Updated: Outriders Review in Progress

Update, 4/2/2021: Since server issues have forced me to take a break from splattering mutants and bad guys all over the place, we thought it would be a good time to post another update.

After grinding through another ten character levels, the action itself is still great – especially when played with friends. Things can get a little tricky when there’s a sizeable gap between power levels; my main character is currently level 21, and I’ve had several friends drop in who are in the low teens, effectively making it so I’m just solo-ing twice the number of enemies on the highest available difficulty (and my low-level Devastator has done the same to friends, too). That being said, the gruesome fireworks display that goes off when we combo our abilities is a gory good time, and the newer abilities my Trickster (the time-bending/teleportation class) has unlocked all fit wonderfully into team play.

The roster of human enemies we’re fighting has remained pretty stagnant since the early levels, though as I get further into the campaign and explore the more of Epoch’s wilderness, it’s presenting some really cool monster designs. From the variations on fodder-level mutants to the larger beasts that look like a somehow-even-grosser-and-meaner take on Half-Life 2’s antlions, the creature designs are unique – the encounters designed around them are a smart test of skill that change things up from the endless rain of bullets you find on the battlefields of human settlements. What’s unfortunate is that, despite their cool designs, the boss battles I’ve played through so far are probably the least engaging of the combat scenarios Outriders has to offer. That five-story-tall version of Stranger Things’ Demogorgon looks awesome, but “shoot the big thing outside the arena and avoid being smashed by its big hand” is a little outdated for a 2021 game.

Also getting old is the lack of a consolidated and easy to use UI for crafting and gear management. Outriders is far from the only game to have this issue, but it’s still a bit frustrating to have to constantly bounce back and forth between the crafting and gear screens – with a mandatory NPC interaction in between every time – because the crafting UI doesn’t have a decent sort function.

I found this especially irksome when faced with certain progress choke points, which force you to spend a lot of time tinkering with (and then upgrading or discarding) the right build to keep you going until you’re able to loot, craft, or buy more powerful gear and advance to higher World Tiers, which increase both Outriders’ difficulty and the quality of your loot rewards. The danger of losing progress towards the next Tier with every death weighs heavily, though, and constantly having to backtrack to base camp just to swap out a couple of armor mods so that my build remains optimal becomes frustrating – to the point where simply forging ahead, progression and pride be damned, becomes much more appealing.

Still, Outriders firmly has its hooks in me, and I’m looking forward to what it’s endgame has in store for me and my fireteam – hopefully leveling up my next character will be a bit more manageable. See the rest of my impressions below for my thoughts on Outriders’ initial free demo, and the early hours of its full release.

Previous updates and impressions below

Update, 4/1/2021: I’ve only been able to spend the last day or so with the launch version of Outriders, as well as the dozen-ish hours I spent leveling up characters in the February demo that contains the beginning of its campaign, but I’m continuing to have a good time. Some important changes have been made since I played that initial slice – loot drop rates have been adjusted, cross-platform matchmaking is the default now, and developer People Can Fly claims a litany of bugs and balance issues have been addressed (though we don’t have a full set of patch notes to see exactly what) – but for the most part my in-depth impressions from back then (which you can read down below) are holding true.

I’m now roughly a six hours past where I left off a month ago, and I’m still really enjoying its grisly combo of gunplay and superpowers. The balancing tweaks made since the demo have made larger encounters a bit more challenging to get through solo, though the ever-widening variety of weapons, powers, and gear allow for a lot of strategy adjustments and experimentation to get over those hurdles.

Having access to the crafting system is also a huge plus, as it now means that weapon mods can more easily be mixed and matched with the best gear and bonuses (provided you have enough resources like iron, leather, etc), and it simplifies the process when compared to other loot-heavy adventures. Being able to beef up that shotgun I love (see below) or swap my SMG’s bonus fire damage for explosive rounds or bullets that regenerate health is super helpful, and the fact that it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to do offers a lot of flexibility to adjusting your build. The UI is still a bit clunky – the Shards used to upgrade weapon perks are particularly obtuse – but some helpful tweaks have been made in that regard too, like being able to mark items for sale/recycling by rarity instead of individually.

