It’s difficult to establish new brands in the games business, especially within the crowded looter shooter space. Outriders gets part of the way there with an addictive gameplay loop, masterful environment art plus flexibility in character and gear customization options. Even if it’s rough around the edges and often crashes, both figuratively and quite literally.

Developer People Can Fly, a team known for fast-paced shooters like Bulletstorm and Gears of War: Judgement, crafted a campaign-based, 3rd person action game riddled with loot, rank-ups and abilities. It’s a twist on the deluge of online service games of the modern era, spinning it towards campaign instead of ongoing content. It often feels like a Mass Effect with even more gear to find and tweak. Memorable environmental design, a satisfying combat hook and narrative arc that builds momentum well in the later acts are among its best surprises. Where it suffers is a lack of polish, a slow beginning, cringe-worthy dialogue, various technical issues and inconsistent quality of life and accessibility offerings.

Ultimately, I’d compare Outriders more to the satisfying, greasy junk food devoured after a night out as opposed to any sort of fine dining experience. It has its moments, guilty as they are, and boasts features that competitors should have while lacking others that are genre staples. It often tries too hard to be edgy, distracting from the eloquence of certain mechanical choices. I’m skeptical of its staying power past a few weekends, as fun as those could be when it’s stable enough to play.

Fans of well-established shlooters like Destiny or Borderlands will be immediately familiar with its general conceit. At its core, Outriders is a sci-fi action game that leans on character builds, skill choices, intense combat, level progression and the never-ending desire to find that next piece of gear. There’s a lot to it, a monumental amount of work and balancing from a studio’s first foray into this space.

Story goes like this: Earth is dying because of climate change. Humanity decides to send a select amount of colonists to Enoch, a distant planet seemingly suited for life. Among them are the titular Outriders, a team of elite scouts that will arrive before everyone else to take stock of this new home. Thing is, Enoch isn’t actually that hospitable. An unexplained, deadly energy force dubbed the Anomaly makes life near unmanageable. When the Outriders try to warn the Enoch Colonization Authority (ECA), its leaders are in denial and send a separate team to assassinate all the Outriders.

The player character survives both this internal attack and exposure to the Anomaly itself, is shoved into cryostasis by ECA scientist Shira Gutmann and sleeps for over 30 years.

Once awakened, Enoch is a totally different place. Overrun by enemy factions in an endless war alongside disgusting monsters influenced by the Anomaly, including a set of humans with special powers called The Altered. Our Outrider, possessing these super human abilities as well, works with former friends and new allies to mitigate threats and salvage some semblance of normal life for everyone that survived this far.

And that’s where the player takes control, finding both Shira and fellow Outrider Jakub Dąbrowski embroiled in this conflict. The MacGuffin here is a mysterious signal being broadcast since at least that initial landing, thus the journey towards gear and glory commences. All of this is explained during a painfully slow introduction sequence, as the game takes way too long to get into the real action.

At this point the player faces a major choice: What class to pick? Outriders features four of them, all designed well enough yet sharing a lot of similar characteristics. Devastator is the in-your-face tank. Pyromancer is a balanced build based on, you guessed it, fire. Then there’s the sniping class in the Technomancer and its multitude of turrets. Finally, Trickster offers agile, hit-and-run techniques including a snappy teleport.

I’ve rolled a Trickster and Pyromancer, then learned about the other two via co-op or reading impressions. Even though the game is technically a shooter, its skill system is what truly makes it fun and engaging. Each character has a set of eight selectable skills, three of which can be active at a given time. Many of these apply certain status effects, for instance Burning for the Pyromancer or Slow for the Trickster.

What’s great about the skill design is they are viable in both solo and multiplayer modes, the latter of which really highlights combat versatility and synergies among classes. Trickster and Technomancer combine as a great team, teleporting and turrets in tandem. Devastator is powerful yet a bit more risky alone, and Pyromancer is an all-around quality pick. It’s the combinations that are necessary when facing high level combatants, notably during post-game.

Quick yet important caveat is there’s no regenerating health. The only way to heal is to fight. Each class has its own curative mechanic, all of which require some sort of damage dealt. While having to fight in order to stay alive might seem counterintuitive, it’s a genius decision. Outriders is closer to something like DOOM in how it rewards aggressive behavior. A frenetic action game masquerading as a cover shooter.

