utriders began its journey in 2015, when the notorious Polish studio People Can Fly , which has behind it such games as Painkiller , Bulletstorm and Gears of War: Judgment , decided to go beyond traditional linear shooters and bring to life a larger project. After years of development and several postponements of the release date, the game appeared before the public and instantly became a significant news feed in the news feeds of major gaming publications. On the one hand, Outriders drowned under a barrage of criticism for poor technical condition, on the other – in the Steam charts.to this day it is on the top lines, showing excellent statistics in terms of the interest of gamers. Is the game really a kind of rough diamond, or is the reason for its popularity due to the banal poverty of 2021 for fresh releases? We will talk about this in our review.
The game meets us with a brief exposition: in the future, the Earth, after numerous wars and environmental disasters, turned out to be absolutely unsuitable for further living. In a hurry, the best minds of mankind have found in the vastness of endless space a planet that can become a new home for earthlings – Enoch. For colonization, two giant carrier ships were built and sent on a journey for a long 80 years. Unfortunately, one of the ships was lost even before departure, and it is even more offensive because it was on it that the entire elite of mankind (scientists, managers, and so on), as well as the entire database of mankind, were located. The second ship was manned on a leftover basis with mercenaries, soldiers and workers, and upon arrival on Enoch, it is these wonderful people who will become the basis for the further development of mankind. However, everything is not going according to plan quickly – as it turned out, anomalies and natural disasters are raging on the planet, which immediately mow down almost zero a detachment of scouts-pioneers, which includes our protagonist.
But even here the game has not yet begun. The main character, like his comrades, turns out to be infected with a deadly black liquid (this is not what I came up with – it’s really black liquid, which the scriptwriters don’t explain in any way during the game), but unlike our colleagues, we manage to postpone the death by rattling into the cryo chamber for more for 30 years. After awakening, the protagonist is first captured by some anarchists, and then dies altogether, finding himself in an anomaly. But that’s not all. The character immediately comes to life and, thanks to the same anomaly, gets superpowers. who immediately mow down almost to zero a detachment of scouts-pioneers, which includes our protagonist. But even here the game has not yet begun.
The main character, like his comrades, turns out to be infected with a deadly black liquid (this is not what I came up with – it’s really black liquid, which the scriptwriters don’t explain in any way during the game), but unlike our colleagues, we manage to postpone the death by rattling into the cryo chamber for more for 30 years. After awakening, the protagonist is first captured by some anarchists, and then dies altogether, finding himself in an anomaly. But that’s not all. The character immediately comes to life and, thanks to the same anomaly, gets superpowers. who immediately mow down almost to zero a detachment of scouts-pioneers, which includes our protagonist. But even here the game has not yet begun. The main character, like his comrades, turns out to be infected with a deadly black liquid (this is not what I came up with – it’s really black liquid, which the scriptwriters don’t explain in any way during the game), but unlike our colleagues, we manage to postpone the death by rattling into the cryo chamber for more for 30 years. After awakening, the protagonist is first captured by some anarchists, and then dies altogether, finding himself in an anomaly.
But that’s not all. The character immediately comes to life and, thanks to the same anomaly, gets superpowers. turns out to be infected with a deadly black goo (I didn’t come up with it right now – it’s really black goo, which the scriptwriters don’t explain in any way during the game), but unlike our colleagues, we manage to postpone the death by rattling into the cryo chamber for another 30 years. After awakening, the protagonist is first captured by some anarchists, and then dies altogether, finding himself in an anomaly. But that’s not all. The character immediately comes to life and, thanks to the same anomaly, gets superpowers. turns out to be infected with a deadly black goo (I didn’t come up with it right now – it’s really black goo, which the scriptwriters don’t explain in any way during the game), but unlike our colleagues, we manage to postpone the death by rattling into the cryo chamber for another 30 years. After awakening, the protagonist is first captured by some anarchists, and then dies altogether, finding himself in an anomaly. But that’s not all. The character immediately comes to life and, thanks to the same anomaly, gets superpowers.
