Outriders Review (PS5) – Don’t Stop Shooting

After constant teasing by developer People Can Fly and publisher Square Enix, I finally decide to give Outriders a shot, so here is the review. Note that I played Outriders on the PS5 and as a result, this review may not be accurate for other platforms.

Is this new looter shooter a Destiny-killer? Or is it more like an April Fool’s joke? Carry on reading this review of Outriders on the PS5 to find out!

The story and lore of Enoch

Outriders is a sci-fi 3rd person looter shooter that takes place on a single planet called Enoch, considered as a suitable replacement for Earth. Your custom character and his/her team of Outriders, scientists and other humans are amongst the first people to land on Enoch. After a series of unfortunate events, your character ends up being frozen in a cryo chamber and wakes up to a post-apocalyptic version of Enoch, consumed by war and bizarre natural phenomena.

The premise is quite interesting. However, the execution of the story beyond that point feels a bit lacking. The rest of the campaign is basically your character volunteering to help out his/her old friends from before the timeskip. A war is ongoing, and you will need to win the war mostly by yourself because “your allies can’t send any more men”. 

As a result, the story feels like a cheesy blockbuster action movie at times, complete with writing and dialogue that feels that way. Some of the dialogue is quite cringy and for some reason your main character has the personality of an edgelord. Many times, I felt like skipping cutscenes.

However, there is some interesting lore and worldbuilding underneath the cheesy action movie-esque cutscenes. The in-game journal entries, while nothing revolutionary, does a decent job of fleshing out the characters, enemies and the world of Enoch. 

Shoot to live

Fights in Outriders are action-packed and intense. Hordes of enemies will shoot at you, throw grenades to flush you out of cover and occasionally, stronger enemies will use their own deadly skills. Enemies tend to feel like bullet sponges at times, but getting a better weapon is usually the answer to that problem.

To survive and restore health, you will need to damage enemies. As a result, the game encourages aggressive playstyles and has a high risk, high reward philosophy when it comes to fights. For thrill-seekers, the gameplay will definitely feel satisfying to you. For those who are less aggressive or prefer camping, you might need to adapt your playstyle.

Further cementing this philosophy is the World Tiers system. The higher the tier, the stronger the enemies you will face, but the rewards and loot are also much higher in terms of quality. You start out at World Tier 1 and unlock higher tiers as you kill enemies. Basically, this is the game’s adaptive difficulty setting. The game lets you choose previous tiers that you have unlocked, so if it ever feels too difficult, you can always go back to an earlier tier to progress but at the cost of getting better loot.

However, there are a few issues with combat that makes it a chore at times. Namely, fights do feel quite repetitive. Enemy variety is very small and there are quite a lot of reskins of the same enemies. The maps are also basically very linear and are just one long hallway with large groups of enemies separating each section. The campaign missions are also always “kill enemies, go to next location”. Compared to a free-to-play looter shooter like Warframe, the enemy variety, level design and mission variety feels severely lacking.

This is also a minor gripe, but the in-game minimap should communicate more information. It displays points of interests (shops, quests, etc.) and enemies, but there are no indications of walls or boundaries of the level. As a result, players will need to be extra aware of their surroundings as it is easy to get trapped in a corner.

Guns, armour, and flashy skills

What makes combat worth it in the game despite its shortcomings is the equipment and skills. Unlike the enemy and mission variety, there is a ton of weapons and armour to choose from. Furthermore, each piece of equipment may also contain two different combinations of mods, which can change your playstyle or approach in combat dramatically. The game is very generous with loot and before long, you will have a lot of different options to gear up your character.

Equipment comes in various rarities denoted by their colour. These are grey -> green -> blue -> purple -> orange, in ascending order of rarity. Besides the mod slots, equipment may also come with various attribute enhancements. Legendary loot does not feel as hard to get when compared to other looter shooters which are great. Similar to the Diablo games, getting a good equipment with the right mods can drastically improve your character and by extension, your gaming experience.

Furthermore, the auto-loot button (down on the D-Pad on PS5) has incredible range. It feels as if I can pick up dropped equipment from across the map. If the inventory is full, loot automatically goes to the stash, so the looting aspect of the game is really convenient. Occasionally, equipment with great mods can also be purchased from the shop. Everything about the equipment in the game is convenient, straight to the point and fun.

