Outriders: Day One Edition

People Can Fly's Outriders mixes a lot of well-worn shooter and RPG elements to create something that feels fresh, if you can get used to its balance.

After a disastrous launch People Can Fly's third-person sci-fi adventure emerges as a smart if familiar shooter.

Buried by an unsatisfying combat loop and bad campaign, Outriders is a forgettable loot game that ends right as it's getting started.

That's a huge letdown, because the encounters feel tuned for co-op rather than solo play. Playing alone, I could feel the absence of other players; although enemies are tougher when playing with friends, having another person to divert a boss' attention feels more natural than having you and a boss circle a pillar as you whittle down its health, or slowly working your way through the unrelenting hail of bullets that some of the later encounters subject you to. You also get to revive your friends in multiplayer (you even get one self-revive), which makes some of the tougher fights a little easier.

Outriders is a brash and bold looter shooter that will keep you entertained through the campaign and side missions, but its endgame content gets repetitive fast.

Taking to combat and combo-ing skills with other players is immensely satisfying and make each run-in with enemies feel exhilarating rather than a chore

Capturing exactly what makes the genre tick, this is perhaps the best looter-shooter game since Borderlands

Outriders is its own greatest victim. There are some decent ideas in here – an absorbing cauldron of combat variables, some majestic geography, even a few guns worth holding onto – but they're dragged down and suffocated by a game that doesn't want to entertain you but hypnotise you with the prospect of another trinket.

It's a lower bar to clear to be sure, but People Can Fly delivered what Bungie and other studios can't seem to do these days: a complete $60 game. Outriders is a flawed looter shooter that can fall into a rut with its core looting loop, but the gunplay is fun, and that's a decent-sized win. If you can grab two other people to recruit via Game Pass, it's a great way to spend some time.

I’m happy that Outriders tries to be something different and more self-contained. It might limit its longevity, but it was nice to play something that was an adventure and not a treadmill covered in bad loot and battle passes.