Play Outriders — but don’t bother playing alone
Play Outriders — but don't bother playing alone

Outriders is finally here, and y'all tin can play the game only near anywhere. This highly anticipated multiplayer shooter/RPG is bachelor on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox I, Xbox Series X/South — and fifty-fifty Xbox Game Pass, if you're not married to owning your copy forever. Since Outriders supports cross-play multiplayer, you tin can play with any of your friends, regardless of which system they play on. And, bluntly, yous should — the game is not about as much fun past yourself.
Square Enix provided Tom's Guide with a review copy of Outriders, and I've been slowly but surely working my way through the story entrada for the last two days. I've played Outriders before, both at conventions and via online previews. But in those situations, I always had two other players past my side by default. Playing Outriders on my own PS5, multiplayer partners take been a lilliputian harder to come up by.
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On the one mitt, this has helped me meet the game's strengths and weaknesses more clearly, every bit just about anything is more fun with two friends. On the other manus, it's highlighted that Outriders really needs a full 3-person party to fulfill its potential.
Outriders impressions
For those of you who oasis't followed the Outriders development bicycle, it's a class-based third-person shooter with RPG elements. You play as an Outrider: an advance sentry on a promising new planet, where humanity can restart after the death of Old Earth. Some sci-fi nonsense goes awry, your Outrider gets magical powers, the story jumps ahead three decades, and humanity is back to fighting amidst themselves rather than colonizing the at present-much-deadlier planet. Your job is to cease a war — or possibly rise above it, as a rare and powerful Altered human being.
The story is actually pretty adept, and nosotros'll cover information technology more than thoroughly in our full review. Just information technology's off-white to say that gameplay is the large draw in a multiplayer shooter, and Outriders definitely delivers on that forepart. Later a brief prologue, you cull to play as ane of iv classes. Devastators become upwardly close and personal with enemies; Pryomancers can light things on burn down; Technomancers can heal and use gadgetry; Tricksters tin play with spacetime anomalies.
The classes all experience pretty different to play, and since each form also offers three dissimilar specialization classes, everyone should detect something to accommodate their tastes. (I've been building up a Devastator with a lot of wellness, partially because I like close-range combat, simply mostly considering you lot tin can die quite rapidly in a lot of firefights otherwise.)
I played through the commencement major arc of Outriders, which takes yous from first landing on the planet Enoch, to a climactic boss fight with a fellow Altered chosen Gauss. (No points for guessing that Gauss has electricity powers.) Along the way, I fought off a lot of enemy soldiers, learned my basic course abilities and started to upgrade my skills.
The first thing I tin say is that Outriders has unusually skilful moment-to-moment shooting. Many games in the looter-shooter genre autumn dorsum on character optimization every bit the cadre gameplay loop, whether through leveling up or finding gear. But it's clear that Polish developer People Tin Fly spent a lot of time making sure that every assault rifle, submachine gun, shotgun, sniper rifle and pistol in this game only feels first-class to burn down. Every shot has weight and impact; every hit or miss feels off-white. Fifty-fifty the reload times toe the difficult line between "short enough to stay engaged" and "long enough to feel threatening."
The skills and equipment systems are also satisfying. Equally you fight enemies and complete quests, you'll earn experience, which lets you level up. Leveling upwards lets you learn new form skills, too equally ameliorate existing abilities. For case: every bit a Devastator, my starting time three skills let me ground-pound nearby enemies, encase myself in bullet-deflecting armor and nail beyond the battleground to interrupt enemy attacks. The skills recharge at a steady clip, so you tin can utilise them often to proceeds an edge. As you level up, you can choose whether to improve these skills, or gain more passive benefits to health and set on damage.
Equipment is as well pretty intuitive. Each level contains a number of item caches — some out in the open, some subconscious behind walls or enemy outposts. Each piece of gear (guns, jackets, boots, etc.) has an detail level, every bit well equally a color to indicate rarity. The game makes it very clear which items you should equip based on their power levels, although I wish there were an "optimize" push that would simply outfit a grapheme with the best weapons and armor bachelor in your inventory.
Outriders multiplayer
It'south fair to say that I was impressed with the core gameplay in Outriders, and I was eager to advance the story. The simply trouble is that finding a multiplayer group isn't all that piece of cake at the moment. Before setting out on a mission, you can consult a computer last at your domicile base of operations and either construct a party from your friends, or look for random partners online.
Outriders implements a smart organization, where information technology will search for other players at the same bespeak in the story. That way, you can advance together rather than having to replay old sections. (Although you can do that, too, if y'all're trying to assist friends take hold of up.)
Earlier the game went alive, the servers were pretty empty — which makes sense, as Outriders wasn't widely available yet. However, even on launch night, I tried to find a random group three carve up times. On each occasion, I wound up staring at the matchmaking screen until I got bored and decided to merely tackle the next story mission myself.
I wasn't the only 1 with connection bug, obviously. Lots of people couldn't find matches — or couldn't play the game at all. Cross-play is non working seamlessly yet, either, meaning it could be tough to squad up with your Xbox friends if you're on PlayStation, and vice versa.
These bug will get ironed out over fourth dimension, and the player base should naturally be bigger this coming weekend than on a weeknight. But still, it drove home that while y'all can play solo, Outriders is very much a multiplayer-start experience. The game gives you the choice to increase the "World Level," which makes enemies tougher in exchange for better boodle.
Better loot is pretty much a necessity in a looter shooter, just upping the difficulty without any fill-in is a very tough proposition. I lost count of how many times I had to retry the Gauss boss battle, since he can (and will) deplete your health bar in only a few hits. Every bit a Devastator, I had few healing options at my disposal, and close-range combat was essentially suicide. In cases similar this, all a solo histrion can do is grin and bear it.
But having to play Outriders perfectly is a much less fun feel than the cluttered, freeform experimentation that comes with multiplayer groups. Even having 1 other player on your team gives you some leeway for failure; going solo does non. There's essentially no punishment for dying, other than having to restart your most recent firefight, simply success feels a petty shallower without the threat of lost progress.
Tom's Guide is still in the early stages of Outriders, and we'll take a more than thorough review next week. In the meantime, it'due south a good weekend project, provided you tin can take a few friends along for the ride.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/outriders-playing-solo-impressions
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