Naturally for a title of this nature, multiple layers of player progression coax people to stick around. First, there’s individual player level. Experience points here are gained by basically just playing anything, up to the Level 30 maximum per character. This provides points that can be invested into Class Trees, unlocking additional passive bonuses that range from basic to highly focused. Each character has three main “specializations” i.e. sub-classes. Decisions around them are important, mainly because there aren’t enough points to unlock everything in the broader tree.

Every skill point investment is meaningful, crafting toward specific builds. For instance there’s a Trickster path called Assassin that promotes weapon output and quick movement on the battlefield. While I’m not a fan of this sort of arbitrary limiting, I understand the design choice. It’s meant to encourage specialization and experimentation rather than becoming an all-around god. Thing is, many people like the power fantasy. Good news is that it doesn’t cost anything to re-spec or shift to a different branch.

Then there’s one of the best ideas Outriders has to offer in World Tiers, both a leveling and difficulty mechanic. This effectively sets the “meta” layer, impacting enemy power, loot drop level and the rate at which the best gear appears. It also determines the wearable item level cap, so a lower level character can’t wield a super-powerful gun until it reaches the corresponding tier.

There are fifteen World Tiers, each one increasing all of these requisites and rewarding with a random drop once a new level is achieved. The brilliance is how Outriders lets the player dictate difficulty by allowing changes on the fly. Having a tough time with a certain encounter? Bump it down temporarily. Thing is, there’s a slight catch. The game only doles out World Tier experience at the highest unlocked level, and dying resets part of that progress. My personal rule was if I failed once during a particular fight, I’d lower it by one until I finished that area. I love this sort of setting that can be adjusted immediately. It encourages more people to play, alleviates wasted time on challenging encounters and there are still plenty of meaningful prizes.

While having to fight in order to stay alive might seem counterintuitive, it’s a genius decision. Outriders is closer to something like DOOM in how it rewards aggressive behavior. A frenetic action game masquerading as a cover shooter.

Speaking of rewards, I’ve come this far without mentioning the most important part of the genre: LOOT!

Originating in role-playing games of yesteryear, gear and customization around it is now commonplace in many genres. Outriders is in a class where it’s the core design aspect: The player character starts with crummy weapons and armor, earns better loot throughout the game until they are powerful enough to take on the game’s most challenging content.

As always, there are varying degrees of quality: Common, Unusual, Rare, Epic and the coveted Legendary. All of them communicated visually by both how they look on the character and what color they show up as in one’s inventory. What’s nice is even if early gear is not pleasing to the eye, it’s still useful in a practical sense. Lower level items starting at the Rare category possess worthwhile perks, such as applying status effects, shortening skill cool downs or replenishing health after a kill.

The overall loot ramp-up is steady, if not slow, until the story opens up to where there are certain optional quest-lines. My first Epic reward came at around 5 hours, a Level 12 shotgun earned during a boss fight. Initial Legendary was a double fire machine gun called Amber Vault at Level 21, a random pull after numerous hours fighting hordes and insurgents. Upside is that certain missions actually allow the player to pick between three different rewards within the same rarity. Most times they are worthwhile, and it reduces the reliance on luck.

Aesthetically, a lot in Outriders isn’t really appealing unless it’s the best of the best. A mish-mash of post-apocalyptic junk and natural designs, a whole lot of bones and protrusions. Weapons are mostly standard military fare until the highest tier of Legendary designs start to look really unique, blending the Anomaly’s supernatural aura with parts from native creatures and elemental features. It looks like each Legendary has its own story of why it looks that way, a blend of Old Earth and New Enoch. And I appreciate the craftsmanship at the top end, even if I don’t love the artistic approach of “edgy and we know it.”

The best intrinsic system of Outriders might be its crafting, the method by which a player tunes its gear to enhance specific builds or shift towards a certain status effect type. This is done via interacting with crew member Dr. Abraham Zahedi, one of Enoch’s last remaining scientists. For both weapons and armor, he offers multiple functions: increase rarity, boost attributes, modify slots, change variant and even level it up if it’s lagging behind. These cost resources like Iron, Leather or Titanium, which are found in-game or from breaking down unneeded gear.

Modding is the most impactful and flexible part. Rare quality items have a single slot, while Epic and Legendary possess two. Crafting allows one of these to be changed to any other mod the player has unlocked, as long as they have the resources to afford it. Even high level mods are affordable. Once changed, this particular slot can then be adjusted to any other owned mod at any time.

There are three tiers of mods, each offering more unique bonuses and powerful build opportunities than the last. These precious items are unlocked by dismantling a piece of gear with it attached. Once that happens, that character can use it on any relevant gear. Forever. These aren’t consumables. Which means that even if gear isn’t used, it’s still useful.

