OutRage Fight Fest Review: Hulk Out in This Chaotic Online Party Brawler

Get ready to embrace your inner anger with online party brawler OutRage: Fight Fest. Using cartoonish comic book inspired graphics while blending several different fight mechanics, the first offering from Brighton-based indie start-up Hardball Games has come out swinging. Rage is more than just an emotion, it’s the energy which you’ll be using to literally hulk up to extraordinary size and wail on others in a mix of solo and team game modes. Relatively simple controls mask a layered combat system, and match types provide just enough variety in strategy to keep OutRage: Fight Fest fun in short bursts. 

Simple Tutorials Serve as a Lackluster Appetizer 

When you first load up OutRage: Fight Fest, you’ll dive into a series of tutorials which explain the basic controls and combo system. On the surface, OutRage doesn’t seem super complex. You punch, kick, and grab with the option of mixing those together for combos. You can sprint or dodge roll to keep things mobile, and landing enough strikes will eventually fill up your rage meter. 

You can then activate one of four Over Rage Abilities: Man Grenade is a powerful area of effect move to damage all around you, Over Drive temporarily boosts your raw power, Rage Cage creates a protective barrier of immunity, and Fireball knocks down anyone it hits while dealing major damage. You’ll only have access to Man Grenade at first, but all the others can be unlocked by leveling up across multiple fights. 

While the initial tutorials are a decent primer for new players, they don’t fully communicate the chaos you’ll be getting into later on. This isn’t helped by the fact that the final tutorial puts you in a 2-on-1 fight that you’re far from prepared for, and getting destroyed by the AI when you barely have a grasp on the basics doesn’t really get you excited to keep playing. 

Chaotic Combat Masks a Layered System 

Despite those issues out the gate, OutRage: Fight Fest actually does have a very good combat system that will take some time for players to master. You’ll still have a chance if you’re just flinging kicks and punches at every opportunity without much larger strategy, but it’ll take fine tuning your combo timing and how you approach each match type to step things up a notch. 

Building up your rage meter in any fight has two benchmarks which increase your character’s physical size, and all three sizes make your movement and range feel a little different. Getting bigger makes every step feel a little clunkier, but having a larger stride balances that out. Your strikes reach a bit further and may deal slightly more damage, but you’re also a larger and easier target for others to hit. 

OutRage has crates littered throughout each map with access to classic weapons like a big hammer, baseball bat, or shovel, but pretty much every object around you (including other fighters) can be thrown. If you hulk up to giant size by filling up your rage meter, you can even throw dumpsters or entire cars. There are also health crates, exploding canisters which create temporary lava circles, and of course rage boosts which will quickly max out your meter. 

Fast-paced and Varied Match Types Keep Things Fresh 

The two biggest things working for OutRage: Fight Fest once you settle in are the different rulesets and the fact that each full fight is only about five minutes long. You can play classic free-for-all knockout matches in solo and duos format which go three rounds with only half the fighters advancing to the next round, and every round eventually has the Ring of Death trigger which causes a fiery damage-dealing barrier to slowly close in and effectively shrink the safe fighting space on each map. 

Multiple rounds means that early on you can play defense and fight to survive, but it can be just as effective and more fun to keep the pressure on opponents. Combo timing is challenging, but it feels like the biggest skill mechanic in the game. Failing to nail a combo can leave just enough of an opening for any nearby fighter to strike and turn the tide. No fighter can dominate forever, especially if it’s not a one-on-one moment. If you’re struggling to stay alive in early rounds and don’t like having to sit and watch the rest of the fight wrap up, swapping to a teams match will let you respawn and lean on your teammates as you improve. 

If you opt for the teams format, players are divided up into four teams of four and dropped into one of four different match types. Domination works like it does in most games where players fight to seize control of specific zones and accrue points while in control. Crate Grab is a more chaotic take on classic capture the flag where you deliver crates to your zone to score, and Pain Points goes purely on the sheer volume of damage your team dishes out. Finally there’s Rage Bank, and in this case you actually choose to deposit your built up rage to score points for your team rather than using that energy for Over Rage Abilities or to stay giant sized.

Great Foundation for a Fun and Inexpensive Brawler 

While it doesn’t use a free-to-play model, the $9.99 price tag for OutRage: Fight Fest is very reasonable for an indie that won’t pressure you into excessive microtransactions the second the game launches. Quick matches bring the same easy pick-up-and-play feel that previous online breakout games like Rocket League and Splitgate provided, and online connectivity runs smoothly without an extended wait time to jump into each new fight. 

OutRage does suffer from a relatively small roster with just 11 different character models so far, but it’ll take you time to unlock all of them and there’s room to grow with future updates. While leveling up you’ll also gain access to all four current Over Rage Abilities, and your overall fight strategy will change based on both the match type and your current Over Rage Ability. 

Other battle royale style party games like Gang Beasts and Party Animals lean more on simple controls with dynamic maps prioritizing ring outs, but OutRage: Fight Fest feels less repetitive and more akin to Super Smash Bros. chaos without the side-scroller framing. You’ll get hours of fast-paced fun, and that could only get better if additional match types or limited time events arrive down the line.