People Can Flight, developer of the saga of Painkiller, who even worked on the saga of Gears of War, in Bulletstorm, To Fortnite's Save the World mode and not only that, it cheered the expectation of the next-gen by announcing its new one modern and futuristic shooter, apparently able to move the market on all platforms. We were talking about Outriders, which between postponements and breathtaking trailers has now really arrived on almost all platforms: PC (Steam, Epic Games Store e GeForce NOW), PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Google Stadia e Xbox Game Pass su Xbox Series X / S, Xbox One e xCloud. After a substantial demo that allowed us to test the 4 classes present (we talked about it in this article), we were able to try the full game for several hours, and we want to share with you our opinions on the experience before our full review of Outriders.
A hard world to win back
The Earth has become an unlivable planet, forcing humans to search the universe for another place to live, to plant their roots and rebuild the population. The "lucky" planet is Enoch, which at first seems rather welcoming, but hides some unexpected secrets to say the least. The protagonist is one of the so-called "Outriders“, Soldiers ready to fight the dangers to make way for the settlers. The tutorial opens with these premises, and while letting the player experience the first shooting and movement mechanics, it drags the Anomaly into the field, a tremendous apparently paranormal phenomenon that it destroys human technology, consuming the bodies of the new settlers and mutating them. After being saved almost by chance thanks to cryostasis, the protagonist will have to reconquer a planet that has now fallen into decline, among rebels and lethal creatures, 30 years later, but he will have on his side the powers given to him by the Anomaly, other than the classic guns. It is precisely these that aim to make the experience unique in a sea of equality.
The market is perhaps not ready to welcome Outriders with open arms, given its offer of Game as a Service which could be really excessive for many, but fortunately the game presents itself immediately with some rather original ideas, which get in the way between the very modern idea of games as services, and the old school mechanics that can make many users happy. The new People Can Fly shooter is seen first and foremost from the perspective of Tough and raw RPG, where the infinite customization of the character allows you to impersonate multiple styles of play, neglecting one's class and attitudes to what your Outrider will be able to demonstrate during his raids. The loot and shoot system is a very sweet membrane designed to make such a customization attractive to all users, which is more fun when one wonders what the aforementioned enemy will release, or what will be given as a reward for the secondary one that - maybe - in itself would have been less inviting. Fortunately, we are happy to confirm that, at least in the first few hours, it seems that People Can Fly has managed to mix everything divinely, holding the player stronger and stronger mission after mission, and not letting him easily shake off the fun that accumulates over the many hours of play.
Between guns and powers
Although the protagonist's powers are nothing short of fundamental, the experience revolves mainly around the classic weapons: most of the enemies come exterminated one magazine after another, and it takes effort to fill the screen and scenarios with blood. The feedback of the shooting system is really well elaborated, the bullets really manage to get out of the screen and give the right satisfaction for that unexpected headshot, or for that well-aimed shot that manages to knock out the boss on duty. The variety of types of weapons does not seem very wide for now, but more than enough considering that the classic sniper rifles, or machine guns, have different variations between magazine width, sights and stats. In the inventory you are faced with a continuous tide of choices, between the level of the items and the unique skills of some, the management of the equipment becomes a real roulette with which you want to continuously play, in order to try that for a few hours. combination that will make the protagonist stronger than the enemies. As you reach the maximum level (30), your opponents are continuously upgrading, and changing equipment with stronger combinations, or upgrading it - even transferring powers - becomes increasingly important to survive the waves of opponents.
The level of the world and the enemy potentials also change. Thanks to this system, playing and accumulating experience unlocks further difficulties, with which the rewards increase dramatically; but it is good not to exaggerate, and from time to time it is possible to calibrate the difficulty to make a more difficult mission accessible, perhaps by agreeing with your party. In addition to being valid as a single player experience, Outriders seems to give its best in coop up to three players, which can be found with online matchmaking, but which of course it is preferable to be acquaintances and friends, also given the complete absence of any ping system or in-game communication method, which we hope will obviously be added during the next patches.