To highlight perfectly why this particular crafting design is so smart in Outriders, a personal favorite Legendary that I’ve been leveling through endgame is Thunderbird. It dropped with the highest tier of lightning damage possible, which allowed me to add a mod with Anomaly blade attacks at the same time. Using attribute boosting, I was able to spec towards critical and close range damage. It shreds most enemies, especially if they rush.

That’s a basic overview of how gear works, though the point is that crafting is so important and multi-layered. With this amount of flexibility, the possibilities are staggering. Quite simply, crafting is easy and essential in Outriders and I wish every loot game leveraged its malleable approach to gear modification.

So how does an Outrider actually use all this sweet gear? Well, to kill baddies. Then receive more gear used to kill more baddies and so on, of course. It’s that standard hook the genre tries so desperately to capture, and Outriders truly excels in the moment-to-moment combat encounters even if its broader mission design could use freshening.

The best way to describe combat is crunchy. It most certainly earns that Mature rating, with explosions of gore and viscera galore. Guns feel good for a third-person shooter, and abilities supplement well. Automatic weapons in particular are very effective. Rifles and tactical semi auto variants are a bit trickier to use if not playing in cover as a Technomancer, since otherwise time is spent on the run. Shotguns predictably have a most satisfying punch, even if lacking range when fighting humans in cover.

Enemies fall into different broad categories: creatures of Enoch plagued by the Anomaly then humanoids, whether insurgents (exiles from the ECA) or fearsome late game foes called Ferals. There are also other Altered, classified as elites or bosses. Standard archetypes exist within these groups: Those that relentlessly follow players closely, others launch projectiles from a distance, snipers hide in cover and bombard with mortar attacks. And, the worst of the worst, flying insectoids and massive airborne birds that fight from the skies.

Visually, Outriders has a lot of striking designs especially for monsters. Thing is, the tactics employed here are mostly the same. Enemy density and intensity are turned to the max. They will swarm and try to overwhelm. Even mini-bosses will constantly hassle a player, bothering with Anomaly barrages or elemental bursts. This makes it hard to account for everything, even when playing on a team, until one learns to anticipate how enemies will act.

One core complaint is how Outriders increases challenge by boosting the level and amount of foes as opposed to providing any sort of mechanical complexity. Encounter design is lacking. This is fine early on, though I expected it to progress over the course of the campaign. A standard cadence will be enter an area, take down a horde, go through a passageway, fight another large group, pass through a blockade, beat up on a boss, collect reward. Expeditions during endgame have areas to secure, a slight wrinkle. In my hours playing, I haven’t seen anything more complex than “stand on a plate until the timer counts down.” The impact of this rote encounter layout is softened at least because of how satisfying the actual combat can be.

Another thing while I’m at it. My Outrider is this super human Anomaly machine, so how is it that I don’t have the ability to jump? All these cool powers and I’m tethered to the ground. A glaring omission in a game where skills are based around mobility.

There’s story and loot payoff plus plenty of endgame potential for those that can endure its rough edges, a valiant effort from People Can Fly that produces plenty of fun and frustration alike.

Ambitiously, People Can Fly sought to create a loot game within a complete campaign arc, featuring a definitive finale then leaving room for post-game for its most dedicated players. Which means its main missions are where the bulk of time is spent, since most realistically won’t play past the ending.

I admit I was skeptical whether they could achieve any meaningful story beats. Early game presents like standard sci-fi blockbuster, as humans fight with both each other and native creatures while trying to colonize an alien planet. It’s rough and often cliche, yet really started to pique my interest with the second act once it delves more into Enoch, its history and inhabitants.

Like, I know humans are often crappy to one another. We are territorial. A lack of resources in a foreign world would certainly create in-fighting. How about this new world? What about its history? What can we learn from it? Can humanity find a second chance? Happy to say that Outriders mostly delivers in the back half on both character moments and the overarching narrative. Even if the finale is a bit messy, I appreciate how it justifies the endgame setup.

The parallels with a franchise like Mass Effect carry over to character involvement, as personalities join the Outrider on the quest to fight the hordes and find this signal. There’s the aforementioned Zahedi, a future seer Channa, the stern outsider Bailey, gentle giant Tiago de la Luz and even an unexpected visitor that will remain a surprise. While they don’t actively participate in combat, there are dialogue sequences and each member serves a purpose within the roaming camp such as driver or merchant. It’s like a reverse Red Dead Redemption 2, promoting a sense that humanity could learn to work together on this faraway rock.

