The Gameplay
The best way I can sum up Outriders’ gameplay is that it plays like it looks. To me, it looks like a more fast-paced, frantic, and fantastical version of The Division and that’s exactly how I found that it played.
It’s a third-person shooter through and through, but it’s not as rooted in cover-based gameplay or realism. Health is usually always regenerated via offense in Outriders, so you’ll need to constantly be killing and damaging enemies in order to stay alive.
Standing in cover for too long can actually be problematic if you’re not finding ways to deal consistent damage. I found during my playtime that it’s usually better to put yourself in high-risk, high-reward scenarios where you’re exposing yourself but for a good reason i.e. setting up a devastating chain of abilities either on your own or with a partner.
Combat is quite varied from what we played. There were times where my group had to contend with swarms of lesser enemies, a small handful of tough to kill ones, and giant cinematic boss fights.
The most impressive part of our demo was a section where we were engaged in trench warfare with an opposing faction and were forced to cross no-man’s land and engage in close-quarters combat in the trenches. The aesthetic in this section was reminiscent of some maps I’ve seen in Battlefield 1, which is to also say that it was a feast for the eyes.
I have no idea yet, of course, how well the variety holds up over a long period of time, but it was certainly entertaining in our half-day demo.
The only problem I found is that some enemies were just too much of a bullet sponge. This is a problem common in the genre as it is often used as a way to cover for a lack of creative ideas in generating difficulty. Fortunately, it wasn’t rampant in the demo, but it did exist.
Covid-19 complicated our ability to get a feel for the nitty-gritty stuff like the frame rate and how Outriders looks a few months out from release as we needed to play over an internet connection, but even in non-ideal conditions, Outriders felt very good to play.
