Game Review - Outriders Worldslayer

Game Review: Outriders Worldslayer by People Can Fly and published by Square Enix

Score: +5/-9

"OUTRIDERS is a 1-3 player co-op RPG shooter set in an original, dark and desperate sci-fi universe. As mankind bleeds out in the trenches of Enoch, you’ll create your own Outrider and embark on a journey across the hostile planet."

Outriders is a looter shooter with some emphasis on cover. It's not as forgiving as Destiny 2 but not as punishing as The Division if you don't stay in cover. Fights are largely divided into two types: Against humans that mostly shoot you so you need cover; and against beasts that rush you in open ground with little cover.

+1 The story is intriguing and revealed carefully so that as you move forward in the main story, there are new things to discover and it's all tidily explained at the end and makes enough sense.

+1 You can rewind main story progress and replay any portion of it.

+0 The dialog is blunt and emotional, and killing off the bad guys in the cutscenes feels cathartic. Notable characters die, sometimes quite early. It's a different and refreshing style.

+1 World design looks great with epic vistas and collosal scope (especially in the Worldslayers expansion), reminiscent of Destiny 2.

-1 Combat map design (arenas) are terrible in the main campaign though somewhat better in the Worldslayers expansion.

• Sometimes the arena is invisibly bounded and you cannot move in one direction without automatically leaving and resetting the fight. There's no way to know until you discover it.
• Sometimes what looks like you should be able to use as cover does not work, and when you hit the go-to-cover key, you end up automatically moving to the nearest valid cover, but it happens to be exposed to gunfire.
• Sometimes you cannot walk off and drop down low ledges, or you cannot vault over low obstacles and it's not clear when that restriction is in place.

-1 Character creation and fashion are terrible.

• Ugly prefab faces with no sliders.
• Most of the time you look like a shambling mound of animal parts in the ugly outfits. It's certainly different from other games but sadly not in a good way.

+1 For a looter shooter, the gunplay is decent and the weapon "enchantments" ("mods") are interesting.

+1 The fight designs for the main quest are quite fast-paced and exciting.

• -1 For solo players however they will often feel overwhelming and many fights will start to feel more Souls-like than looter-shooter. When you have to repeat a fight a couple of times to get through it, then a large part of your success will be because you have foreknowledge of what is coming, when, and from where. And that really doesn't feel good.
• -1 Very few enemy types. You've basically seen it all after the first two zones.

Classes are terrible before endgame. For solo play, viable build variety is low and gameplay isn't really fun with any class until endgame when build choices expand. It's really for co-op and each class clearly has different roles for a team.

• Four classes and apparently you can choose to focus gunplay or skills, but it's really rough going solo for most of the main campaign unless you pick the right build and skills.
• -1 You are told to play aggressively but in the early game with few skills and build options, they like to suddenly bring in reinforcements to flank or overrun you.
• -1 Except the Technomancer class, many classes will have probably significant trouble with the main story campaign if they start a new level 1 character, until more skills are unlocked. There are various options, but none of them feel good:
• Keep repeating the fight and use foreknowledge to adjust your strategy and skills.
• Narrow your build choice. In the early game, focussing on guns instead of skills tends to be better, and this lasts for more than half the main story campaign. Even the one class that's the best choice for solo main campaign play will have to carefully pick skills and and perks (class tree nodes). There isn't that much true build diversity for solo.
• Lower the game difficulty and basically overpower the fight with better gear.
• Play co-op.
• Skip the levelling process and jump to level 30 where you have all skills available and the maximum number of skill perk picks (class tree).
• -1 For all classes you will need a pretty optimized build.
• This means quite narrow skill choices and if you pick the "wrong" ones, some boss fights will get drawn out into boredom or irritation with bosses that feel like bullet sponges.
• Lots of weapon and armor enchantments are basically worthless.
• -1 Once you hit endgame, the "fun" doesn't really start until you've grinded for gear and the "right" high-tier weapon enchants ("mods").

-1 Good use of the control style at the last dream sequence, but otherwise it really just gets in the way.