Chris Holub

Outriders biggest asset is by and large its greatest flaw. It will forever and always be compared to Gears of War. Though OR definitely brings some welcome features that Gears has desperately needed for some time, like armor and weapon loot, customizable classes and sub-classes, and a crafting system, the positives it presents are overshadowed by its negatives. The game, to start, has had notoriously bad server and connectivity issues. That wouldn't be a problem except that even single player has to be played online. There's really only one class good for soloing, though you can probably succeed with any of the classes, you really need a well balanced team to progress efficiently through the levels. Reports, as of today, still indicate server instability and difficulty staying connected to multiplayer matches (or even single player matches). On top of that, the loading of each area is a bit of a pain, and I've run into weird glitchy quest functions both in single and multiplayer where your quest tracker doesn't work right or where my team actually fast traveled to a location but ended up going to different places. The game appears to be a throwback to time when character features like mouth movement were difficult to master and scenery was sometimes blocky and without much texture. Speaking of scenery, though there are many distinct "'environments" they really all feel the same. There isn't the same breathtaking quality that Gears had right from the start. There's no beautifully detailed world, nor is there a righteous soundtrack to keep you in awe. (I literally turned off the music entirely because it was annoying.) The mobs are either humans (which aren't particularly difficult but can be frustrating) or one or two types of aliens who don't vary much at all from area to area and are essentially the same everywhere and mostly forgettable. The weapons, and armor, though graphically are "cool" are basically all the same in function and though there is some variance there's not a lot of incentive to stick to a certain play style because, especially if you play by yourself, (or even if not) you usually just end up getting the weapon with the highest dmg and clip size. For storyline, it's not bad, but pretty typical. One thing that I noticed was that, with Gears, I always had this impending sense of doom and this overwhelming anxiety that I was about to get annihilated. You don't get that from this game, and it isn't because you're over-powered. You just don't get the feeling that you really even have to be there or kill these bad guys. The game literally says multiple times that NPC's don't understand why you're helping them. You're an Altered which means you don't have to answer to anybody and frankly the main character kind of acts like he's there because he's more or less got nothing else to do, so might as well. You never really buy into your protagonist, nor do you really develop any emotional investment in him/her or the NPC's he's helping. Unfortunately, this game can't find its niche. It's not an epic solo with multiplayer features. It's not a multiplayer based story driven cooperative blast fest. It's not an "Ultimate Unstoppable Force" character/skill builder to make you feel like all your enemies are pathetic worms. And it's not a dungeon looter or RPG to invest your time and carefully craft your specialties while grinding and grinding your life away. Outriders just sits somewhere in the middle of these typical genres like an orphan without a home, neglected and poorly developed.