Developer: People Can Fly
Publisher: Square Enix
Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PS5
Outriders – Review
Outriders is a game that has been gaining more and more attention gearing up towards its release. The game tries to mash several different genres together, by recreating gameplay that is iconic in the Gears (of War) series, the looting that happens in Borderlands, Destiny, or Diablo, to then also add a deep and engaging storyline. For the most part, these items work well together, but with the game being a jack of all trades, it becomes a master of none.
Story
In a not-so-distant future, the world has basically gone to hell. Our planet is on the brink of exploding, and thus we’ll have to colonize other planets. Sadly, we only know of one inhabitable planet, and there’s only time to build two vessels, and room for only a few of the world’s population to go aboard said ships. When one ship blows up, the chances of our species surviving become even slimmer. Nonetheless, after more than 80 years in stasis, you, an Outrider (the vanguard to see if the planet is safe), and the rest of the Outriders make it to the surface of Enoch. While at first this seems like a perfect paradise to start over, it soon changes for the worst when an Anomaly rages over the valley you are trapped in, destroying all tech and even disintegrating other humans. When the rest of the pods are signaled to land, during this first anomaly, it seems everything is lost. You are also hit by the anomaly, but for some reason survive, but are placed back on ice to look for a cure. When waking up three decades later, only a few pockets of humanity survive, all slaughtering each other in the valley where they are trapped by the Anomaly. You learn you have gained new abilities, making you an Altered human being, who is ready to find a way to get out of this mess, albeit by adding a few more holes to your enemies.
Graphics
Having played the PS5 version of the game, we were never truly blown away by its graphical prowess. The overall quality is fine, but it more than often feels like a late PS4 title, rather than something of the current generation. The game experiences many clipping issues, texture pop-ins, muddy details, and so on. We have to say that, even though often the big picture is a bit less qualitative, some minor details were handled perfectly, such as the water effects when running through puddles, or even when you drag tracks through the snow. We were disappointed with the character customization options at the beginning of the game, however. The limited options made it clear that creating a unique character was not part of the design team’s plan.
Sound
The sound design in Outriders is fairly decently handled. You won’t have a soundtrack that lingers in your head for days, but you’ll have decent atmospheric music, proper sound effects and appealing voice acting that comes aplenty with all that is going on. Overall, the sound team has done a good job.
Gameplay
To simply describe what Outriders is like, we’d call it an online Gears (of War) with looter shooter mechanics and a simplistic class system. From start to finish, you’ll be roaming around on Enoch, an alien planet, where you’ll have to fend off insurgents, feral beasts and others who also have powers like yours. You can do this in a single-player format (while always having to connect to the servers and remain online) or in a multiplayer format. You can play with those who are at the same part of the story as yourself, or just go random and join whoever is available. The offset is simple, you run around, shoot, use your abilities, all hoping to find new gear, and become stronger and stronger. All of this is accompanied by a fairly decent story, but this is also what slows down the overall online play portion at times.
The mechanics and gameplay are quite simple. You pick a mission, these get properly marked and off you go. The combat itself is mainly cover-based such as in Gears (of War), with a class and skill system thrown on top. You choose between four different classes, each with their respective skill trees, allowing you to aim for different builds. You have typical support, all-around, DPS and tanking skills. This makes the online cooperative play a bit more fun to mess around with. The game’s content is a bit bland at times though, with only a few special fights sprinkled in-between the same battles over and over. Nonetheless, the overall mechanics are quite solid, even though the cover system is actually worse than many other similar games.
When diving into the ‘looter shooter’ part of the game, you’ll be able to experiment with different difficulty levels (called World Tiers), which will give you more experience and more items to loot. The latter is mainly achievable when playing with other players, as playing single-player is quite hard to manage on the higher World Tiers. It’s somewhat fun finding new gear, but even so, the actual gear does not really impress. The different types of weapons are slim, and during some battles, you’re just spamming your Altered skills.
It’s been quite a wonky experience to find some stability in actually getting to play Outriders during our testing period. More often than not, it took us five minutes to just log in, and then during many gaming sessions, the server also went down, making us lose progress. These things can happen, but this happened several times per day, making it an arduous task to actually just start playing the game. The game was also promoted for you to be able to complete it in single-player mode, but sadly, with the need of always having to be connected to the servers, the above issues will also plague those who just want a solo experience.
Conclusion
Outriders is not a bad game, but it’s not going to win a game of the year award in our books. You’ll have yourself a fun Gears (of War) clone with looter shooter mechanics thrown in the mix. The story seems to be more important than the actual endgame content, which is a shame for a game such as this. Add the fact that the game is riddled with semi-boring fights and unstable servers, and you know you just have an ‘okay’ experience, rather than a stellar one. We enjoyed our gaming sessions, but we don’t see a reason to keep coming back to this one.
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