There’s way more world building than I ever anticipated, as Outriders features a massive journal with numerous entries on lore. Starting with what happened on Earth to result in deep space travel then moving onto Enoch and its various stories, factions, locales and enemies. While not nearly as robust, it reminds me of Destiny’s Grimoire collection because a lot of the cool stuff takes place before or outside the in-game campaign. It’s a nice touch, even if I wish there was more of it during cut scenes or spoken roles.

The actual presentation of its general narrative is rough, disjointed at times and notable for its inconsistent tone. Certain cut scenes just aren’t well-directed, with violent camera movement and jarring cuts. Thankfully there’s an option to turn off camera shake, which I highly recommend. Dialogue often borders on cringe, a combination of edgy lines and lackluster delivery. If you like cursing, you’ll bleeping love the writing in Outriders.

It’s curious, the art design seems to mimic the campaign movement. The first few areas of human civilization within cities and trenches are lackluster in a visual sense. It makes them confined, an odd feeling for this awe-inspiring alien planet. It’s like they never left Earth, a lot of browns and grays with nondescript locations. The further it goes, the more exceptional environment designs become. There’s stunning artwork once the squad visits snowy peaks and rumbling volcanoes, cult areas and ancient ruins, lush forests and foreign villages. Outriders turns into a sensory treat throughout the campaign, and somehow ends nowhere near where it started in terms of artistic effectiveness.

Unfortunately, what the game also reveals over time is a continually basic quest structure and tedious mission design. It starts as clicking on an area, moving through it while fighting hordes of enemies, then teleporting back to camp to try the next one. And never really changes. Even more beefy side quest-lines like beast hunts and bounties are the same setup with a named enemy boss target. Occasional side missions pay off differently, but getting there is wholly predictable. Combat flows in a similar way almost every time, just changes in enemy grouping. This is especially painful on subsequent characters which is the only way to try a new class.

That said, I want to praise Outriders for a multitude of other design aspects. The aforementioned World Tiers are exceptional. The way it integrates side quests with the main campaign is great, allowing for swift selection of either mission type within the game world. Being able to quickly mark all loot of a certain rarity leads to easy dismantling or selling. World destruction during combat is a beautiful thing, in particular where spots of cover can be destroyed. This leads to changes in a battlefield’s construction mid-fight, requiring more dynamic tactical choices.

For those into the cosmetic side of loot games, it has a decent enough character creator. Personally I like when a game offers limited yet different options, and that’s Outriders. There’s no sliders or jaw length or body type, it’s a limited set of player looks, hairstyles and skin tones. Then there’s visual options for banners, emotes and one’s truck. Most are earned via an accolade system, hitting certain milestones across categories like combat, class use and world progression will award new designs. It’s enough to feel personal without being overwhelming. While it could be riddled with future loot boxes, micro-transactions or cosmetics for real money, publisher Square Enix has said that won’t be the case.

Now that I’ve praised decisions, it’s only fair to highlight certain other design issues with Outriders. This is where it can be rough. As I alluded before, there are tons of jarring camera cuts. Gives a feeling of whiplash when just progressing through its campaign. There’s frequent, intermittent loading screens. Everywhere. Moving from areas. Transitioning to side quests. Trying to team up. Then, its fast travel system is annoyingly cumbersome. You can’t travel between regions unless you first move to the base camp of a given location. Which means something as simple as turning in a bounty takes up to three fast travel instances, each with its own loading screen. This is luckily fast enough on current generation consoles and PC, though suffers tremendously on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

In terms of actual performance, it’s mostly stable throughout solo gameplay. I didn’t notice frame-rate dips or chugging. It’s not the most beautiful game, though it has its moments more because of art direction than resolution crispness. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case while playing on a team. To go along with matchmaking issues I’ll mention soon, co-op play is filled with lag, odd animations and dropped frames. Oh, and turn off motion blur. Thank me later.

While the People Can Fly team provides a number of smart quality of life options, it’s lacking in other areas. If a game doesn’t offer a photo mode, which this one doesn’t, I’d prefer it offer the ability to turn off the heads up display (HUD) in a click. Blood spatter lingers on the screen even when a small bit of health is lost, which is especially disruptive since it stays outside of combat. Text is too small, even on the largest setting.

And now. The ugliest of all: Instability and utterly poor matchmaking.

