Andy:
Elevated greens ? How many are we speaking about ?
You make it sound like the greens are 20 or more feet above the fairway. The falloffs and surrounding green areas at Outlaw are less severe than one would find at Pinehurst #2. The only really deficient hole is the par-4 10th -- with the very narrow diagonally placed green which doesn't provide too much of a landing area at all. Still, for most players they are approaching the target with usually a PW or LW in their hands.
Andy, you didn't mention the ground game as a prominent positive force. Too many people in AZ and no less the membership at DM is used to playing the predictable point-to-point golf that has been a feature of such a golf landscape. Outlaw cuts away from that presentation style in a big time way. You also say frontal bunkers -- on the short holes that is the case but there's always an area of opening for another style of play for those who do so.
The run-off concept is a great addition to present day golf as so many courses have formulaic bunkering that allows too many times for quick and e-z recovery or a fairly pedestrian chip'n putt for par. Outlaw puts a premium on tee ball placements and then requires a sound thinking element with one's approach play.
Andy, the slope of 147 is really way too high -- my God the course plays just over 7,000 yards from the dead back tips from my memory and there's way plenty of width for the player to get their shots in play and advance to the respective targets. I've played more than my fair share of +145 slope courses and Outlaw is not one of them.
Chirichua is not a "might be just as difficult" more demanding than Outlaw -- it's considerably more so because of the terrain, degrees of hazards and the overall length required there.
What's amazing is that Nicklaus himself doesn't get the sufficient credit for designing such a fantastic layout because it proides the complete role reversal for what most people play when in the desert. Substitute another name designer or one preferred on this site for the Bear himself and the fanfare attached to the course would likely have been much higher. Outlaw gives you a walkable layout with no housing clutter and a wonderful array of different holes that accentuate a solid mix between aerial and ground games.