The introductory description of the plot may seem chaotic to you, but believe me, this is how the events are presented on the screen. After what he saw in the first 30 minutes of the game, it seems that the scriptwriter did not sleep for three days in a row, coming up with a suitable plot of the plot, but in the end he could not find anything better than to cross the intro of Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem . Further, the plot enters a more measured channel – now we, together with a team of like-minded people, have to go on a journey, regain control of the carrier ship in orbit, and here, finally, the player himself gets a more active role.
After the anomaly has thoroughly patted our hero and transferred him to the status of a superhuman – Alium (hereinafter I will use the official terminology from the localization, although I do not understand why the word “Altered” is translated as “Alium”), we are allowed to choose one of four classes: Technomancer, specializing in ranged weapons and the use of turrets and grenades, Pyromancer, which deals fire damage in an area, Trickster, a trickster, able to impose negative effects on enemies and teleport them behind them at the right time, and Destroyer, a tank that specializes on the defense.
Each class has its own abilities – active and passive, as well as developmental features. In addition to the three branches of pumping skills and characteristics that are looking for a bias, for example, in defense, attack power or resistance to elemental damage, each class has one more important feature – the mechanics of health regeneration. The fact is that there are no traditional first aid kits in Outriders, although the health bar is automatically restored by only a third. The mechanics of further treatment are different for each class. For example, one gets health for killing an enemy in close proximity, the other is healed only after killing opponents previously marked with special skills, and so on. And here lies a rather noticeable hole in the balance of complexity. Yes, most of the time the game will dump crowds of enemies on you, who die quite quickly, respectively, the hero will not feel a lack of the opportunity to improve his health.
The situation changes dramatically when Outriders pits you one-on-one against bosses that can withstand a huge number of hits, while doing impressive damage. And what should the same Trickster do in such a situation, who heals only after killing an enemy in close combat? At the same time, the Technomancer in such conditions feels quite comfortable, just shooting at the target. The possibility of additional treatment due to various weapon perks saves the situation a little, but at high difficulty levels this is not enough.
By the way, it is the recovery mechanics that make the Gears- style cover system almost useless in the game . Firstly, you will simply be smoked out of your home with grenades and units of melee fighters. So it makes sense to hide behind cover only for the duration of reloading.
The game offers a fairly flexible difficulty setting. Along with the level of the protagonist, the so-called level of the world also grows, which in turn determines the level of enemies in relation to the level of the player, the chance of falling out of more valuable loot and the very possibility of putting on clothes of a higher level. In this case, the player is free to lower the level of the world at any time, if at some point the game becomes too difficult, and after passing the problem stage, return everything back. This approach really helps different categories of gamers to play the way they want: hardened munchkins will be able to sweat as much as possible, while receiving a valuable reward for their efforts, and more casual players will be able to run through the story without stumbling through difficult stages, albeit losing quality loot.
The latter is another positive aspect of the game. There is a lot of loot, it is diverse and in general is the main driving force behind the passage. Outriders allows you to change both elements of armor (helmet, jacket, pants, gloves and boots), and use three types of weapons at the same time. At the same time, two slots are designed for full-size barrels, including automatic and semi-automatic rifles, shotguns, machine guns, sniper automatic and self-loading rifles and submachine guns. The third slot is reserved for pistols and revolvers. Moreover, each gun, depending on the degree of its rarity, has not only a set of basic characteristics such as range, damage, accuracy and rate of fire, but also additional perks and modifications. The latter can both influence the gameplay on their own (for example, hits on enemies slow them down) and enhance the passive or active abilities of the hero. Add here your own set of characteristics and modifications for armor, an interesting system for crafting equipment, in which you can independently change one mod to choose from (the stock of mods available for installation is replenished after the equipment is disassembled), as well as a very branchy character development tree and as a result you will get a complex and a very entertaining system of building builds, which brings a tangible amount of variety to the gameplay.
