Verdict
Outriders is a reliable third individual shooter with strong gunplay and a surprisingly developed story. This makes it an amazing recreation for any participant on the hunt for a compelling third individual shooter.

Pros
Lengthy story to play by way of
Solid gunplay and character growth
Fun coop alternatives with associates

Cons
Matchmaking is damaged
Some balancing points between lessons

Key Specifications
Review Price: £49.99
Available on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Multiplayer: Coop PvE
Genre: Looter shooter

Outriders is the most recent reside service looter-shooter to hit the scene. Since being unveiled it has usually been described as a 3rd individual Destiny 2, and at first look there’s loads to assist that description.
The recreation sees you are taking the position of an excellent powered area soldier, often known as an Outrider, as they attempt to navigate a hostile new world, referred to as Enoch. Along the way in which you’ll be tasked to blast your means by way of hordes of hostile enemies, selecting up new weapons and armor as you go.
But, having lastly accomplished the prolonged marketing campaign’s story and delved into its finish recreation, I can verify Outriders is a reasonably totally different beast to Destiny with the naked bones to be an amazing recreation. And for die laborious shooter followers in search of fast and straightforward enjoyable, it’s going to rank among the many greatest PC video games, greatest PS5 video games and Best Xbox Series X/S video games to reach not too long ago. But there are few key points that should be fastened for it have any long run enchantment.
It has a surprisingly focussed story

Outriders story is pretty by the numbers, but it surely’s much more compelling than most looter-shooters’
The story marketing campaign takes round 20-30 hours to finish
Starting with the story. The recreation’s premise is a fairly customary one on this planet of Sci-Fi. Humanity has fled the Earth in the hunt for a brand new dwelling after making its dwelling planet uninhabitable.
You take the position of an Outrider, an elite workforce of troopers, tasked with trying out potential new planets to verify their viability for colonisation.
The recreation begins with you touchdown on Enoch, an enormous Earth-like planet stuffed with large alien creatures and luxurious valleys ripe to discover.
Not giving any spoilers away, however as anticipated the colonisation doesn’t go easily and also you quickly end up in a hostile panorama making full use of the over-the-top area weapons you landed with.
The plot isn’t terribly unique however, it’s surprisingly developed, particularly when in comparison with Destiny’s story missions. This is helped by the very fact the sport needs to inform your Outrider’s story in a reasonably focussed means.
Though you get to choose their face and hair, the Outrider is a completely scripted character. There aren’t any dialogue decisions. Outriders is way more like Gears of War on this sense, it needs to inform a narrative and whilst you can come alongside for the trip, you’ll be able to’t get off the rails and alter it.
This makes it really feel way more developed and focussed than competing looter shooters, which have a tendency to make use of story campaigns as over-fluffed tutorials designed to organize you for the tip recreation, which homes nearly all of the content material.
The solely draw back is that, occasionally, the dialogue and excessive villains can get just a little near 90s cartoon ranges of cringe. One, particularly, feels like and acts like an R-Rated model of He-Man’s Skeletor. For a recreation all about ethical greys my greatest subject is that a whole lot of the characters really feel pretty one-sided.

It’s extra like Remnant: From the Ashes than Destiny gameplay-wise
Outriders options Gears / Remnant: From the Ashes-like cowl mechanics
There are 4 totally different lessons of Outrider to select from at launch
It helps PvE (participant vs enemy) coop
It’s this focus that makes Outriders stand out, with it feeling like one of many solely looter shooters round to deal with a correct full fats story marketing campaign that’s the main focus of the sport.
This can be mirrored in its gameplay, which jogged my memory extra of Gears or Remnant: From the Ashes than Destiny.
For starters, the sport isn’t an open world. It takes a hub method, tasking you to work your means by way of self contained areas/maps, every of which is stuffed with non-obligatory facet missions and hidden collectables to seek out. You unlock new hubs to discover in a linear trend after finishing core story missions.
These basically observe a fairly customary format, tasking you to battle your means by way of a collection of hostile enemies earlier than killing a essential boss.
Gameplay mechanics are additionally nearer to Remnant than Destiny. It has related cowl mechanics that allow you to conceal behind particles and partitions whereas sporadically popping as much as shoot incoming enemies.
Though this can be a dangerous tactic for 2 causes. First as a result of enemies are very aggressive. Rifleman will lob grenades repeatedly to coax you out of your fox gap and most encounters have hordes of berserker-style foes that may swamp any defensive place pretty quick.
The second is the sport’s virtually Bloodborne-like well being restoration system. In Outriders, regardless of wanting like a closely armoured area marine, your character is surprisingly straightforward to kill, even in decrease difficulties. To make issues work, even with increased stage characters, well being regeneration could be very gradual and also you’ll at all times be one mob, or boss’ energy assault away from loss of life.
To get spherical this, every class has distinctive methods to gather well being. In the sport, like most looter shooters, you get to select from 4 lessons. These embrace Technomancer (lengthy vary sniper), Pyromancer (mid vary jack of all traits), Trickster (shut vary murderer) and Devastator (close-range tank).
Each class comes with a wide range of tremendous assaults and defensive abilities, plus a sturdy talent tree you should utilize to spice up sure stats and skills as your character ranges up.
But extra crucially, they inform the way you gather well being/survive Outriders’ frantic firefights. Devastators, for instance, gather well being with every shut vary kill, whereas Pyromancers get it each time an enemy marked with its abilities are killed.
This offers you not simply an incentive, however an pressing should be aggressive and repeatedly push ahead in every firefight, to the purpose at occasions it looks like the sport added cowl mechanics to troll, reasonably than assist, gamers.
Creating an honest construct to match your playstyle can be made tremendous straightforward due to the sport’s intuitive talent tree and tremendous skills. Each class is split into three distinct paths tailor-made to particular playstyles. For extra adventurous gamers additionally they have components that intersect, making it fast and straightforward to mix components of every tree, in case you so want.
Early on, the sport additionally does a very good job incentivising you to try dangerous ass strikes utilizing every class’ tremendous skills. Each class has a wide range of tremendous skills to select from, three of which may be activated at one time. Devastators, for instance, can create rock armour round themselves, diminishing incoming harm, and have varied earth themed assaults, which deal with obliterating enemies utilizing gravity based mostly powers.

