my funds in a way to buy extra lives.
The more I ran through that initial level, the more it burned into my memory for better or worse, so I was able to have no issues clearing it before long. It ended up making each stage feel like a test of my memory, more than anything else, and while I didn’t find the levels themselves all that special, I at least really enjoyed taking on the bosses and seeing the cool aquatic enemies thrown my way, since they still have that Rainbow Arts charm to them. That ultimately made for the experience being a fun challenge for me to take on, even if I seriously doubt I’ll end up fully beating this game without cheats. (since yes, there are in-game cheats you can use, but I refrained from using them for the sake of trying to get a pure experience) Still, with local co-op as a new feature, those might not be a bad idea if you bring a buddy along.
Conclusion
Ultimately, X-Out Resurfaced is a shooter that’s definitely more fun for fans of the original game compared to a newcomer such as myself. A lot of QOL tweaks help make the game enjoyable to play and less tedious than the Amiga original, but make no mistake, Resurfaced is still a very vicious experience. When one wrong move could wipe out your entire lifebar and send you to a game over in no time, it makes going through the stages incredibly frustrating and even borderline cheap at times, if you end up dying to an obstacle you didn’t notice in time or a ceiling tile that you may have not seen well due to the crazy amount of bloom applied to the sprites.
Memorization is key to X-Out, and once you work with that mindset, along with saving credits to buy spare ships vs trying to build a singular sub of destruction, then the game becomes a lot more fun, and I was able to end up appreciating the game a lot more despite me feeling some aspects of that Amiga design did not age all too well. The new modes like Co-Op and mirror mode are neat ideas, but absolutely ones you’ll want to brute force with cheats since I seriously doubt a newbie friend would want to struggle with memorizing such a game as this.
So while Resurfaced might not have done too much to make it appealing to those used to newer STGs, it definitely nailed the target it was aiming for, and I can’t help but still appreciate this remake nevertheless. Honestly, I’d love to see Project X get this sort of gorgeous remaster treatment!
I give X-Out Resurfaced a 6 out of 10.