Outriders Review: Out of Patience

The 0% was left in on purpose...

I don't know the exact point where the joy that comes from playing co-op left me during my tenure in Outriders.

Maybe it was the constant lag that was initially felt after the tutorial prologue. The lack of verifying that I was, in fact, doing any damage was quite the concern for me. It could have been my internet connection, but I normally don't have many problems with my connection. It could have been my friend's connection as well, but we all live in Southern California. The frustration was real.

Maybe it was the constant crashing I experienced when I first purchased it on the PC that created that  negative (and lasting) impression. Maybe it was the guilt-inducing trauma of having to delay/impede my group of friends progress while I spent hours googling any potential fixes. The fact that we only played once a week made the whole stress of troubleshooting killer. It definitely led to my decreased enjoyment of the game. And despite hours of scouring the internet, it just seemed like my PC was not cut out to run the game, even at the lowest settings. 

Maybe it was when I ended up caving and buying Outriders AGAIN on the PlayStation store for FULL PRICE (to be honest this was probably the point of no return here). I spent over 100 dollars to play a game I didn't really enjoy all that much in the end. All this for the sake of friendship. Two weeks after my second purchase of the game, the game went on sale for 30 bucks. The wound was so salty it could feed a stable of horses. (FYI, it's on sale for $17 now.

Yeah, that's my character on the left. You could see how I wanted to this experience to be as painful as it could be.

And I haven't even talked about the actual gameplay!!!

Whether on the PS4 or the PC, my copy of Outriders ran rather poorly. And there were no combinations of the settings that made the game that much more playable. For the entirety of my $100 fiasco I was either dealing with horrible texture and asset pop-in or inconsistent timing due to lag (And sometimes not). So a lot of times I didn't know how much damage I was doing, where I was going or where enemies were coming from. My map was updating at the pace of a snail climbing Mount Fuji and there were points where my character moved like a PowerPoint presentation. You'll have to bear with my pent up aggression about this game. And can I just mention how long these loading screens were? Literally can take up ten minutes to load a map. 

Getting into the graphics, I am pretty sure the game is probably very beautiful. But nope, my version ran like a train wreck. There were so many texture issues and glitches with guns not loading, animations not playing, and sometimes even deaths that led to loading in an endless void. I appreciated some of the variety that came with the game's different locations. The forests were lush and filled with extensive details, the trenches were grime-y and claustrophobic, and the deserts were...barren.. expectedly. Towns were the lowlight. They were crowded, badly designed, and lacked variety.

 "I have had it with this school, Skinner! The low test scores, class after class of ugly, ugly children." - Seymour Skinner

Gameplay is definitely where things are good...but not great. Playing through the hordes and hordes of enemies can get rather dull, but the feeling can be refreshed through collecting new loot and exploring the modding system. Shooting can feel tight and refreshing (if your internet connection is good). The game does a weird disservice with the cover system by forcing you to abandon it mid way through the game. There are perks and skills that help with staying in cover and the tutorial spends a lot of time explaining it, but eventually cover becomes a liability. Enemies essentially make cover useless by throwing grenades or having abilities that literally find you anywhere. They also seem to flank from everywhere. 

But things eventually do get repetitive. Numbers go burr, but I eventually lost interest nor could confirm if upgrading my stats would take down enemies quickly. Enemies became way more annoying, becoming bullet sponges with insane abilities. Some trash enemies still take full clips of ammo to finish them off. And don't even get me started on the last boss. 

But by far...The ugliest part about this game is the story. Completely inconsistent with its tone and the plot leads to nowhere. The characters all have some sort of story arc but, either due to the bad acting or the bad writing, you never feel the emotional weight of their stories. Also the main character doesn't even seem to care about anyone. There are so many "bosses" that get built up but - surprise!- you never get to play them. 

My thought process through every story beat of the game

And I get it, I get it. The campaign isn't the end goal of Outriders. It's just a vehicle to get players to continue playing the game. It's like when you beat the single player mode of a fighting game. It doesn't mean you mastered the mechanics of the game, it means you're ready to take on other players and keep learning new tricks. But the game is so bad that it almost made it a punishment to get through the story. It's like the Outriders is saying, "you wanna keep playing this game for the loot? Screw you! Suffer first and cry. Once your soul is in shambles, you can enjoy our game." 

Well you know what Outriders? Screw you and your time wasting nonsensical mumbo jumbo. I'm giving you a 3/10 and hoping I never have to see you again.