Outriders is a funny game because sometimes it works excellently and other times it's insufferable. The soundtrack is among the least distinct I've ever heard, and I never cared about the story or the characters even a single time... I really cannot recall ever caring less about a story or cast of characters than I did in Outriders. They build up the Russian guy and his daughter but their relationship never makes much sense or gets enough details to get invested, and then when they dispose of him they pretty much never mention him again so any possible emotional weight that could come from that story beat is lost. The funniest part of the story is where you kill a mad scientist for being a psychopathic murderer and your scientist friend gets upset, so you explain it was necessary to kill him because he was an unreasonable serial killer and your buddy just says "BUT WHAT DOES THAT MAKE ME?". Wonderful writing, just an absolute masterclass, the pacifist scientist thinks he is a killer because an entirely different scientist who didn't agree with any of his beliefs was a killer. Yeah that's how things work dude.
Around the time of the lava spider boss I was loving it, my build as a close range shotgun trickster was really fun and abusable in a way that felt intended by the devs. However the cracks show when certain bosses or areas show up and are completely antithetical to that playstyle. Good luck playing like that on the final boss as a solo player on any reasonable difficulty, because everything you've specced into becomes totally useless! My build was entirely constructed around sprinting and warping around like an idiot, basically killing weak things to become invincible while dealing with larger threats. At the game's best, it felt almost like I was turning the game into a third person knockoff of Doom Eternal, which ruled. In the levels and boss fights that are actually well designed you can play that strategy out very effectively and it's a ton of fun. That's the baffling part: one class has an entire playstyle of needing to feed on generic mooks, and sometimes the game provides for that. Other times you get, say, Moloch or the final boss, where there is nothing to duck and weave around and no enemies to kill to earn shield and health. In cases like that, genuinely the only path forward that wasn't overly torturous and grindy was to either lower the difficulty or play co-op (I played entirely solo).The shame of it is, for a co-op focused game, it doesn't feel like it would be fun to play co-op? Most levels are relatively short and not particularly wide or explorable so I don't see where that feature would really add much, and I say that as someone who loves an excuse to replay a game in co-op mode. I almost never needed or wanted co-op, I just sorta blazed through on my own in about 12 hours. Props for having some fun class abilities and very modular difficulty options, but design-wise it's a very confused game that jumps between solid level design or no level design at all. And it also comes with the worst parts of any looter-shooter, where a gun you love and want to keep using simply no longer can match the damage output you need, so you gotta abandon it for something with less fun abilities but four times the raw power.
This is a perfect game pass game, the sort of thing that I'd rent or borrow and enjoy, but regret if I paid for it.
Around the time of the lava spider boss I was loving it, my build as a close range shotgun trickster was really fun and abusable in a way that felt intended by the devs. However the cracks show when certain bosses or areas show up and are completely antithetical to that playstyle. Good luck playing like that on the final boss as a solo player on any reasonable difficulty, because everything you've specced into becomes totally useless! My build was entirely constructed around sprinting and warping around like an idiot, basically killing weak things to become invincible while dealing with larger threats. At the game's best, it felt almost like I was turning the game into a third person knockoff of Doom Eternal, which ruled. In the levels and boss fights that are actually well designed you can play that strategy out very effectively and it's a ton of fun. That's the baffling part: one class has an entire playstyle of needing to feed on generic mooks, and sometimes the game provides for that. Other times you get, say, Moloch or the final boss, where there is nothing to duck and weave around and no enemies to kill to earn shield and health. In cases like that, genuinely the only path forward that wasn't overly torturous and grindy was to either lower the difficulty or play co-op (I played entirely solo).The shame of it is, for a co-op focused game, it doesn't feel like it would be fun to play co-op? Most levels are relatively short and not particularly wide or explorable so I don't see where that feature would really add much, and I say that as someone who loves an excuse to replay a game in co-op mode. I almost never needed or wanted co-op, I just sorta blazed through on my own in about 12 hours. Props for having some fun class abilities and very modular difficulty options, but design-wise it's a very confused game that jumps between solid level design or no level design at all. And it also comes with the worst parts of any looter-shooter, where a gun you love and want to keep using simply no longer can match the damage output you need, so you gotta abandon it for something with less fun abilities but four times the raw power.
This is a perfect game pass game, the sort of thing that I'd rent or borrow and enjoy, but regret if I paid for it.