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Gratuitous Space Battles: The Outcasts DLC PC Review

You have probably heard this a thousand times, but time really does fly. It has been nearly three years since I last played Gratuitous Space Battles, the space combat simulation game that required players to focus more on battle planning, ship placement, ship configurations and their command orders rather than actual control of the war. It was a game where you would sit back with a bucket of popcorn and watch how your strategy played out on screen, as the action between the computer A.I and your pre-battled planned A.I fought in a flourish of colourful lasers and glowing defence shields that lit up the darkness of space.

The Outcasts is the seventh DLC for the ever growing Gratuitous Space Battles and adds a new race which, as you can may have already guessed, is called The Outcasts. This race comes with some stylised ships, looking something like a flying saucer UFO that you would expect to see pop up in The X-Files or some other sci-fi show. They certainly stand out from the rest of the game’s range of galaxy races and their spacecrafts. Ten new ships are included in this DLC, covering four Cruisers, three Frigates and three Fighters. as well as two custom campaign missions that pit you against The Outcasts.

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Lastly, there are six new equipment modules to let you customise the ships. Not all are as appealing as some, but one of the neatest is the decoy projector that lets ships deploy a decoy copy of them to pull in enemy fire. Laugh as the enemy tries to pummel the ghost ship as the real spacecraft stays away from harm and unloads its weaponry into the enemy space fleet. Another weapon that seems to be on the borderline of trolling is the multi-target tractor beams, which as the name implies, grabs hold of enemy fighters and locks them in place, allowing your other ships to easily lay waste and blow those poor fighters to kingdom come.

This new DLC is certainly appealing for fans, but at £4.49, I am not sure if it is entirely worth it. Especially since in the random Steam sales, you could pick up the game for around the same price. It certainly adds some flair to the title, and no doubt the community will make use of these additions in the user created content, which I must say is absolutely jam packed with so many custom maps. It makes me wonder if you REALLY need DLC for this game, because the community is that involved in making cool and challenging maps that you are forever getting new content to play with. Although, having new units to use and spice up the game with is always a nice bonus.

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If you are die-hard fan of Positech Games’ Gratuitous Space Battles, you have already decided that you will be buying this DLC. The score at the bottom of this page means nothing to you, which with something like this is always going to be down to personal preferences. For less dedicated players, I would recommend waiting for a sale, as I feel you won’t get that much of a benefit out of the DLC, especially if you are in it just for the new mission maps. It is not a bad piece of DLC by any means, but I feel that it does not shout out a message of “You Need This” like some other expansion packs might. Besides – no one can hear you shout in space anyway.

6 out of 10