It is especially important too coordinate your team based on the four available classes, as mentioned before, incredibly customizable, but which respect some essential rules. In fact, each has fixed bonuses that it can take advantage of, such as the ability to heal by inflicting damage only from certain distances, or skills that can be combined with others of your team to create lethal combos. The skill tree seems to be one of the most successful parts of the whole game: it is incredibly complete and extensive, as well as resettable at any time to be reprogrammed and full of opportunities that can only be seized after several hours of play. As the number of players in a team increases, the strength of the enemies also increases proportionally, automatically forcing players to collaborate with efficient strategies. An applause must also be made to the fantastic artificial intelligence, which except for moments of bugs and some indecision, is contextualized for every type of enemy, which at times will try to jump on you, other times to hide to snipe you, or even to surround you and take you from behind. We have probably not yet made the acquaintance of all types of enemies, which for now seem multiple and somewhat varied, so we still have to find out if the game will flatten out in this respect or if it will present unexpected surprises.
Outriders is still a Game as Service
While remaining down to earth, and doing its job well as an RPG, Outriders unfortunately ends up being dominated by its own kind. The GaaS gives and the GaaS takes away, and in the face of a satisfactory amount of content already on day one, some problems are unfortunately present simply due to the reference market of the work. Although the history of the world is well deepened thanks to secondary dialogues, documents and quantities of incalculable artifacts, the online multiplayer structure obviously undermines the narrative, in the face of the greater fun that the coop can guarantee. Intermission cutscenes break the action all too often, and we had the impression many times - already in the first hours of the game - that there was not much harmony between the story and the play sections. Living the experience in single allows you to enjoy more of the fascinating world brought into dance by People Can Fly, but some problems (such as the skip of the dialogues that is not limited to single sentences, but skips entire discussions, forcing players to have to hear every period to understand something) undermine the pace at which events flow, bringing them below the quality to which the classic single player experiences have accustomed us. However, there is no shortage of twists and moments of tension, as well as the character of a protagonist who is anything but anonymous who seems to react well to events and give the right pinch of pepper, helping to appreciate - even superficially - the narration of Outriders, and creating the right curiosity and desire to continue.
Speaking of which, this is customizable through an editor, and it is possible to create a total of 6 characters per account (more than enough, given the only 4 classes present), even if the final result will be only partially original given the relative scarcity of the models present. The graphic side is probably the Achilles heel of the experience. Nothing particularly serious, but this does not have the artistic charge that it could have granted itself, and although the individual models are in themselves well elaborated, the breathtaking views are not so many, even if the variety of the scenarios is for the moment rather well processed. The animations often turn up their noses, and in general the color palette is quite dull and standard, even if the effects of the powers manage to rekindle the flame that the screen should emit continuously. In short, the homework has been done, even discreetly to be honest, but works like Destiny have managed to make the infinite lights and particles on the screen iconic of the brand, while Outriders still seem to be quite shy in the realm of graphic and artistic creativity.
As day one approaches, the game presents (as is now customary) some problems. You want for visual bugs and various glitches, you want for problematic cross-play, some corrective patches will need to make the current build more stable. However, in the course of the experience there have not been many disabling bugs to reveal themselves, with just a few selves and some but for the current state of the game, we are sure that these will remain a memory already in a few weeks. At the time of this writing review in progress of Outriders, we have not yet had the opportunity to get our hands on the endgame, as we are positioned towards what seems to be about half of the campaign. This has left us quite positive impressions for the moment, despite several areas that should be reviewed and which we hope will improve with the accumulation of hours of play, and updates. We look forward to experiencing first hand the final activities of the work, which will have to keep it alive over the next few months, or why not years. See you on our portal, where we will talk to you soon the quality of additional content which will be accessible once the main campaign is over, which could improve the already solid experience to the point of making it a strong market leader, and the remaining part of the main Outriders campaign.
