The Outfit is a third person World War II shooter about three officers - J.D. Taylor, Deuce Williams, and Tommy Mac. Each officer has different abilities. For example, J.D. Taylor is the fastest, and carries a rifle, a shotgun, and molotov cocktails. Deuce Williams has the best purchasing power (more on that in a bit), and Tommy Mac is the toughest in terms of how many hits he can take. He carries a tommy gun, a flamethrower, and sticky bombs.

The game is more than just "run and gun" third person shooting. Each time you respawn, you start off with four soldiers following you. You've got some basic controls on them - assault a position, regroup, and a special ability by officer. For example, Tommy Mac can have his squad tear gas an emplacement, causing the enemies to cough and be unable to shoot back at you if you rush it. The more men you have, the more powerful your vehicles that you either commandeer or purchase are, too.

And you're going to be purchasing all kinds of things, as that's a big part of the game. As you kill Nazis and blow up stuff, you earn "Field Units" (FUs) which you can use to buy new equipment. For example, you can start off buying a .30 caliber machine gun position, which will help defend well against infantry. Soon you can upgrade to a .50 caliber machine gun, even better, and after that, an anti-aircraft gun. In the same way you upgrade from the 37mm anti-tank gun up to the 75mm anti-tank gun, or from the Crocodile flamethrower tank to the Calliope rocket launcher tank, each upgrade costing a bit more than the previous model.

Purchase prices are also dependent on which officer you pick; Deuce Williams, with his high purchasing score (and rank of colonel), can get gear cheaper than Tommy Mac. On the other hand, I rarely found money to be an issue in the game.

Purchasing is easy, too - just hit the Y button, then use the right thumbstick to pick which selection of items - from a squad replenishment to machine guns to tanks to radio called in strikes - and hit the appropriate button for the item (A, X, or Y). Then you place it using the left thumbstick to place it on the ground, and the right thumbstick to rotate it so it faces the right way. It's a bit weird at first, but you'll quickly get the hang of it.

Other objectives are more important. Taking the Motor Pool on a level will allow you to get more vehicles, in particular - tanks. Most of the single player game will involve you using tanks to get around and to blow up the enemy. The Armory will allow you to get more powerful weapons - such as the anti-tank guns - and the Radio Tower will allow you to call in artillery and air strikes.

Beware, though - the Germans can and will retake objectives from you. In some levels they get down right nasty about it, racing in past you in armored cars to secure it before you can turn around and retake it. Sometimes it's worth it to surround it with friendly anti-tank guns and machine gun nests - sometimes it's worth it to let them take it, or just retake it as you need to.

The combat in the game is pretty straight forward. It's deadly, so don't expect to charge a Panther tank and survive. If you do get close enough, though, to an enemy vehicle or emplacement you can hit the "X" button to steal it, killing the guys who were using it. That can be handy on missions where you don't have the ability to buy a tank yet, or - worse - if you left your vehicles and the Nazis stole it from you!

The rest of the time on foot though you'll be making due with your two main weapons and your grenades. Ammo isn't counted, but every weapon has a limitation - either it "overheats", as counted in a yellow to orange gauge on your screen, or it has a reload time (such as a tank gun). Also, the more you fire and move, the wider your cone of fire will be, and it will only shrink if you give it time, kneel, or click the right thumbstick to aim (which will make you move slower).

The AI of the opponents isn't the brightest in the world, but it isn't bad. The enemies take cover, typically, though you'll almost always have a least a wave or two of them parachuting in and running right for you. The tanks will simply run over smaller barricades and emplacements (like anti-tank guns) and the faster vehicles will try to keep moving. Often it'll turn into a vehicle on vehicle slugfest, as you trade rounds downrange, only getting out of your tank to repair it. Occasionally you'll catch them "napping", where you can shoot them but they don't respond, but that's not common.

Your own men, for the most part, do okay as well, manning machine guns or anti-tank guns that need more people as necessary, and shooting it out with the Germans. One of the most annoying things they'll do, though, is run in front of you as you're shooting - I've capped more than a few of them in the back of the head. They also tend to die quickly in open terrain to enemy shells, so keep that in mind if you're racing for a vehicle - you still need one of them to man the guns (even though you'll be shooting them) or the drivers seat (even though you'll be driving)!

The single biggest annoyance I ran into, really, with combat is the fact that when new supplies parachute in, they will automatically destroy anything they land on. I used that to my advantage, once - trapping a Panther tank in an area that I'd called in a fresh anti-tank gun and thus destroying it - but it was also used against me, when in my stolen Panther tank an enemy supply drop landed on me and killed me. You'll also run into times when, basically, the computer will camp your spawn point, killing you each time as you respawn. That's incredibly annoying.

The single player campaign covers 12 missions. It's got an over-the-top storyline, involving Enigma machines, the division between the SS and the Wehrmacht, the French Resistance, and a few other elements. It's by no means realistic - nothing about this game really is - but it's a lot of fun, and even made me laugh out loud at times.

Each of the missions is pretty good about telling you what to do next. "Go here. Repair this. Defend this. Kill these guys." As you race around, you'll also find bonus opportunities ("medals") showing up. For example, one level might have you destroy 25 fuel drums, and another destroy 5 out of 10 flak guns for the level to be completed - but if you get all 10, you'll get a bonus.

The best part about the graphics and the physics of the game is the destructability of the environment. Almost everything is destroyable. Tree in the way? Burn it down. Building in the way? Blow it up. You can surprise the enemies by putting holes through a building and shooting them through them. By the end of a fight a once-pristine village looks like the pictures from a World War II documentary, full of holes and fires.

The graphics other than that - and, in particular, in the between-mission full motion videos - are lackluster, especially on the advanced platform of the Xbox 360. The sound though is fairly solid, with great voice acting from famous people like Ron Perlman and Robert Patrick. Really, it's the scope of the game that shows where the processing power is going - with tons of enemies and vehicles on a screen, only rarely would the game show any slowdown whatsoever.

The controls are fairly straight-forward. The most annoying thing were the vehicle controls. Like the "on foot" controls, the left stick controlled movement while the right controls aiming. However, vehicles tended not to control that easily, and almost never backed up in a straight line. More than a few times my vehicle would get stuck, particularly when the camera would get stuck in a weird position, and I'd be unable to move around or avoid enemy fire. Similar problems with the camera would show up occasionally too when on foot, mostly if you were crouched and trying to aim near geographic features (or if you soldiers decided to stand between the camera and you; they change into silhouetted outlines, but can still obstruct your view).

In short, this is a heck of a fun game, and a new breath in the World War II genre. The single player campaign isn't the longest in the world, but there are a lot of multiplayer maps to try out, and more coming out.