Outtrigger (Dreamcast)

While the system is nearing its final days, the Dreamcast's bread and butter is still its online capabilities. Outtrigger is a fast-paced shooter from Sega that works well as an online game, but it doesn't have enough to it to outlast the likes of Unreal Tournament or Quake III Arena.

Similar in scope to other competitive arcade shooters, such as the Grid, Spawn, and War: The Final Assault, Outtrigger takes the first-person shooter genre and strips it down to its core gameplay elements. The result is a fairly simplistic game that is built for speed. Each character starts with three weapons: a machine gun, a grenade or bomb, and a rocket launcher or other heavy-weapon equivalent. The game's different characters all have slightly different weapons, so your heavy weapon could be a rocket launcher or a railgun-style weapon, among others. You can also make a custom character and pick which three weapons you start with. More stages, characters, and weapon choices are unlocked as you proceed through the game's mission mode, which gives you set objectives, such as protecting a hostage from constant attacks or defeating a set number of enemies before time expires. The mission mode is really the meat of the single-player experience, as the game's arcade mode is essentially mindless. Beyond those modes, there is a four-player split-screen mode and a six-player online mode.

Multiplayer matches can be played to a specific time or point limit, and they're available in both standard free-for-all and team deathmatch flavors. The online mode supports Sega's underused broadband adapter and features a lobby system that lets you chat and find different players or game modes before finally joining a game. Like in Quake III, you can join games that are already in progress, provided the player who started the game allows you access. The online mode isn't impervious to lag, which can cause things like rockets that fire close to a second after you push the fire button and opposing players who magically teleport around the arena, but in our tests with both dial-up and broadband connections, the game remained reasonably playable throughout.