After Outriders was previewed and practically scared a little over a year ago, our national camille, Outriders, returns this time in his last hair, strong in his universe itself and with some ambition. Enough to tickle the masters of TPS and shooter RPG who are Destiny, Gears of War, or even Borderlands? Place the verdict.
Visits to unfamiliar plants usually end badly. This is checked again in OutridersTPS finally released by People Can Fly. Finally, because after a preview version from the end of winter 2020, then a demo last month that didn’t convince Joniwan at all, the release of the game named by Square Enix has been postponed several times, also because of the COVID-19 just to improve that which could be, given the rather mixed feedback from a fairly unanimous press at the time. But let’s get back to this story of an unknown land. When a delegation of elite soldiers, the Outriders, explores a whole new plant, Enoch, aboard a spaceship to flee from a dying and utterly chaotic earth, they discovers that the place – which their care should be safe – everything else as hospitable there is space.
The supposed new oasis of peace of mankind is nothing more than an immense trap, the fault of an anomaly, an inexplicable phenomenon that kills or changes every form of life on its way. Obviously you see that the rest of the field has arrived: you play as one of those Outriders, you will be hit hard by this anomaly and instead of staying there you will develop sacred powers that you will choose in due course as your character class.
Do you want to wake up or go back to sleep?
Before that, only to understand what kind of anarchy the tradition isOutridersFor many years, after the tragic impact of the anomaly on his crew, our hero found himself again as Kryostas. And his awakening, Enoch, is a land of chaos. The settlers, who should have been warned of the danger, came anyway. Since then, the plant has been home to both Altrans and mutant animals that the MonsterVerse, which Warner Bros. installed in theaters for years, wouldn’t deny. Your mission, which you just have to accept, is to try to survive this world, understand the anomaly and, if necessary, find other outriders. Given the effort that went into this plot, both in terms of dialogue and kinematics, we quickly understand that People Can Fly wanted the package to be in the script to be something mature with challenges and a strong one To offer morality.
The envy is there and the mythology offers fascinating. But this is served by a blatant staging. Sure, and that’s a plus, the long phases of dialogue are summed up in the choice of phrases for your avatar, the appearance of which may change depending on the care taken during the game, but which lack customization options. But having to force a movie on yourself to take a simple means of transport, or to start a discussion with another character, or to change rooms … this breaks the rhythm of the game, but especially that of the narrative. The French version doesn’t help in this file either, as the choice of voice is not always adjusted and suddenly transforms what looked like a Hollywood blockbuster … in SF’s vulgar series B.
Despite all these curiosities, we love the adventure that offers us Outridersand fail to fully immerse themselves in it. This is due to the gameplay, which also costs a lot. I said it above Outriders is a TPS, a shooter RPG or a looter shooter in which the player regularly collects ore or items to upgrade their equipment in real time. The problem is, we feel too much that on the People Can Fly side we wanted to be playing on multiple fronts and trying to get the best out of the competition without ever being able to reveal or get real identity to accomplish what his scenario and his graphic universe are not always the same (we will come back to this), provided he is partially.
I cover you, you cover me, he covers us … ah bah no actually
On Enoch, you fly in linear environments with a fully assumed corridor effect – even if there are a few small branches here and the pretext to pillage or isolate yourself from enemy fire – before arriving in more open arenas, with a resulting wave of antagonists killed. Dj saw something. The good idea is to provide a suitable environment for the player to cover up – ah … but it looks like Gears, doesn’t it? – with the now classic option of shooting blindly in the zone in order to avoid being shot a little too exposed.
The problem is thatOutriders isn’t really a cover shooter. To regain health, and with it vitality, you need to rely on your achievements armed in hand, since regeneration occurs according to your actions against your enemies. Play it aggressively, you have a better chance of surviving effectively, not to mention the contribution of your altr forces that will make a household to hell on the battlefield. Note that these are very well used by developers. The cooldown is fine, the effects are analyzed after your enemies and their attacks. This is even more true when you are against another altr, human or monster. This also gives us boss fights that are quite difficult, but the challenge deserves to exist and the contract will be fulfilled as we enjoy it.
