Reviews of Outriders

If you followed our impressions of the first, second and fourth day of playing Outriders, then you know very well that we had a great time playing it in a group of three, despite the occasional big problems with servers (to which extra technical problems are added for some players on the PC). At first glance, Outriders are proud to support the genre of action games with loot, which includes not only shooters such as Division or Destiny but also crowds of the Diablo type. The source of entertainment is as much wild action as the sophisticated building of your arsenal and abilities. Unlike most of these titles, however, Outriders outlined themselves from the beginning against a template of live service games with endless additions, battle passes and other microtransactions. This is a complete game with everything, including the endgame, together in one package for one price.

• Platform: PS5 (reviewed), XSX | S, PC, PS4, X1

• Date of issue: 1. 4. 2021

• Manufacturer: People Can Fly (Poland)

• Genre: Looter-shooter

• Czech localization: no

• Multiplayer: for up to three, online

• Download data: 46 GB

• Game time: 40+ hours

• Accessibility: 17+

• Sales version: boxed and digital

• Price: 1499 - 1799 CZK ( Xzone )

Quality Polish sci-fi

Although the story initially resembles genre classics of American production, you will quickly discover distinctive elements in it, revealing the Polish origin of the authors of the play. I see this as a clear advantage because it shifts the atmosphere from Hollywood clichés towards a more earthy European style and comes to quirky jokes, imaginative cynical humour but also chilling references to the Holocaust or strong criticism of colonialism. In other words, the story of the Outriders is worth paying attention to. Very often, however, its key moments are hidden inside missions, so if you're interested in storytelling, you shouldn't miss any side content along the way. By the way, the writers were helped by the writer Joshua Rubin, who has, for example, Assassin's Creed 2, Destiny or Telltale's Game of Thrones.

The earth was destroyed, its natural resources squeezed and polluted. During the last desperate years of human survival in its shell, there have been several attempts to launch the ark, a spaceship with select agents to ignite human existence elsewhere in space. The first ship burned in a terrible crash, but the second finally arrived on the acceptably habitable planet Enoch decades later. But as soon as you begin to discover the planet as an explorer (a profession called Outrider), you will encounter its murderous anomaly, manifested in the form of brutal magnetic storms. Whoever survives the storm mutates in an unexpected and often frightening way. This applies to local animals, but also to yourself. And so a war breaks out between factions of human losers, mutated people, and mutated local monsters.

Cynical humour but also references to the Holocaust or criticism of colonialism.

From the very beginning, I was surprised at how much attention the creators of the story paid. There are dozens of film scenes between missions, and many of them will surprise you not only with an interesting plot but also with how good the characters or scenery look. The very beginning is a bit generic, but as soon as you start to discover other biomes of the planet and the mysterious structures in them, the design and the plot will take quite a different turn. In addition, your hero is a champion of the position of bored/irritated antihero, so he comments on everything with such a dose of cynicism in his voice and words that I had a great time and laughed nonstop (for example, the comment why do I try at all when they kill his character which he had to escort to safety). Because of the brutal things you do with your mutant abilities to enemies on the battlefield, you'll often feel more like the main villain of the story, than his hero, when you are kidnapped by a party member, you comment with the words why would they want to upset the immortal demigod?. In addition, the game contains several false endings and great revelations, and especially its point is well built and reminded me of the legendary game Spec Ops: The Line.

Action nirvana

The effects of similar games such as Gears of War, Division or Diablo are immediately apparent in the game. Nevertheless, it has its own identity and in terms of the intensity of the fight from the perspective of a third party, we have not had anything like that before. Gears are noticeably slower with an emphasis on cover, which is completely unnecessary here for some classes (for example, Devastator heals only by killing at close range, so there is no value in hiding in cover). The division has its hands tied with its partial emphasis on the realism of enemies and abilities/weapons. The closest way to Outriders is to Diablo, especially in later missions, on a higher difficulty or in the endgame Expeditions. Since the game is only PvE, you don't have to worry about how exaggerated some of your skills are on the battlefield. Thanks to this, you will unleash the wilderness on the screen with the right equipment, as you've never seen before accompanied, of course, by duly bloody effects. For example, even a single weapon caused a smile on my face, but it had two perks on it: one froze the enemy and the other set it on fire, at the same time.

