Review: Outriders | Mix Grill

Every now and then there will be one Game Which is on my radar, but not necessarily because I’m passionate about it, but because I’m interested in what it really is. Outriders That was a game for me. It was described in the previews as a mix between Mass Effect for Combat and Diablo for Ambient Loot Systems. Something should suit me, but the pictures just weren’t attractive to me. The last game definitely did this.

Humble story

Let’s get one of the less out-of-the-way Outriders right away; the story. Shame, because the plot really attracted me in advance. After mankind was forced to leave Earth because it became uninhabitable, they reached Enoch after an 80-year journey. At first glance, this world seemed to fit a new home, but it soon emerged that a mysterious storm called “Anomaly” proved otherwise. All Hell explodes and infects your character, Outrider. After waking up from freezing sleep years later, you seem to have special powers. As if The Anomaly and Enoch’s life-threatening animals weren’t bad enough, the remaining humanity (of course) turned against each other again in one big war.

From that moment on, your character will be sent from one place to another (locations and monsters have been big pluses for me) and you’ll be constantly getting orders in your head. “Kurwas” fly around your ears (the game was created by Polish studio People Can Fly who explains this part) and with the exception of that strong introduction, the story doesn’t really get itself back in a number of set pieces. Plot twists that should have emotional coverage simply don’t land well. It’s not necessarily bad, but it’s pretty unassuming and we’ve seen better over the years. Fortunately, the Outriders don’t have to rely on the story.

Solid game

The gameplay is very strong and the feeling of running, shooting, using your power and decorating the character with better equipment and weapons got me in his fist. The thing with Outriders is that – in part because of the online part – it feels like a game as a service, but in practice, it’s a mix between an RPG and a Lootershooter like Borderlands.

It really starts with choosing one of the four categories for your personality. For example, the Devastator is a tank-like design that allows you to take more damage and deal damage at close range, while the Techomancer performs better from a longer distance. I myself is the game that I play as an effective mid-distance performer with his firepower. This is where the multiplayer part of Outriders comes into play, because although you can play the game perfectly on your own (90% of the game I played alone) it is nice to have other players around with the other classes.

The Flow in Combat in particular has made sure to keep playing the game, no matter how difficult the battles at times. You have to stay active all the time and use your power over the enemies to continue treating yourself. So you constantly switch between positive and negative to work yourself forward. If it gets too difficult, the Global Levels System is a pretty cool concept. As you live longer, these levels will continue to progress one step up. The higher the tier, the better the loot, but the enemies will be stronger as well. At any point, you can turn it down a bit if you don’t progress any further.

As mentioned earlier, the game looks like a game as a service as Destiny, but it “only” has an end after story. Even the endgame in which you bring your character to the limit in 14 different levels (again slightly different from the global levels) has an end.

Problems

So far so good, but the Outriders had some issues in the early weeks that still recur from time to time. For example, the servers weren’t always fixed during the review, so you could be kicked out of the game in the middle of the mission or you couldn’t even start the game at all. This seems to be resolved for now, but why should I bother me with this while playing on my own (and thus can’t pause the game) is a mystery to me.

conclusion

The story might not be much to write about and there are still some tough bugs to fix, but the gameplay and the world of Outriders have made a lot of good for me. The fight looks good, from hiding to using your power and weapons and proving that a “only good” game can definitely be worth it in the long run.

Outriders are now available for PS4 / 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S / X, and PC. The PlayStation 5 version was used for this review

Marc de Haas