For context, Outriders is an online-only game. Even when playing alone, it requires a connection to its servers. I’d imagine that’s because it stores character and loot information there as opposed to locally. One could debate the merits of that call, yet that’s how it is and we have to play under those rules.

I had mostly a pleasant solo experience, save for occasional crashes and the quality of life issues I noticed. It’s playing with others that’s near impossible right now. Matchmaking is, in a word, miserable. Teaming up with friends should be way easier than it is. It took 15 minutes of multiple tries just to join a game, and that’s on the same platform. Cross-platform play wasn’t fully available until yesterday, over a week after launch. And still, the same team up issues are present when trying to use a “game code” system that generates a unique identifier for each hosting instance.

Trying the “join a team” function is brutal and broken. I started using it for Expeditions, post-campaign higher tier challenges. Half of the time, it pairs me with one person running a random campaign mission. I’d even bet they have their party set to “open” and they don’t really want me there. Other times, it takes me to someone’s hub camp and they are standing there idly for what seems like eternity. It’s a rare case when it fills a whole team running the correct mission type. A more elegant solution would be a playlist where one can pick the enemy level, instead of matching into a single host’s instance.

Then there’s the general instability as it relates to hard crashing to the dashboard. I can’t count how many times Outriders has crashed now on my Xbox Series X. It often happens when at the character inventory screen or trying to swap skills. There’s also times it freezes during gameplay, notably boss fights, which is infuriating. The worst part? Apparently crashes can cause *full* inventory wipes. Players trying to log back in will find their characters without any gear. Talk about demoralizing. People Can Fly and Square Enix have been furiously updating the game with stability fixes, which I appreciate even if I won’t excuse it. The inventory bug is still present at the time of publishing, so I refuse to play again until that’s remedied.

For those at this point wondering about my experience with its endgame, it’s hard to give full impressions on something I haven’t finished. Not for lack of trying or desire, I really want to play more Outriders. It’s purely that I can’t due to the multitude of known issues. Connecting to teams is inconsistent. It will crash before, during or after an Expedition, never knowing what’s going to happen with my loot drops. Not to mention the threat of losing my entire inventory is enough for me to await a patch or two.

Really unfortunate, because the concept is sound. An Expedition is akin to a dungeon, a bespoke mission that really ramps up the enemy density and requires mild coordination to complete. Post-game foregoes the World Tier system, moves to a Challenge Tier concept where players run these timed missions at increasingly higher difficulties to rank up and earn a currency that can be used to either buy weapons or play new Expeditions. Once hitting the highest tier, it unlocks a final Expedition that’s supposed to be the pinnacle of play. I’d absolutely love to see this, especially because loot drops are quite generous. One day.

When it works, Outriders can be incredibly fun and a great time whether solo or squad. It’s like an awesome sci-fi tale meets looter, featuring frantic combat and honed character skills amidst stunning backdrops and during a narrative where individual people and a new world are both characters in their own ways. Then it fails to find a connection before signing in, puts the player in a co-op team that isn’t doing the desired activity or crashes a couple times in the same boss fight, and it’s the most disappointing experience possible.

Technical issues aside, I’ll remember as much about its clever mechanical systems as what happened in the later acts to crew members I grew to know and the secrets of Enoch, its culture, the Anomaly and its ferocious foes. There’s a point in the story where it reveals the actual situation on this distant planet, both in terms of its native landscape and humanity’s colonization efforts. It’s an effective twist.

Like all great loot games, Outriders excels when injecting those mini endorphin rushes, whether it’s succeeding at a particularly tricky fight or snagging that piece of gear with a great set of stats. It launched in a tough state, certain aspects like its crass tone and shaky presentation will be there forever while others can be fixed. There’s story and loot payoff plus plenty of endgame potential for those that can endure its unpolished current form. A valiant effort from People Can Fly that produces plenty of fun and frustration alike.

Title: Outriders

Release Date: April 1, 2021

Developer: People Can Fly

Publisher: Square Enix

Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation 5, Playstation 4, PC, Google Stadia.

Recommendation: For those into shlooters and 3rd person action games that don’t mind dealing with its edgy tone and technical hiccups, the meaty campaign of around 30 to 35 hours is well worth it. There’s a lot of loot to discover, builds to try, crafting to complete and a story that steadily improves in quality. Multiplayer and post-game should be played at one’s risk as its loop is plagued by inconsistent matchmaking, hard crashes and general connection issues.

Sources: Square Enix, Screenshots from Xbox Series X.

-Dom