Outriders was a game I was extremely excited about approaching its launch but for some reason, I didn’t get around to it. Finally, I sat down and put some hours into it, here we go.

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Reviewed on Xcloud

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Outriders is a sci-fi third person cover based shooter with some magic abilities to go along with its firepower. Mixing up gunplay and magic abilities makes for some interesting encounters.

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Outriders does a lot of things right but also really stumbles in some major areas. The story seems like a decent sci-fi story but for me, it was impossible to get into because of how laughable the dialogue and voice acting were.

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The sound design also was lacking. The guns did not sound satisfying and the enemies and environments all just had a very bland sound and feel to them.

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This game also makes an unforgivable mistake that so many games make and it just bothers me so much! It makes you follow someone while they talk to you and the person you have to follow moves at a pace you can not match. You move so much faster than them which is one of the most immersion breaking designs in video games.

It’s not all bad though, the core of this game is just pure fun. The cover mechanics and shooting feels great and was always fun. Going from cover to cover taking down enemies had me missing Gears of War…. Maybe I’ll revisit that next.

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While the sound of the guns is lacking the feel of the guns is great. The bullets feel like they have weight behind them and taking down baddies was satisfying.

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The abilities your characters have are interesting. For my character, I had a move to set enemies on fire. Killing an enemy with a skill will refill your health, making skill management the key to success.

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The difficulty system was also interesting and unique. As you are doing well and not dying you are filing a world tier bar. Do well and move up to the next world tier which will also increase the difficulty. As you die that bar drops and if you die too much then you will go down in world tier.

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What I spent the least time with was the crafting and upgrade system. It came off as overly complicated and something I didn’t feel like. Investing time in.

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Verdict

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Outriders is a game that does a lot wrong but backs that up with doing a lot right. The core gameplay of cover based shooting was a lot of fun and is enough to keep playing. I’m probably about halfway through the game and while I do want to keep going the main thing Outriders made me want to do is go back and play Gears of War.

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Final Verdict: likely to return