REVIEW: Outriders

Outriders from developer People Can Fly, and publisher Square Enix are, at the most, an entertaining game. With its sci-fi Lords of the Flies setting and characters that are both complex and serviceable, the story is constantly at risk of raising ethical issues. At its best, the gameplay is thrilling and engaging. It can make you feel as god-like or more than many of the characters. It can be frustrating and almost punishing to play the way the game wants you to. It's a fascinating game, with some scary questions about the future and the necessity of online games brought up by the constant server problems. However, Outriders's intrigue is based more on its flaws and what could be, than what it is.

Although it may sound confusing, I promise to clarify. Outriders's problems begin with the story and setting. While I don't mean to say that the setting is bad, I believe it is one of the best aspects of Outriders. Enoch is a fascinating and beautiful planet to explore. It feels tragic that Enoch isn't a more prominent character in Outriders.

Instead of focusing on deep exploration of alien worlds, we are subject to linear firefights. These occur in three to four areas that have plenty of high-tall rocks for hiding behind. The Outrider is a soldier who was originally assigned to protect Enoch from hostile forces. The anomaly that occurs at the start of the game will cause you to become Altered. This is where you can choose which one of the four classes you want to play. This is an amazing setting for gameplay. We don't get to continue with "now explore this new open-world." Instead, we get small sandboxes between which allows us to explore. For the first time in a while, I feel like I want a game that has an open-world component.

Do you see what I'm referring to? I would have loved to explored more of Enoch, and been more involved in the setting and world. This would have kept me engaged in the story's events. The game instead focuses on the human characters. We assume they are the last remaining humans in the galaxy and so we care about them. I find this disappointing, especially since the story begins 30 years after the anomaly. You wake up to discover that they haven’t been doing much other than trying to kill each other. This is a waste of depth. You could add layers about the building of communities, survival, and what happens to people who become violent. And how you can maintain peace if you choose. It's the worst part of this game is listening to all the dialogue between gameplay. These lines describe events that would have been much more fun to experience first-hand. We get very little beyond a brief explanation of why you are in this new open-space shooting group and not in any previous open-space shooting group. I will admit that I am disappointed.

Despite these and other issues with the gameplay that I will reveal soon, Outridershas one problem that stands out above all others. It's the issue that makes the game in some cases unplayable. Outriders requires an internet connection in order to play. This is something I haven't been able to come up with. Even if you are playing solo, you will need to connect to the server. There is an option to allow other players to join. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more popular title with the same restrictions in 2021. It should also have an offline mode for games that can be played by one person without the need for multiplayer. Outriders is unable to provide an offline mode. This is because my experience with Outriders has been erratic, unreliable, and buggy while trying to play the game and log in.

After waiting almost 10 minutes to be signed in to Outriders I was unable to sign in. After I launched Outriders and waited for it to load, I would press the X button and sign in. A loading circle continued spinning until the end. Even though I spent nearly an hour trying to sign in, there were a few nights when I realized that I wouldn't have continued if the game was still being reviewed. I was so fed up that I quit the game and switched to another one.

Although it might seem harsh, I believe my frustration is valid. I felt as though I had downloaded the wrong thing every time I looked at the "Signed In!" screen. I haven't downloaded Outriders, which is a third-person shooter, but I have downloaded Escalator Land, the digital version. It just feels entirely unnecessary to make this an issue at all, and I understand that I wouldn't have these problems if the servers were running fine, and once they've been fixed players likely won't go through this again with Outriders--but it didn't have to be a problem in the first place.

Actually, I think that if there was an offline mode where you could play alone, it would have made the online game more appealing. Story and server issues aside though, the gameplay is what really matters in Outriders. It wasn't exaggerated when I said that the gameplay can make it feel like you are God-like in your abilities. Despite all my problems, Outriders can be an engaging and fun experience due to its core gameplay loop. It's endlessly enjoyable to use your unique abilities and strategic gunplay in order to move around the battlefield and make your enemies explode. This works great solo but also well when played with other players. You can create more combinations between characters by having a squad that includes multiple classes, or multiples of one class. The Technomancer class, for example, can create a turret that fires ice cold pellets at enemies. This will cause them to freeze in place. My Devastator squadmate will send an earthquake to make them fall.

Unfortunately, the other side of this is difficult balancing. Outridersuses fifteen different world tiers that make up 15 different types of difficulty. World tiers 1 through 5 are the easiest, 3 and 4 are normal, while between 5 and 15 there are 10 variations of extremely difficult. As you play the game, you unlock new world tiers and gain more proficiency in your ability to eliminate everyone around you. You can even have your current world level automatically adjusted to the highest, increasing the difficulty of your playthrough.

This is where the problem lies. The higher difficulty levels make it seem like the game is telling you how to play. But, you need to know how to survive. While I enjoyed the game, I did so mostly solo and with some co-op. I was able to get the most out of my Technomancer and Trickster characters, and I even completed the game with my Technomancer. Each class was given different difficulties to help me get to know them better. However, I couldn't unlock anything beyond world tier 6. It could be that I am terrible at Outriders. That is possible, but it doesn't mean that that's all. The Trickster class can slow down time and teleport enemies far away. It also generates a temporal knife that can cut through anyone who is unlucky enough to get in its way. That is the problem with Trickster class: you have to be close enough to use your powers.

After taking damage, the only way to heal is by killing any enemies that you have affected with your abilities. It is a very engaging game due to the Trickster's close-quarter nature and ability to move quickly to avoid being hit by enemies. This makes it difficult to get through the more difficult levels. I lost my health much faster than I could recover it, and had to stop pushing forward in inches instead of moving across the entire battle arena. While the game encourages me to keep pushing forward and get in the thick of the fight, it also punishes me by making my powers cool down while I die. This causes the game to stop and frustrates me to its utmost. Only after I had died countless times, I was able to survive encounters. I also knew the enemy locations and could eliminate them all so well that I barely survived. It felt like I had lost all my freedom to play the game. I couldn't advance if I didn’t exercise extreme caution.

Maybe I'm just terrible at Outriders. Or maybe there's a way I should be using my skill points more effectively. It doesn't seem unfair to suggest that the steep difficulty curve beyond world tier 4 is too difficult for solo players of certain classes. The Devastator is another CQC class. While I was a Trickster, it is also true that the Devastator class has certain ranged attacks that can mitigate these issues, but not fully. Technomancer and Pyromancer both place more emphasis on ranged abilities. This doesn't make for a great contrast in gameplay. This creates a feeling of lackluster polish that makes it feel like the game isn't polished enough.

Where does it all end? It landed me at "interesting," as I stated at the beginning. I have an amazing time playing the game, especially when I play co-op. The different abilities of the classes are well-designed and allow for different combat combinations within the same character class as with other players. While I enjoy the core gameplay, the frustrations and issues that I experience with network issues and difficulty balancing do not diminish the frustration I feel with the story, which has a disappointing end. We're left with a game that feels sadistically half-finished because it was halfway to greatness.