But what’s the use of covering up when an attack is clearly the best defense and option to follow? Ultimately, the general aspect makes the most sense in solo when the cooperative role plays the heavy fire card under all circumstances. Anyway, two or three (best option), you get ahead faster and that is the whole point of the game: getting ahead, being able to improve your equipment and alt level. Remember that the latter decides at the beginning of the adventure. We didn’t say it was final and that’s a shame. It’s nice to play the pyromagic and burn everything around us with it, but we would have liked to have been able to play elbows with the powers of the tellurist (earth), who clearly acts as a tank here, to take advantage of the changes over time that occur from this result the illusionist or even the support abilities of the technomage, anything as you like and not just exclusively for the whole game.
Do you feel it my altre?
The combination of Altr’s powers with weapons, as well as the various skill trees to be completed, are successful and ultimately quite conventional in their execution, although they are long and slow to complete. Disassembling your equipment to mine or resell raw material is also part of the adventure that doesn’t revolutionize the genre at this level. It’s more about the loot and the way to get it thanOutriders tries to emphasize a little, with a general difficulty determined by a system of “world levels” that determine the opposing power, but also the quality of the rewards to be achieved. A possibility to make the game even more accessible than before with a super simple and intuitive handling and to offer the regular guests of the genre a consistent challenge without spoiling the little newbies.
Speaking of challenge, what about the general interest of the title? If at this point my opinion is not going to be as precise as Camille’s, she is not very optimistic about any of that. Outriders has potential. But it’s not an exploit. Or so wrong. Graphically, yes, where the game oscillates between the very beautiful (magnificent landscapes on the horizon) and the openly passable, especially when you get involved in the adventure of a new generation and in this case exactly on PS5. We won’t get back to the narrative, but we can only underline the AI’s lack of intellect, which is easy to grasp on a playing field favorable to the player, as once found by him, it will tumble over you without necessarily try to surprise you (or so rarely). Worse still, the enemies all end up looking at each other and almost always arrive in the same order. Fortunately, the boss fights, they are spicier and more varied, which boosts the action, which unfortunately repeats itself too quickly for them. This title may be less the case in the single player experience, although some parts of the game are a bit too Corsican for a single player …
On the flip side, the game’s life is there, with a good fifteen hours to complete the main campaign and a good ten additional hours to complete the secondary quests. And not to stay on our side Outriders offers us a gourmet endgame with expeditions – missions in which it will be necessary to make the powder speak plainly and simply – with varying degrees of difficulty and with unspeakable bosses as a bonus. Degree of replayability and challenge, everything is there to stick to the concept. People Can Fly definitely kept its promise: Outriders is definitely not a service game and you will no longer pay to dress or equip yourself better during your trip. On the other hand, it’s the stability of the cooperative mode and the servers that the developers have failed.
Bugs and crashes that hurt (very bad)
During my hours of testing, I thought I had swapped between the drops of the various crashes and bugs listed here and the – precision to play, even solo, you have to be connected – but I ended up joining the noticeable group of designated players In the middle of the game for no reason after a game crash. Participating in a co-op game is long, too long, and once in the company of other players the delay is considerable, with terrible frame rates and ubiquitous situations (enemies in particular going through you). What is already very painful is all the more so when one realizes that the difficulty imposed in cooperation corresponds to that of the level of the host player. Enough to create serious differences and toxic but logical behavior (the player whose level is less good will rub less against enemy fire).
In short, time to take stock, we can’t say the experience Outriders is bad. Most of all, it makes us dissatisfied. Lack of variety in the action – no sessions in vehicles or spectacular scenes – unstable servers while waiting for a big patch, aspect finally quite classic in its realization and lack of charisma and immersion in the scenario, side finally questionable: People Can Fly’s latest release has Arguments, but seems unable to properly set them to music due to strange decisions. And that’s a shame, because the adventure on Enoch is anything but unpleasant.
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