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"Outriders has great action and deep customization, but it lacks personality."

• Fun shooting

• Excellent customization

• Different classes

• Strong rep hooks

• Weak story

• Flat characters

• Always online, unnecessarily

Outriders is not like Destiny … at least according to developer People Can Fly. No matter the premise of the sci-fi looter and shooter. Don't look out for these Thrall-like creatures roaming around in swarms. Ignore the class-based superpowers, one of which gives players a Titan Slam.

Okay, it's a bit like Destiny. To be honest, it's a lot more than that. The cover-based third-person shooter grabs some bits of its contemporaries while defying some of the games' biggest pitfalls. By distancing themselves from modern live service games, People Can Fly wants to separate the luggage from the valuable loot.

Outriders lack personality and their edges are rougher than an octagon, but the core battle is just plain fun. Thorough character customization, numerous equipment benefits, and exciting superpowers make for a nifty shooter that should shine after much-needed maintenance.

Mass Effect Lite

Outriders has great narrative ambitions, though they don't quite pay off. The dystopian science fiction story revolves around mankind's attempt to colonize one of the last livable planets in the galaxy, Enoch. Players control a title outrider who awakens from a 31-year-old cryogenic slumber to discover that the mission has failed and civil war has broken out among the remaining humans. To make matters worse, there is a mystical aura called anomaly that turns people into overpowering "altered" ones.

There is certainly some potential in the area, but it doesn't quite come to fruition in the dry colonization soap opera featured here.

I can't tell you too much about where it goes from there because the story is as "in one ear out of the other" as it gets. There's tons of sci-fi technobabble to learn, read pages of dry lore, and meet dozen of flat NPCs. During a character's big emotional beat, I caught myself asking "Who?" loud to no one.

The game lacks personality and that goes beyond the narrative. Enoch itself is a vague planet that clinically moves between popular video game areas, from generic desert wastelands to subdued green forests with brightly colored plants. It's hard to identify any of his levels from a series of modern science fiction shooters.

The game is more successful when it plays with its otherworldly elements. The best moments come when he faces Enoch's extraterrestrial creatures who stir up the usual firefights against interchangeable human factions. Giant spiders, kite-like birds and acid-spitting bipeds bring the world to life and give a better sense of the chaos in which humans have found themselves. They're also more compelling targets that require players to get out of cover and play aggressively.

There is certainly some potential in the area, but it doesn't quite come to fruition in the dry colonization soap opera featured here. It just feels like an outdated take on Mass Effect, the first of many associations the studio will have trouble shaking with.

Less fate, more Diablo

What Outriders lacks in history it more than makes up for in its action. Let's get some more inevitable comparisons out of the way. Take the Division's third-person shoot, Destiny 2's class-based action, and Diablo's character building, and you are well on your way there. To be clear, this is not a punch. The game does an efficient job of taking the best ideas from each of these games and seamlessly piecing them together into its own recipe.

What makes it all fit together so well is the deep customization that every combat mechanic improves. Shooting itself feels good, but it's only enhanced by weapon perks, which turn each weapon into its own "exotic" to borrow a notion of fate. There is a lot of joy in equipping a gun blindly and firing a shot only to discover it is freezing an enemy. It gets players to experiment with their loadout and offers lots of cool rewards for doing so.

In addition to standard shooting, the game has four character classes, each of which brings unique skills to the table. Fraudsters can manipulate spacetime to teleport behind enemies or slow them down. Pyromancers set bad guys on fire and cause damage over time. Each class is completely different and has different skills that can be mixed and matched. Switching classes can completely change a style of play, so everyone is worth a look.

It doesn't stop there. Each piece of armor also has benefits that can further change class skills. In addition, there is an extensive skill tree that enables more permanent tinkering. Of every comparison the game warrants, the Diablo is the one most liable. This is an action game that allows players to create hyper-specific builds and raise hell in so many different satisfying ways.

Outriders don't know how to tell a story, but it's damn sure they can stage a battle.

Here is a specific example. I mainly played a technomancer, a support class that can heal towers and spawn. My final build was to reduce the cooldowns and improve the health of all of my tower skills so that I could put up ice and poison towers every few seconds. This allowed me to approach combat like a tower defense mode, where I could strategically place turrets around the battlefield and put enemies in danger. I couldn't believe I had managed to create something so specific in the game. I was even more shocked that there was so much more I could do to make this setup even more deadly.

Sometimes we crave deep, narrative experiences from a video game. Sometimes we just want to shoot a frozen kite out of the sky with a lightning-fast weapon. Outriders don't know how to tell a story, but it's damn sure they can stage a battle.

Another service

There's a certain reason People Can Fly doesn't like the modern game comparisons. Outriders is not a Destiny-style live service game, although it looks like it is. Instead of connecting players with the promise of weekly updates, see what you get. It has all the charm of building a strong character through RPG mechanics, without the baggage, having to keep up with updates all the time. It's a game that respects that at some point players will want to play a different game.

There's a wealth of strong content and ideas out there that will help extend the life of the game beyond the 25-30 hour campaign. One of the more effective hooks is the World Tier system, which acts as a clever difficulty level. Players can unlock up to 15 levels, each of which adds additional challenges and rewards to the game. It's an ingenious system that dedicated players can use to test their championship and work towards a final badge of honor (and the true ending of the game).

The biggest draw is the game's multiplayer mode, with which up to three friends can put together and tackle missions together. The class system shines here as it promotes a coordinated game where each team member has a specific use in battles. The game doesn't offer a great solution for dealing with players who are at radically different levels, but firefights are so fun that it doesn't matter too much.

It's a game that respects that at some point players will want to play a different game.

While there is a lot to do, Outriders is in rough shape right now. The game's opening weekend was plagued by crashes, bugs, and server issues that prevented players from getting their hands on it for too long. Oddly enough, the game features the same "always online" model that is reserved for live service gaming. When servers go down, fans can't even play alone. It's an inexplicable choice that is already causing some frustrated gamers to drop it altogether.

People Can Fly is not mistaken in distancing Outrider from other games, but it's hard to blame people for making the comparisons. With unnecessary live service DNA, the game is a quack to be a duck. Just as its protagonist is torn between a human and an altered state, Outriders takes a strange middle ground between old and new game design. It's an identity crisis that weakens the current experience.

But did I mention you can get armor that electrifies your evasive throw? Cool.

Our opinion

Is Outriders a sophisticated action game with a compelling science fiction story? No. Is it fun to freeze a spider with an ice tower and crush it with a well-placed sniper shot? You bet. Sometimes that's all you really want from such a Sagittarius. It could use an offline mode for single player sessions and some maintenance, but it's a solid foundation for an action game that respects its players' time.

Is there a better alternative?

Gears 5 for a third-person narrative shooter and Destiny 2 for a Space Magic looter, but Outriders is a great option for those who want a little bit of both.

How long it will take?

The main campaign lasts around 25 to 30 hours with a good portion of side quests. Multiplayer and World Tier Grind extend this time much further.

Should you buy it?

Yes. It's a bit rough but fun to play with friends. Even cuter, it's included with Xbox Game Pass, which makes it a breeze for Xbox owners.

Editor's recommendations