It is definitely a story that has already been heard several times the one that characterizes the incipit of Outriders, the new third person shooter of People Can Fly, a development company that has already made its mouths heard several times with titles like Painkiller, Gears of War and the underestimated Bulletstorm: with the earth now doomed, there was no other solution than colonizing new planets, for this purpose, 2 arks were sent in advance, but only one survived the journey.
After a small start that is easy to define banal, Outriders change gear by accompanying us in one storyline full of twists that, although it certainly does not reach peaks of science fiction narrative to Philip K. Dick, holds up well and finds excellent excuses to justify all the features provided by what is a done and finished TPS disguised as a Service game. It will therefore not be long before Outriders he throws us violently into the center of the action and makes us find ourselves in a post-apocalyptic land, literally surrounded by enemies, holding a couple of weapons and the first power of the class, among the four available, that we will have selected.
The first words that will immediately come to mind will be “Gears of War”, but in reality we are faced with something profoundly different, despite the ubiquitous cover and shoot. The first difference with the “colleague” can be seen immediately in the animations of the covers, made a little faster and raw, this is because, at least until the end game, Yes, coverage is a fundamental phase of gameplay, but dodging will be more so.
Ad Outriders he doesn’t like seeing sandbags behind us to evaluate the situation, he prefers to keep us in constant motion and makes us understand it without frills by throwing waves of enemies ready to surround us and making grenades rain on our heads without any hesitation. On our side, to counter, we have everything that characterizes a looter-shooter: a gear updated in real time as we slaughter what the title throws at us, and a set of powers ready to unleash the hordes. People Can Fly in fact, he thought of a good system to “force” us to use our class powers net of a good set of weapons in constant updating, making them the only effective way to heal in combat.
To give an example using the pyromancer, the class chosen in our test adventure, we will have at our disposal a set of flames of various kinds that, in addition to damaging the enemies of course, will mark them. By killing an enemy marked by our flames, even if it is our teammate to do so, we will be healed. Forget about potions and medkits well, come on Outriders you live by shooting in all directions.
Up to here, more than being in front of a Gears of War, it seems more like being in front of a The Division, but beware, as always stated by the producers, Outriders it is not a service game, but a TPS with loot, 2 very different things. Don’t expect Dark Zone or pve / pvp with infinite content: Outriders it begins and ends. The world level system acts more as a dynamic difficulty selector than as a watershed for an open and explorable universe of increasing difficulty (as we can see in the very famous Genshin Impact) and has the simple function of making enemies more lethal, but which at the same time have the possibility of rewarding us with more “sparkling” drops.
Currently, the only unlockable feature once the story is over are the expeditions, but if you are looking for a gameplay system where you “lock yourself in MMO style” better look elsewhere. Contrasted to a good shoot and loot system, there are still some technical flaws to be solved. Many – albeit short – uploads from one section to another, useless dialogues with shopkeepers, server problems and voting systems even just to overcome a short area in which only a few minutes, if not seconds, will break in meaning. the frenetic pace that the title offers us is negative.
There are a lot of mini transition movies, practically every time we move, but unfortunately it is understandable: it is obviously a subterfuge to hide the classic loads, but the feeling of heaviness cannot be ignored. The obvious repetitiveness that is encountered is certainly not a mystery, but we must admit that we could (and probably will) work on it: most of the requests that will be entrusted to Maxwell, our alter ego, will be “go there and clean the area, go there and kill that beast. ” Fortunately the management of bossfight meets this bad feeling, adding a particular gameplay system to learn to master and which will give us a little more gear.
In short, a TPS that takes risks and experiences this Outriders, trying to detach a little from the panorama of the other titles of the genre, but what from ‘absolutely the impression of not having had the courage to take a step further to become the new universe on which to spend the months.
Of course, no one was asking for a new Destiny, for that there is Destiny, but it is impossible to wonder if, after finishing the story and expeditions, if with that extra step People Can Fly would have managed to capture even the lovers of the already pluricified Service Game , that anyway, a turn on Outriders they will certainly not deny it. The considerable success that the title is enjoying makes us think that, probably, that extra step will likely be taken and it won’t even have to wait that long.