![]() ![]() Source: Android Central (Image credit: Source: Android Central) Outriders: Boring story, terrible voice acting, and a grab bag of gameplay problems ![]() On PS5, the environments have a kind of harsh beauty, a natural brutalism that, while perhaps not as spectacular as other games on the console, is pleasing in its own way. ![]() While the game does occasionally dip into boring character and enemy design, the fauna and scenery of Enoch is the real draw. The Outriders loot isn't terribly intricate (not to mention some of the armor sets are crimes against good taste), but the system being simple works in your favor: Pick a gun, upgrade its stats, stick a mod on it so you burn/freeze/cannibalize your enemies, and when you're ready to upgrade it you can dismantle it for parts. ![]() It takes a little while for the game to really get going, but it picks up around the time you unlock weapon and armor modification. Every successful enemy encounter that pushes the world tier meter up feels like a triumph, just as much if not more so than that chunky bits of enemy that litter the ground around you. The world tier system, which allows you granular control over the game's difficulty, also helps keep things competitive. During one mission, in which I lured several enemies onto a bridge and merrily sliced through them with my hand-wavey space magic, I realized I was having more fun with this than I had with a shooter in a long time.Įvery successful enemy encounter that pushes the world tier meter up feels like a triumph. And when those fail you, you have a selection of hefty guns at your disposal, with gunplay that feels pretty weighty and enjoyable, especially through the DualSense's haptic feedback. While Outriders may look, at first glance, like a Gears of War-style cover shooter, the chest-high walls are mostly there to catch a few bullets while you race around flinging your supernatural powers everywhere. All the classes have complex mechanics that only become visible the more you play, which makes for versatile gameplay. This sort of play is not only possible in Outriders but it's also encouraged by the level design and enemy AI behavior. I managed all this within about 15 seconds, and could not stop the grin that spread across my face. I then used my new ability to teleport behind a troublesome sniper, sliced through him with a Temporal Blade (which is a sharp hand wave that makes enemies disintegrate), picked up his gun, and picked off every one of the grunts still trapped in the bubble on the other side of the battlefield. The first time I encountered an enemy group after getting my "Hunt the Prey" ability, which allows the Trickster to teleport behind an enemy, I ran straight into the group of common enemies around me, activated my Slow Time ability, trapping them in a bubble. Each of them are cool in their own way, and cater to different playstyles, though the movement-and-power-oriented Trickster was my favorite. You have four-player classes to choose from, each of which grants you unique abilities to use on your enemies. The powers with which your character is imbued make each combat encounter interesting and fun. It's great then that Outriders' gameplay is so buoyant that it lifts the game up and makes what would otherwise be a dull affair into something more guiltlessly fun. ![]()
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