For the primary 5-10 hours my private favourite was Gravity Rush, a capability that allows you to fly into the sky and floor pound enemies upon your return.
As you’d count on from the developer of BulletStorm, the fight feels meaty and there’s a wierd thrill about watching scores of enemies explode into piles of pink goo on the finish of every assault.
The gunplay, for essentially the most half, additionally feels satisfying for the opening hours. Pump motion shotguns proved a private favorite throughout my first playthrough due to their skill to one-shot weaker enemies, with every shot feeling splendidly weighty and impactful.
But there are some flaws in its mechanics
Throughout our evaluate the sport was suffering from matchmaking points and recurrently crashed on PC
The recreation has some balancing points between lessons
The finish recreation could be very coop focussed
This is essential as, whereas the gunplay is enjoyable, the looting and match making mechanics are just a little hit or miss.
Like most looter shooters, new armour and weapons are coloration coded. Green gadgets are widespread, blue’s mid-tier, purple’s uncommon and orange/yellows are distinctive. The subject is, whereas there’s an honest variety of weapons to select from together with staples like shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, gentle machine weapons and SMGs, all of them begin feeling just a little samey pretty quick. The solely distinction you get comes right down to little issues, like if it’s auto hearth or semi-automatic.
The solely factor making it just a little entertaining is the armour, with Outriders having added some fairly “out there” virtually Warhammer like designs to the combination.
Outside of this weapons actually solely get attention-grabbing within the Outriders endgame, the place distinctive weapons begin showing. Each of those include extra entertaining, atypical taking pictures mechanics that breath new life into any load out.
This is gloomy because the longer I performed the sport the extra I realised a few of the lessons aren’t balanced terribly nicely. My early love of Gravity Rush rapidly turned bitter when harder firefights began and it turned the one dependable means for me to keep away from being mobbed by the ocean of smaller enemies flooding the could. This rapidly turned it from a enjoyable skill to make use of strategically to a crutch I required to succeed.
During my second playthrough of the sport I additionally seen some balancing points between the lessons. Specifically, I found fairly how underpowered the Devastator. Playing solo the defensive construct I created felt utterly underpowered in comparison with the Technomancer, which lengthy vary sniping and strong turret summoning skills let me blitz by way of sections I repeatedly struggled at throughout my first playthrough as a demolitionist.

This isn’t as huge of a problem as it could be on a recreation like Destiny, which has participant vs participant modes, however it’s a minor annoyance nonetheless for gamers that are likely to favour tank builds.
There are additionally points with the endgame, which twists Outrider’s mechanics on their head. Though the story mode helps coop and there are some encounters which might be greatest tackled with human teammates, the character of the narrative makes it really feel prefer it’s designed to be primarily loved solo.
However, attending to the endgame when “expeditions” change into accessible this rapidly flips. Expeditions are tremendous laborious missions that activity you to battle waves of enemies earlier than taking over an excellent laborious boss on the finish. They additionally current an enormous spike in issue on the story missions, to the purpose you really want a squad of human gamers working collectively to succeed.
This can be tremendous have been it not for the truth that, on the time of publishing, Outrider’s matchmaking mechanics have been pretty damaged (examined on PC). During my complete time with the sport I’ve efficiently managed to matchmake with a random workforce as soon as, and even then the sport crashed inside 10 minutes of me becoming a member of the sport.
The solely means I’ve been capable of efficiently create a squad is by manually making a squad with folks I do know and welcoming them to my recreation. Even then the sport has been rife with stability points and I’ve skilled frequent crashes. One notably nicely timed crash occurred simply earlier than we took down a boss, forcing us to start out the complete endeavour from scratch.

Outriders Conclusion
Outriders does an honest job outgrowing its status as a 3rd individual Destiny clone. Offering strong taking pictures mechanics, a surprisingly meaty story marketing campaign and enjoyable and intuitive character growth system it earns a spot as the most effective third individual shooters to reach this 12 months. The solely draw back is that technical points hinder a whole lot of the endgame’s funnest components.
You should purchase Outriders if:
You like third individual shooters:If you’re on the hunt for a enjoyable, zero fuss, third individual shooter then Outriders ticks all the fitting containers, providing enjoyable fight and a surprisingly prolonged story marketing campaign to blast your means by way of.
You like coop video games:Outriders is a good selection for any gaming group in search of a brand new cooperative shooter to deal with. The solely draw back is that it’s matchmaking dynamics are fairly damaged, so that you’ll probably have to manually make your fireteam in case you hope to deal with colonising Enoch as a squad.
You Shouldn’t purchase Outriders if:
You need a third individual Destiny:Despite pre-release buzz, Outriders is a really totally different recreation to Destiny. It’s main focus is on creating an amazing story and universe for gamers to blast by way of, reasonably than a brand new reside service for avid gamers to grind.

Editor

Alastair is in command of TechSwitch’ and Recombu’s editorial output. He has over a decade’s expertise as a journalist working in each B2C and B2B press. In his spare time he runs a webcomic.