Unfortunately, beyond gathering and character development, diversity ends and a monotonous routine begins. It doesn’t matter what you are doing – go through the main quest or side quest, in any case the gameplay will develop according to the same pattern of “run-fight in the arena with a crowd of enemies-cutscene”. Yes, skirmishes, given that every now and then it will be interesting for you to try a new build or weapon in action, are fascinating at first, but sooner or later the banal change of scenery and composition of enemies will start to tire you. Moreover, the game is far from short – it will take 20-30 hours from your life.
Even the cutscenes mentioned do not paint the picture much. The Outriders are not strong with their characters. In most cases, you won’t even remember their names. The only exception was the truck driver Jakub, and even then only because he can only shout “Kurwa!” start a de-energized car. As a result, there is no talk of any interesting relationships between the characters. Moreover, the writers even manage to get confused in their own lore. For example, in one of the additional tasks, the main character without a second thought, playing Russian roulette, shoots himself in the head and immediately comes to life – after all, he is Alium. At the same time, during the game, we will repeatedly have to engage in battle with the same Aliums, and if you shoot them, this is already irreversible. Why? Nobody knows or tries to explain.
As a looter shooter, Outriders has not forgotten about such an important component for such games, as the activities available after completing the main story. After the finale, you will have access to expeditions – fifteen unique tasks for which completely new locations and boss battles have been prepared. It is in expeditions that the scope for cooperative play opens up, because by the time they open, you and your friends will already be sufficiently pumped, which means you will have more options for interaction through the active and passive abilities of your characters. Well, thanks to the variable levels of complexity of the expeditions, these opportunities will be where to implement.
And now we’re getting to what makes Outriders so common in the news about the gaming industry – its technical condition. The fact is that the long-term construction from People Can Fly, even despite repeated transfers, faced serious technical problems at the launch. The first few days, it was not possible to play at all due to the impossibility of connecting to the servers, which is very strange, because the entire network functionality of Outriders ends with the possibility of joining two more players in the cooperative game mode via peer-to-peer connection. Why a constant connection to servers is needed here is a huge mystery. What’s more, PC gamers report poor optimization – Outriders is unstable even on powerful PC configurations. There are also numerous bugs, like a missing interface or regular crashes to the desktop. The patches that the developers prepare in a hurry make the situation even more disastrous. The latest update, for example, completely removed the inventory from a huge number of players.
These problems, however, mostly relate to personal computers. Outriders feels a little better on consoles. Separately, it is worth talking about the possibilities of cross-platform play. Yes, this is certainly good, but the implementation, as is often the case, failed. The fact is that if you suddenly decide to play with a friend on another platform, then you should be prepared for a number of inconveniences, starting with a strange system in which the password for connecting is valid only as long as the host keeps the co-op menu open. and ending with the missing voice chat. So if, while playing, say, on the Xbox, you want to invite a friend from the PlayStation, then you will only have to call by phone if you want to somehow communicate during the passage.
As for such aspects as graphics and sound, everything is as impersonal as possible. Powered by the Unreal Engine 4 , Outriders looks pretty sterile, losing to many third-person shooters even from the last generation of platforms. Yes, every now and then there are cute backdrops, but this does not cover the poverty of the environment and not the most detailed textures.
The sound is also without frills. You will not hear juicy and powerful shots – all weapons sound somehow muffled and flat, and the music is extremely inexpressive and will be forgotten as soon as you turn off the game.
The conclusion about the reasons for the increased attention to the game suggests itself: the lack of fish, as they say, and Outriders is a fascinating project. But if you dig deeper, then we have before us a typical representative of such an already forgotten phenomenon as the “Polish shooter”.
Outriders has a whole slew of problems in terms of both gameplay and technical implementation. Nevertheless, the project is capable of captivating with a fairly deep character development system. Perhaps fans of looter shooters should wait until the next sale or try the shooter on Xbox Game Pass (fortunately, it appeared there simultaneously with the release). I will not recommend the brainchild of People Can Fly to the rest.
