Review: Outriders By People Can Fly

Written by Edwin Francisco

Outriders was developed by People Can Fly which is the same developer of Gears of War: Judgment. You can readily see the inspiration from Gears of War. So, forgive me if I keep comparing it to that game since it’s the closest thing that can be compared to. This is not their only game though, they also have worked on Painkiller, Bulletstorm and the early version of Fortnite (Fortnite: Save the World).

Outriders is a sci-fi cover shooter. So, it will remind of you Gears of War. But Gears of War is set in an alternate world, while Outriders is set in a distant future where the Earth is already dying and people traveled to a distant part of the universe to colonize a seemingly habitable planet. Outriders is also a looter-based game, like The Division, Borderlands and Destiny where you get to pick up a lot of items along your adventure.

A story with so much potential, very little push

The story is really good, though. It’s not an epic game in a sense that it’s like Mass Effect. It feels competent enough as a sci-fi story. You are the last remaining people of Earth and you have traveled through the universe to colonize a distant habitable planet. Once you reach there, you discover that it has devastating storms at which point most of the people you know die, and your character is injured. You are placed back in cryo-sleep to heal. Then you wake up in a middle of a war, 30 years after your long sleep. The main premise is actually good, but there’s barely any character development. The characters seem interesting, but just not enough to get you interested in their stories.

My main issue is that I hate my character. I have no sense of empathy to the main lead. In the story the main character makes some dumb decisions which makes me uncomfortable in following him or her. I think this is the main thing that messes the game for me in terms of the story. But the main story is interesting enough to get me through the game, I just don’t like my character in terms of personality. It’s a good thing the game itself is pretty good, or else I would have quit the game.

What sights to see

The graphics is not as impressive as Gears of War, which is a bit disappointing. It did impress me when I was doing a character creation part, but once the game started, the characters kind of falls apart for me. Some of the small animations doesn’t look right and the shadows don’t look right which made it look like a game from a previous generation of consoles. But there are moments that can make you say WOW! The environments are done magnificently. If I compare it to Gears of War, there are more environments and the landscape is more creative. I mean, it’s really worthy to make them as wallpapers too, it’s really good. The only problem with the environment itself is that if you are going to compare it with Gears of War, the details are much better in Gears than it is in Outriders. But you only notice that when you compare it side by side. On its own, it’s just really wonderful to look at. Just don’t look at the characters in close up, it just crumbles my sense of immersion.

Another issue with the graphics is that there are locations that you can’t go to. Either a location is obviously reachable easily, but you are not allowed to go there, or a room is just blocked with the color black. And it’s weird for me to see games that don’t use a jump mechanic to get through some simple obstacles that seem easy enough to get through, but no. Somehow, some easy obstacles are impossible to get through. It’s just disappointing to see level designs to be created that way. It feels like an old game.

What I did enjoy with the visuals is, that when you are with other players, you can see their customized trucks and even see their characters in the camp or even some cutscenes. I just wish they did something more immersive. I enjoyed it when I was facing this one opponent, and I had this hero moment, and suddenly these two other players I was playing with showed up around me. I loved that scene. They do have other small moments of this throughout the game, but I wish they did more of it.

There is too much cutscenes. Feels like the game comes from an old era of games during the early 2000s. Good thing the game loads fast on the Series X and you can even skip the cutscenes if needed. I’m a bit bothered that there are mini cutscenes for just jumping across a bridge, or passing through a crevice. I’m pretty sure that you’ll get tired of seeing that fade to black effect after playing this game. It reminds of me of the classic PSOne Resident Evil games when opening a door.

And the only reason for this mini cutscene, is just to show your character, not for loading the level. This mini cutscene in-between the levels just mess up the pacing of the game, from fast action to hitting a brick wall. There’s a better way to implement this transition, but not with a ton of fade to black especially we know that it’s not for loading a level.

Speaking about cutscenes, the real cutscenes had a lot of shaky camera shots. I mean, it’s not a surprise to have shaky cameras to give that feel like you are watching a documentary which is regularly used in a lot of movies. But this had too much of it, to the point it was irritating and led me to just wanting to skip the cutscene altogether. It felt like it was trying too hard to make it shaky. It was a surprise to me that there is shaky cam limiter on the game options, so I’m pretty sure that the developers are aware of this issue.

Being an Outrider

The game itself is a cover shooter. If you can think of a game that encourages you to take cover, that’s a cover shooter. Gears of War popularized this game mechanic. But in this game, even though taking cover is an important mechanic, you are encouraged to face the enemy than keep on hiding. If you do keep hiding, enemies will try to flank you, throw grenades, bring in more foes for close range melee attacks, in every single direction. If you do kill or hit an opponent, it gives you a boost in health. You’ll need that, since there is no full recovery of health when you rest up. There is a baseline where you can recover but if you are a starting player, that baseline for your life isn’t much to rely on.

You can only hold three weapons; two main weapons and one sidearm. You can switch easily between your main weapons, but holding down the buttons for switching weapons will actually arm you the side weapon. I was worried that it might be hard to use because you are using one button for switching 3 weapons. It actually wasn’t so bad.

Enemies drop a lot of loot. It might not be much at the start, but it can get overwhelming at times. All of the weapons that you pick up has mods. If you dismantle the weapon, you will acquire it and then you can apply it to any of your weapons. There are weapons with one or two mods, but there are three tiers of mods.