The story is leaning much more into the “grim/bleak sci-fi pulp” end of the spectrum as it goes on, to mixed results. The already middling writing and voice acting hasn’t exactly improved in the new scenes I’ve reached, with basically every character rasping their way through exposition – even the really wild stuff, like “hey there’s a giant mutant bird living in that volcano over there” being met with a heavy sigh and dutifully grunted “guess I’ll go murder it, then” – but the overall arc is still engaging enough that I’m curious to see what twists it has in store. It’s worth noting that the audio lag and syncing issues I experienced on PS5 during the demo’s cutscenes are all but nonexistent now, so at least those aren’t actively making me less invested anymore.

We’ll have more updates in the coming days and, of course, our full and final review once I’m able to get through the Expedition missions that make up Outriders’ endgame. In the meantime, you can read my longer demo impressions below for some more in-depth thoughts, watch what happened when our UK team tried to reach the highest world tier with the devs, or – if you’re jumping in yourself – check out our guides team’s important survival tips.

Original demo impressions below.

Since seeing our first hands-on preview of Outriders last summer, I’ve been cautiously optimistic about People Can Fly’s new co-op shooter/RPG. I was disappointed by the latest delay, but as a consolation prize, Square Enix has released the first act on schedule as a demo for us to start forming impressions off of. After spending the last day or so wreaking superpowered havoc on PS5, I’m still not sure whether the final game will end up being the Mass Effect/Destiny/Gears of War mashup I’ve been hoping for, but it’s definitely sold me on the fun of its sci-fi setup.

What I find most engaging about the Outriders demo – which covers its prologue and first chapter and has kept me going for about six hours so far – is its insistence on more closely resembling a single-player RPG than a “shared-world” shooter in the vein of Destiny and The Division. I may not be able to make huge, story-altering decisions like in a classic BioWare RPG, and they’re still yet to crack the code of making every player the story’s Chosen One simultaneously, but being able to have optional conversations with almost every NPC I interact with and seeing tangible in-world consequences to my actions – like unlocking a new merchant with a permanent discount by completing a side quest – goes a long way toward getting me invested in Outriders’ post-double-apocalypse world.

Though maybe “post-post-apocalytic-apocalypse” is a more appropriate way to phrase it, because while the planet our crew of survivors from “Earth that was” land on was originally full of verdant forests and bizarre fauna, by the time the story kicks off in earnest it’s become anything but. The world dubbed “humanity’s last hope” quickly goes awry for our titular customizable character and their friends, and an unexpected lengthy time jump (which is a trope I’ll admit I’m a sucker for) sends things into territory that would make even the maddest of Maxes wince.

Its writing may not win any awards this year, and cutscenes suffer from out-of-sync audio errors and some flat voice acting, but it does a serviceable job of moving the story along and endearing its NPCs to you, whether they’re novel takes on established archetypes or making good use of People Can Fly’s affinity for self-aware banter. The latter can create some clashing tones, though. This is clearly a story that wants to address serious themes like humanity’s penchant for conflict and overconsumption, but it also kicks off with a somewhat bombastic attitude that doesn’t really let up, especially in the first chapter showcased in the demo. It sort of feels like hearing someone yell “YEE-HAW” during the somber acoustic part of a country set; it’s not entirely out of place, but it doesn’t quite fit in, either.

Outriders – IGN First

Similarly, the prologue (and several trailers, too) hinted at a lush and colorful world to explore, but most of what we see in the demo is the drab browns and greys of war-torn lands and refugee camps. Hopefully, we’ll see more varied environments and characters in the full release, but for now the majority of the color in the world comes from the flashes of red, blue, and green as you carve your way through each early-game zone with a variety of weapons and special abilities.

Combat is, for the most part, some solid fun – as one would hope since it’s where 90% of Outriders’ gameplay lies. It follows the satisfying (if familiar) formula from other co-op heavy looter-shooters and adds a gory dash of time-bending elemental superpowers for good measure. Gunfights – whether playing solo or with friends – are frenzied affairs that leave battlefields literally coated in blood, and there’s something morbidly hilarious about seeing a whole-ass ribcage rolling through a skirmish like a bony tumbleweed.

