Outriders Demo

Gameplay & loot outshine an uneven tone & introductory mission.

Demos and Betas don't always work out. At worst, technical issues and bugs steal news headlines, while core gameplay is an afterthought. Hype can confront an unfinished product. These days, it can be more risk than reward.

Fortunately, People Can Fly's Outriders Demo not only avoids the major pitfalls of unsuccessful demos, it allows its core gameplay and looter mechanics to shine. It's by no means a perfect game and its story/characters alone will turn some people off, but more than anything - it has a fun combat gameplay loop and interesting gear/rewards that enhance combat.

The demo, which released on Feb. 25th, has about 2 hours of missions to guide you through. It starts with a prologue mission, then gives you access to 4 short missions (including 2 boss fights). After you finish the demo missions on your initial character, you can choose to start another play-through on one of the 3 other character classes.

At its core, this experimentation with each of its character class is the heart of the demo. Since there isn't much content to really explore, as a player, you naturally turn to weapons, mods, experimenting with abilities, and each of the classes. Fortunately, each character has a distinct play style, including slightly different ways to heal, giving the demo surprisingly more replayability than one would expect. 

For example, the Technomancer (below) triggers heal recovery by dealing damage, where Devastator triggers this when standing close to enemies.

Despite coming away from it positively, Outriders does have a very forgettable opening hour.

It starts with a mostly generic sci-fi setup -> tutorial mission -> NPC exposition -> new alien world -> something really bad happened on Earth...you get the idea. Adding to this, three NPCs you think will be major parts of the story, cowboy Jack Tanner, corporate sleaze ball Charles Maxwell, and bright-eyed techie Shira, are setup as very campy NPCs with cringe-worthy dialogue. Even your character's background is worthy of an eye-roll.

It's just at that moment where you're probably getting a little bored and ready to switch back to what you usually play, where Outriders story pivots. Two of those NPCs - quite literally "capped" off. Dead before you realize it. The main character's backstory...inconsequential in context to what happens next.

The flash-forward that Outriders pulls off immediately shifts the focus and to something way more interesting.

The new world you find yourself in smartly contrasts with the early setup. It's way darker. The cheesy characters are way battle hardened and there's mystery as to what happened between then and now.

Was the campy intro a setup? Most likely. But, it worked.

This shift, from bland to interesting, also happens to the gameplay after the prologue mission. Granted, all demos are expected to have a tutorial section that slowly shows you how to run, hurdle a log, shoot a gun, etc. 

As soon as the Anomaly event happens though you're an Altered and can pick a subclass.

Does dying and then being resurrected by a mysterious force remind you of the setup of another game? 

Once you acquire 2 of the character class abilities, things start to make more sense. By the time you've got the 3rd available in the demo and you've increased a couple World Tiers, the real game emerges. 

That game is the balance between aggressive gameplay and healing.

Similar to Gears of War, you'll start each combat sequence finding a defensive wall to queue on as enemies move vertically down the battlefield towards you. The trick Outriders successfully pulls off is that it doesn't intend for you to only play behind cover. 

Other games, like Mass Effect, have done this too, using classes like Vanguard to jet you quickly at enemies or abilities like Overload to instantly replenish your shields as you move forward. Mass Effect always felt to me like it had distinct combat elements - abilities or gunplay. Outriders combat and abilities feel far more cohesive.

It's class-based health mechanics really lend itself to fun, chaotic gameplay. Boiling it all down, the health regeneration mechanics incentivize movement. You can run and gun, regaining the health lost when jumping out of cover.

Playing as the Technomancer, I found myself trying land a couple pop-shots on enemies to trigger health regeneration while in the middle of a battle. This alone enabled the "long-range" class to be able to move freely. I wasn't just stuck sitting behind a wall waiting for enemies to stop firing.

The demo's boss fight the Insurgent Altered highlight this - a frantic attempt to avoid the bosses roaming super attack, while shooting the boss to trigger healing while dealing damage. Its a mechanism that leans into the ridiculous exploding bodies and frequently ability usage and post-apocalypticness of it all.

As I approach the boss, watch the health regeneration in the bottom-left corner of the screen.

As much as I hate the word synergy, it's really what comes to mind here: There's a balance between the gunplay, abilities, and healing that make the moment-to-moment combat really fun. It breaks away from the boring, stationary tactics a cover-based shooter can easily fall back into.

Based on combat and loot, Outriders is a title worth watching as the April 1st release approaches. 

However, I'm not sold on the tone and humor in Outriders. The demo is a bit of a mixed bag - there are moments that will make you laugh, but also moments that are campy & cringe-worthy. It's not something will deter folks that really enjoy the gameplay, but it will turn some people off. 

Reflecting back on the first couple hours of the demo, it's quite understandable why some might not have stuck it out long enough to unlock all the abilities and get into the loot system. 

An example that highlights this is the end of the Terra Infirma mission. There's a goofy, awkward moment:

Immediately followed by an extremely uncomfortable one:

The tonal shift from awkward humor to senseless murder here is really bad.

Was the the soulless murder of the enemy solder and his squad supposed to be gritty? Was the "War is war" line by murderous captain just before being picked off by a sniper supposed to be ironic?

At the very end of the scene, your character even asks, "Why do I even bother", which straight-up trivializes the entire thing. 

Now, this moment is a just from a tiny side quest, but there's enough of them throughout the demo to highlight there is an uneven tone and comedy underneath the writing in the game. 

There's way more more that can be discussed on Outriders, both good and bad, but at the end of the demo, the core gameplay left me excited. I distinctly remember jumping on PWTJ #47 very excited to talk about the gameplay. It let me forgive basic sci-fi plot points or abilities we've seen in other games or campy dialogue. 

Outriders likely won't be a game for everyone, but if it is your style of game, it looks like you're in store for a great game.