While the game’s crafting system does not let you create new equipment from scratch, it does let you pass down mods from the library of mods you gained from dismantling equipment. You can also level up gear and enhance attributes, albeit at a rather expensive cost. 

Besides that, the game gives you the option of four different classes, each with its different skills, skill trees and playstyles. They are:

• Devastator: Tanky class that benefits from getting up close and personal
• Pyromancer: Offensive class with damaging, fire-themed skills
• Trickster: Mobile class that can slow time and teleport around
• Technomancer: Supportive class with great long-ranged potential

For this review, I decided to roll with the Technomancer, the resident support-oriented class in Outriders. Note that the game does not let you switch to other classes on the fly. To try out another class, you will need to make a new character. 

Even though the Technomancer may not have skills that are as flashy or explosive as the other classes, the skills my character used made me feel very powerful and are a blast to use in battle. People Can Fly did a great job in making the skills stand out in terms of visuals. Abilities explode and whizz across the screen as enemies burn, freeze, get poisoned and the like.

Skill trees can be reset at any time free of charge, which is great for experimentation for different builds and such. Instead of tailoring your gear to suit your skill build, you can adjust your skill build to suit your best gear, which grants a lot of freedom in terms of playstyle. Even passive skills feel impactful. For example, the skill that gives me 10% increased DMG when firing with sniper rifles effectively turned my 2-shot kills into 1-shot kills. 

Presentation

Visually, the game is decent on the PS5. Character models look and behave a bit goofy at times. In some areas, the game’s shadows can be a bit too harsh, leading to characters’ skin tone looking far darker than it was supposed to.

However, the maps, levels and environments look and feel alive. Aesthetically, the maps feel varied enough with different biomes and regions. Overall, People Can Fly did a good job of creating a planet that looks and feels like an alien world.

PS5 Performance

On the PS5, the game runs relatively stable in single player. I never noticed any frame rate drops even when there are many enemies shooting and running at me. Also, I only encountered one bug so far, which was my character teleporting to cover instead of running to it, nothing game-breaking. In addition, I have not experienced any crashes. Load times are also around 3 seconds or less. 

Furthermore, note that in single player, internet connection is required. If you have poor connection, the game will send you back to the lobby. Luckily, I had a stable connection throughout my time playing Outriders for this review and I never experienced being kicked to the lobby.

Regrettably, I was unable to test out the multiplayer for this Outriders review. At the time of writing, People Can Fly reported that the game is experiencing server issues, with problems affecting the game’s crossplay functionality. As the number of PS5s in my region (Malaysia/Southeast Asia) is already low, I was unable to matchmake with anyone else. Hopefully, the server issues and crossplay will be fixed soon.

Outriders does not use the adaptive triggers of the PS5, which is somewhat of a letdown. It does use the haptic feedback, though not in any particularly interesting ways. The most it does is having varying intensity in the rumble, but it is not like first party titles such as Demon’s Souls where they make full use of it by having the rumble travel down the controller. Note that the haptics only kick in when you shoot the gun. 

While it is easy to wish that People Can Fly could have done more the Dualsense, but considering Outriders is not a first party title, it would be rather overkill to add all the extra implementation for only one platform. 

Closing Thoughts

Overall, Outriders is a looter shooter that shines in terms of its looting mechanics and character progression. It also does a great job in making you feel very powerful as you take on swarms of enemies. Unfortunately, its high-intensity combat is hampered by poor design choices. Nonetheless, the game does feel less grindy than other looter shooters.

If you are looking to sink time into a new looter shooter, I feel that you can give the game a shot. While the game does have flaws, ultimately, getting new and better equipment and skills is the most rewarding aspect of the game that outweighs the issues the game has in its combat.

Once again, this review of Outriders is for the PS5, so your experience on a different platform, say Stadia, will be really different. 

For more information about the game, check out its official website.

Final Score:

7/10

Game reviewed on PS5. Review code provided by Square Enix.

Outriders

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: People Can Fly

Release Date: 2021-04-01

Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Steam, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S

Outriders’ brutal and bloody combat combines frenetic gunplay, violent powers and deep RPG systems to create a true genre hybrid.

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