For similar games, the design of the game environment is not so important, which just has to offer enough space (arena, if you will) for proper battles and some of the tactical opportunities (narrow gorges to stay superior, etc.). The core of all fun is your movement and fighting skills. The basic controls of Outriders are fast and functional, but these are the abilities where the true heart of the game is hidden. You can choose from four classes a teleporting Trickster, a slowing time, a jumping Devastator, causing an earthquake, an all-fire Pyromancer, and a low-strength, yet remotely devastating Technomancer sniper. The first hours of playing you will see only a fraction of their potential, but by the end of the game, all four classes conjure up an absolutely unreal theatre of doom and are a source of ecstatic action entertainment,

At the end of the game, all four classes conjure up an absolutely unreal theatre of doom.

This will make your attention even more on the loot, as each new weapon or armour can mean a dramatic shift in your strength and abilities. Thanks to the excellent crafting system, you can also store your favourite abilities/properties (perks) of individual weapons or armour in a permanent library, from where you can pull them out at any time and place them on a new weapon or armour. As befits loot in a similar game, everything is clearly divided into "rarity classes" and the best pieces of equipment create an extra interesting synergy with each other, where one ability affects another - all the way through which you can combine your effects with teammates' effects. The so-called theory-crafting, or thinking of new builds and combinations, is at an extremely high level in this game, which Anthem or Avengers, for example, can only dream of.

Strengths and weaknesses

While crackling or splashing headshots resemble Gears and firing a trio of selected spells with preset buttons, for example, Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, the game also contains weak points or features. This includes, for example, separating parts of the map with a short eclipse or a film with climbing an obstacle. The map itself is absolutely confusing because the environment in the game does not correspond in its layout/shape to what you see on the in-game map. To make the confusion perfect, here and there auxiliary guidance through a translucent line (as in Dead Space) will lead you to a destination literally to the wall. Some enemy combinations can also be too challenging for specific character builds, although this is a rather rare problem and can usually be solved by reducing the difficulty in setting up.

The overall difficulty of the game is solved by an interesting dynamic system, where the tiers of Diablo are levelled and increased automatically according to your playing (but it can be manually disabled or changed). Surprisingly impressive are some of the boss fights, which in the best moments are remarkably reminiscent of Dark Souls titles, thanks to an impressive combination of environment, epic music and, of course, a properly scary opponent with a proper health bar. Unfortunately, no bosses contain any extra mechanics all the fights in the game are simply about prioritizing targets on the battlefield, dodging all sorts of unique attacks and the ability to heal with one's own attack in time. Fortunately, the enemies themselves are quite diverse and well combined, so each battle is a challenge. Artificial intelligence deserves praise,

The numbers don't lie

When the Polish studio Peple Can Fly started developing the game in 2015, armed with experience from games such as Bulletstorm, Gears of War or Fortnite: Save the World, about fifty people worked on Outriders. The publisher of Square-Enix believed in the title from the beginning and invested in it, so the team inflated 200 developers. And it's up to you to recognize it, if it weren't for some of the moments in the story and the deliberate Polish accent or the names of its protagonists, you might think it's the AAA title of a great American studio. People Can Fly have really become one of the best Unreal developers in Europe. And now they've also earned a well-deserved success because, despite the Outriders presence in the Xbox Game Pass overpayment, the game surpassed lifetime numbers of competing titles such as Avengers and Borderlands 3 on Steam in its early days.

Unfortunately, the servers and the network code of the game were obviously not ready for this success and interest (which may also have been helped by the start of the game during the extended Easter weekend during the pandemic). For the first three days, the servers reliably fell for several hours, when it was not possible to enter the game. At the same time, it requires online and for playing the story in one player (probably for protection against cheating). I was lucky to play in a group of people with whom we were able to maintain a good mood and have fun with humour and mutual encouragement, even though the game started to fall regularly every night. Elsewhere on the Internet, however, I have observed very irritated reactions from other players, which I completely understand.

In the first days, the game surpassed the "lifetime" numbers of players in competing titles.

Unfortunately, this also applies to some journalists, who in their frustration began to criticize the game in addition to problematic servers for its apparent mediocrity and superficiality. I'm a little worried that these people will be influenced in its evaluation even after they manage to connect to the servers and play it, this is a title intended for a specific audience of fans of the looter-shooter genre and the most famous of them clearly praise its gameplay. And if you don't skip movies or side missions, the story really has a lot to do. Personally, I'm really looking forward to the Outriders now playing a different character for the second time, this time more slowly and using all the dialogue options of the characters and carefully reading all the notes found.