In more or less standard fashion, the four classes all boast strengths, weaknesses, and skill sets that will be familiar to anyone with some experience in classed-based action games – though where other squad shooters typically have a variety of roles for players to fill (healer, support, etc), Outriders is very clearly focused on the DPS side of things, at least based on the abilities available in the demo. Yes, the four classes each “fill a role” on the team, but aside from the Devastator’s Golem ability (which effectively just turns on “tank mode”) they’re all in service of how quickly you can reduce your opposition to a sticky red paste. That uniformity may be a turn-off for anybody who really loves to play The Healer or Buffy McBufferson, but it also allows those who opt not to team up with others to feel safe playing as any of the four classes. And there’s a very real possibility that they’ll become much more different as they level up in the full game – there was an entire skill tree that the demo barely scratches the surface of.

I spent a decent amount of time exploring on my own as both the tank-ey Devastator and the far squishier Trickster, and found that the combat was balanced as well for one person as it is for a group – the only notable difference being that while I was playing with friends there were a lot more enemies to deal with in each encounter to scale up the challenge. The roster of enemies present in the demo is fairly limited, featuring run-of-the-mill riflemen to melee-focused berserkers and the occasional superpowered miniboss – but they provided enough tactical variety to demand some quick thinking and strategy, especially in larger groups. Aside from some floaty movement and a frustrating lack of clearly climbable (or, perhaps more importantly, non-climbable) objects, I’ve had a grand time-bending earth or using teleportation and stasis powers to chunkify hordes of nameless baddies, and there was something sadistically gratifying in seeing just how ruthlessly one set of powers could crush, incinerate, or straight-up disintegrate enemies when paired with a teammate’s if I was playing with a group.

Thus far, what I’ve played of Outriders might not revolutionize the looter-shooter formula, but it’s a solid take on it and has a good variety of upgrades and perks that mesh well with the chaotic pace of combat and promise some really interesting builds for late-game characters. While the weapons are a fairly standard array of assault rifles, shotguns, and sniper rifles – with some notable inclusions like the “double gun” or more powerful Legendary-tier weapons – the inventory metagame gets more interesting as you collect rarer gear. While “Unusual” (I don’t know why they can’t just call them “uncommon” like everybody else) items have simple passive buffs like additional crit damage or armor piercing, Rare (or better) items often have special perks that can either enhance your class-based abilities or even provide new ones, like generating a protective shield with every hit.

Similar to other loot grinds, it appears you can either sell or disassemble items to purchase or craft better gear, though the crafting system was offline in the demo. I’m glad that progress from the demo will transfer to the final game when it launches on April 1, though, because I’ve found a winning set: a rifle with the aforementioned shield ability and a preposterously powerful auto-shotgun that restores health with each kill. I hope I can upgrade these bad boys as I reach higher levels and world tiers (which increase both enemy difficulty and loot quality as you level up) in the full game.

Outriders’ demo highlights a lot of what it has going for it – fun combat, both for fire teams or solo players (though it’s definitely more fun with friends so far), intriguing sci-fi plot hooks with a lot of potential, and a unique take on how co-op shooters can adopt elements of more traditional RPGs. That said, it also shows some spots where the apocalyptic space shooter is starting to stumble. Replayability is a big part of whether a not a co-op RPG shooter remains enjoyable, and while combat in Outriders is a bloody good time, I found myself yawning through my third and fourth runs of its several sample missions. Similarly, while I really enjoy some of the concepts introduced in the story, what I’ve seen so far is on a tightrope between being the first game to crack the “shared-world shooter with a good story” puzzle or another instance of mashing “skip cutscene” as fast as possible – and nothing takes you out of a story faster than buggy cutscenes.

What I don’t think the Outriders demo has done yet is really sell me on it in the long-term, and while that’s very hard to do in a few hours it’s also crucial in determining whether a game like this is worth becoming invested in. I’m definitely interested to see more of its world and unlock more nifty pseudo-magic, but I’d venture a guess that 70% of my playclock in similarly structured games takes place well after the credits have rolled, and this demo provides little to no insight on what to expect from Outriders’ endgame. Its developers have detailed a fairly robust endgame plan, but whether or not it has the staying power of other service-adjacent co-op shooters – or if that’s even the team’s goal – remains to be seen. Hopefully, it’ll keep up the fast pace of its action and decently fun, pulpy story – because I really want to level up that auto-shotgun.

This demo hasn’t been quite substantial enough that I’m willing to put a temporary score on Outriders yet, but I am having a good time with it and am looking forward to playing more for the full review. Look for that sometime on or around the release date of April 1.

Source: https://www.ign.com/articles/outriders-review