Depending on the rarity of the weapon, that will also determine what tier of mod you will get. Dismantling weapons is pretty easy. You can do that anywhere at any time as long as you are not being attacked on. But applying a mod does require you to go to camp and talk to a specific character. Replacing mods is actually pretty easy, because of it, the game really encourages you to experiment.

Review: Outriders by People Can Fly

Talking about experimentation. You when you level up, you also get some class points in which you can distribute and add some particular skills based on a skill tree. Don’t worry, if you make a mistake you are allowed to reset the skill tree at any time. I really like this since it really encourages you to try and experiment with your setup.

There are four classes of characters in the game. You do get to choose one when you start the actual game.

The Trickster teleports and can control spacetime which is really helpful on a lot of situations. The Devastator is the tank, which is pretty solid class because it can take a lot of hits. The Technomancer focuses on long range attacks and turrets. The Pyromancer is great for medium range and conjures fire.

Each class will have their own set of skills which you can apply a maximum of three at a time. Skills will unlock based on your character level. Again, you are allowed to change this at any time as long as you are not being attacked on. Each skill that you use has a cooldown timer in which you have to wait for in order to use it again.

You are not allowed to change classes while playing the game. So, choose one, and stick to it. After going through your first game and if you start a new one, you are allowed to skip the introductory level and immediately choose another class.

The game can get quite hard. The game has this progression system called World Tiers. The higher you level up; the World Tier levels will unlock and increase the difficulty. Your character can reach to a maximum of level 30, but World Tiers can level up to a maximum of 15. The higher the World Tier, the higher increase in difficulty it is. Each level of tier will provide a number of points higher than your current level. So, if you are at level 10 at World Tier 12 you can fight of enemies at level 19, but the loot you get is also at level 19.

So, if you are at level 10 and you are at World Tier 15, you might be fighting off enemies with level 22 making it really challenging for you. However, since this is a loot-based game, the items you get can balance things out. So, you will really need to push harder to get more effective armor and weapons. But if you are not prepared for the higher Tier, you are allowed to change it anytime to make it a tad easier. Heck, you can even go to World Tier 1 even if you have access to World Tier 15 and you are already loaded up a ton of weapons, just for you to finish the game quick.

After finishing the main story, you can try to finish quests that you weren’t able to finish earlier. But you are also given more quests called expeditions. Expeditions also provide more weapons and armor if you are successful. There are another set of difficult tiers. In general, you start with Tier 3, but you are also allowed to lower it since it can get overwhelming if you are playing alone. But of course, the higher the Tier, the higher the loot. Also, if you can finish it within a certain amount of time, the faster you finish, the better the loot. What I like about this is that, even if these are end game missions, it still makes sense within the story itself. The missions themselves are quite challenging to downright really hard, but it does give you more interesting items to pick up. If you love loots, this can get really interesting.

Lots of bugs!

I’ve heard a lot of people having issues with connection, mostly on the PC. I had those issues too while playing on the Xbox Series X. I did have a connection problem once in a while, but not to the point that I would be frustrated about it. But there was one time that I wasn’t able to play because it won’t let me connect. There was even one game where I was logged out in a middle of the game. I do have to say that I don’t like that you are forced to play this game online.

This is a very competent single player game, and being forced to be online all the time doesn’t make any sense to me. The main reason for it being online all the time is that drop in drop out feature where anyone can join your game at any time if you like, and your character details are actually saved on their servers, which kind of make sense with modern gaming, but it still doesn’t make sense for me to login just for a single player session. Logging in the game actually takes a bit of time and there were a couple of times where it took me a while to just consider restarting the game. Since this game requires you to be online all the time, Xbox’s Quick Resume feature won’t work.

In terms of other bugs, there are times that some of your equipment don’t visually load immediately. I mean, you do have it, it’s just not showing on you. I also had waypoint issues where the pointer is actually telling to go through an area I can’t even pass through. There was also a moment that I finished this one quest, and I see the marker where I should finish the quest, but the game won’t let me see the cutscene or get me my items. I had to do another quest and go back to that location to finish the quest.

So, I’m not saved from all the technical bugs of the game. The game is riddled with bugs. But, it’s not a terrible game. It has one of the best gameplay mechanics I’ve played in a long while. The action itself is pretty standard. But it the modding system and all the loots that you get is actually very entertaining. I am having fun, but it can be a grind. You can play this at a leisurely pace if you want to, but if you want to make the best out of this game, look for friends. The game actually reminds me of playing Diablo, but with the mechanics of Gears of War.

Lastly

You can make a long list of issues that’s wrong about this game. But I also can’t deny that the game has done a lot of things right. Just like the graphics, when you look at it at first glance it can look good, take a while and look at the small details and it can look bad, but looking at it as a whole, it looks amazing. I love the fact that customizing your character and player experience is easy. You can really change the parameters of how you want to play at any point in the game. So, I did enjoy the game, but might have had a hard time playing it on my own when I pushed into the higher World Tiers. Playing it with friends is the best way to go about it. The game did many things right, regardless of how buggy it is. If you can look past a lot of the glaring issues, you might have a fun time with it like I did.

Outriders is available on Steam, Epic Games, Xbox One, PS4, PS5 at $59.99. The game is also available on Xbox Gamepass (Console only) and on Google Stadia.

Rating of 3.5 out of 5

Game released on April 1, 2021

Developed by People Can Fly

Published by Square Enix

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