Outriders, the tried of the first hours of the game
Outriders
About a month ago we told you about our experience with the Outriders demo. People Can Fly's looter shooter - the developers of Painkiller, Bulletstorm and Gears of War Judgment - has finally arrived on PC and consoles with some commercial success. Thanks also to the excellent choice of inserting it in the GamePass catalog (Xbox and xCloud only), the media push initially decreed its success. Like all these works, time will tell us if survival on the market will have brought its benefits, even where People Can Fly continues to push on the nature of a game over and over and not of a so-called GaaS.We have started living our experience on PS5, then transporting us back to PC, having to deal with server problems that are making players' lives too complicated. We have not been able to complete the campaign yet due to a couple of totally off evenings, which made it difficult for us to progress. In this sense, in fact, Outriders lends its side to its very definition. Where Borderlands remains true to itself, allowing players to live their experience even offline and for ever and ever, Outriders remains dependent on its own infrastructure, entering a strange limbo that really left us with more than one question.
An opening away from the memorable
Outriders: style is all about Enoch Anyone who knows People Can Fly knows that it's not a team dedicated to great screenplays. In this specific case there is a willingness to try to set up a more interesting world building, with the hope probably of laying the foundations for a long-term structure.The incipit of the adventure - which we already told you about a month ago and which we will avoid repeating at this stage - certainly does not scream a miracle, positioning itself in that slice of the market that works between science fiction and trash, between an Avatar and a Starship Troopers.
Outriders: the war in the trenches We know that the work of colonization of the new planet Enoch has totally failed and, leaving the inhabited center that was the background of the demo, we allowed to take a peek at subsequent maps and that of the entire region. Currently we have come to unlock six or seven, all of different sizes and conformations. Biomes that change and structures that reveal themselves, recounting thirty years of devastation of a colonization totally adrift.
This is the aspect that so far has struck us most positively, albeit leaving room for a level design and really sparse maps, both in terms of detail and interactions. A series of narrow corridors that punctually open into larger sections dedicated to naked and raw confrontation. All without solution of continuity, for hours and hours, always looking for the same key, the same end point of the map and the same closure of the area. Over and over.
Mediocre but functional
Outriders: Different Classes for Different Skills This is where Outriders' main short circuit currently lives and thrives. Five years of development could and should have been enough to give us a more refined experience. We are not talking about what concerns the problems to the servers or the current impossibility of putting into action a cross play now prohibited between PC and console. Rather, we are talking about a structure, a presentation and a substance that continues to feel inconsistent.So why do we say that all this is functional? Because the very essence of the People Can Fly title is the stark definition of "brainless". Turning off your brain and pulling the trigger is all that is required of you, as long as you are reactive enough to use your skills at the right time to allow yourself not to die terribly. The idea of the team is in fact that of having put us in the position of not being able to cure ourselves except by killing enemies through our abilities and, as far as possible, also maintaining a certain aggressiveness in positioning.
Outriders: the affectionate fauna " "This aspect is the most emblematic to understand the strangeness and confusion of the People Can Fly approach. Outriders presents itself as a TPS strongly influenced by the playful structure of Gears of War, with the same type of covers, the same type of sprint and an aesthetic that in some cases also reminds it. Nothing negative, on the other hand, as we have mentioned, the same team worked on a chapter of the Epic series.
What appears strange is the forced and clearly unbalanced dichotomy between two approaches to gameplay that in reality are one and the same. only one. We reserve the right to get to the most advanced stages, to unlock the latest skills and to have the opportunity to test the highest world levels to give a definitive judgment. Currently, however, we cannot get rid of the consideration that Outriders is a somewhat schizophrenic and in some ways only sketchy work, which perhaps is still in search of its true nature.
Outriders: the armored car is everything
World and co-op level
Two of the main mechanics of the game are also two of the most difficult to decipher. The writer tries practically all the looter shooters on the square, having therefore seen all the colors. Outriders attempts to hybridize character growth with a structure closer to that of Diablo. This has led to the inclusion of a disproportionate amount of world levels which, as the difficulty increases, also increases the remuneration. The system is fluid, increasing and decreasing according to your score in the game and always remaining within sight along with that of your level. You can decide to go up and down as you please and according to the threat you are facing. This choice really hit us positively despite the need for a better balance. In fact, in this sense what works much less is the balance between the group experience and the single one. We understood that the only real difference is based on the amount of life points of the individual enemies, an element that clashes with the need to kill to recover health, bringing the single experience to be simpler in its progression, but limiting zero missteps. Once dead, in fact, you are dead, without the possibility of recovery and resuscitation, with the consequence of having to restart from the beginning of the checkpoint, often positioned several minutes and hundreds of bullets before. On the contrary, in a group, even the most ridiculous enemy turns into a sponge that often requires the support of multiple team members to be killed, making any situation potentially deadly. To balance this choice there should be the resuscitation through a companion, which inexplicably, however, has also been included as an autonomous feature for only once in a fight, without the help of the proximity of a member of the group. We will probably never stop asking ourselves questions about the logic of this choice ...The essence of the shot
Outriders: some equipment really has style. these first hours for what concerns the loot and the feeling. Leaving aside problems related to the demo and to those who enjoyed farming legendaries before everything was patched, Outriders currently lacks a bit of variety, especially on armaments. We have also had the opportunity to test some more particular weapons, but in large part the impression is that everything fires a bit in the same way within the single category. It is obvious that expecting Bungie gunplay would be wrong especially from the point of view of the setting itself. Comparing an FPS with a TPS would be as villainous today as it will always be, but already the previous Massive The Division has given us a variety of sensations, trigger in hand, that Outriders seem to have no desire to achieve.Despite this, we cannot hide the fact that we are having fun shooting (strictly in groups) and that the approach to the skills necessary for the recovery of life represent a breath of fresh air in a panorama that is always identical to itself.
We already have a million other things to say and considerations to make, but for now we stop here. Outriders has just come out and we still have a great desire to rattle off every detail and really understand what we think. For now, the judgment remains suspended halfway between the functional and fun experience and the awareness of a certain degree of mediocrity and schizophrenia, which has probably held back their ambition.
