People Can Fly's 'Outriders' demo out Today (All the Platforms)

[XsjadoBlayde]

Running until the release date of April 1st and beyond, us humble unwashed masses are privvy to the next Destiny live-service from a developer well known for making acclaimed shooty bang bangs...Outriders.

How to play the free Outriders demo - and our first impressions

Grab the squad and get looting

www.techradar.com

Set in a dark sci-fi universe, Outriders can be played with up to three other players and is a "drop-in-drop-out" shooter, meaning players can join and leave without affecting the game.


The demo will allow you to play the game’s prologue and opening chapter, up to the “showdown against first rival Altered,” although after defeating ‘Gauss’, you’ll be able to go back and explore the world, with some further side missions being unlocked.


Players will also have access to four character classes up to level seven. This means you will be able to unlock and pick four abilities, plus spend two skill points, and try different variations among the characters therein – there will be six character slots in the demo, too. In addition, you can progress to World Five where resources are capped at "generous" amounts.

According to the developers, "the further you get in the full Outriders story, the more twisted, exotic and powerful both gear and enemies will become."

The Outriders demo goes live on February 25 at 5pm GMT / 12pm EST / 9am EST (or 4am AEDT on February 26) and will run beyond the game's official release on April 1.

The Outriders free demo is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC (Steam & streaming with Nvidia GeForce Now).

Technically, this being a demo means I'm not infringing upon the local primate's free games column here, so put away those lawyers, dear woodland fauna!

 

[Elijin]

Not a live service game.

 

[BrawlMan]

I saw a video of Seraphim17 showing the demo with no commentary. It looks alright, but I'm giving it a hard pass.

 

[Worgen]

Well, I wasn't too impressed with the gameplay trailer, but its a demo, I'll try it out.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Just from watching a short video, the combat strikes me as the love child of The Division and Hellgate: London (and when was the last time I thought about that game?), the AI looks utterly brain-dead, and the classes don't seem terribly differentiated besides their skills (and they mostly look like "new way to kill dudes".)

I mean, these are the guys who made Painkiller, but they're also the guys who made Bulletstorm, whose demo managed to completely turn me off the idea of buying the game.

 

[Worgen]

Or it needs an account setup and fuck that noise.

 

[happyninja42]

Or it needs an account setup and fuck that noise.

Yeah I tried to set one up, and declined. I was amused by how the game refused to let me shut it down. I was at the "click here to sign up for squeenix" *No* "ok click here to exit" *click to exit, get told goodbye.....am taken right back to the previous screen without any close/exit to desktop option*

Had to alt-tab and close out the window to get the game to stop trying to make me play it. So...yeah that was fun.

 

[Worgen]

Yeah I tried to set one up, and declined. I was amused by how the game refused to let me shut it down. I was at the "click here to sign up for squeenix" *No* "ok click here to exit" *click to exit, get told goodbye.....am taken right back to the previous screen without any close/exit to desktop option*

Had to alt-tab and close out the window to get the game to stop trying to make me play it. So...yeah that was fun.

The last game that I had issues with that was Quake Champions. I made an account but the game kept messing up when I would try to sign in so I never got to try it. I have less patients for this.

 

[happyninja42]

The last game that I had issues with that was Quake Champions. I made an account but the game kept messing up when I would try to sign in so I never got to try it. I have less patients for this.

Yeah I don't care enough about a clone of a set of games that I never found terribly compelling in the first place, to bother giving squeenix any of my data if I can avoid it.

 

[sXeth]

The demo doesn't seem to really get into any of the meat of the game.... so you're plowing around with generic guns and a handful of powers.

I can definitely feel that kjind of cludgy floaty weight that Division (and other Ubi games have), which weels awkward in a power-spammy looter.


The abilities are.... eh. My buddy compared it to mass effect combat prettymuch, which is probably a solid enough comparison. Nothing too awe inspiring.

 

[sXeth]

Found some to dive into it a little more.


It definitely lacks some... presentation? guidance? Because it comes across a very plodgy third person cover shooter, when you don't really need to (nor is that a particularly effective way to play).



The demo definitely doesn't do it any favors. I don't know if you get out of the kind of genericy guns in the later game. But the demo also restricts you solely to fighting general human mooks (with only a tease of one of the alien monsters in an optional sidequest that you can finish the demo without actually doing). And doesn't really put any highlight to the mod systems or the class tree which have a lot more depth then might be initially apparent (again, you might pass through the demo without seeing modded armour if you don't get a blue drp).


You only see 3-4 skills out of 8 for each main class in the demo too. One of which seems to pretty universally be "give my gun a status effect" buff. And you don't get to any of the subclass nodes with the 2 skill points you can pick up. Which seems to be where you get to define your playstyle a bit more.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

I made a mistake with labelling this a live-service game, as according to the devs it is not. Apparently it's a full game that just looks exactly like a live-service game, but you get it in one package/purchase...I think? Just wanted to make sure am not leaving incorrect information laying about unchecked. FAQ mentions it below;

OUTRIDERS COMPLETE EDITION | SQUARE ENIX

Be unstoppable in this 1-3 player co-op looter shooter with 4 unique classes and a customisable arsenal of brutal powers, skills, gear and weapons.

outriders.square-enix-games.com

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

The demo definitely doesn't do it any favors.

PCF have kind of a bad history with demos.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Outriders dev promises to permanently brand cheaters with a HUD watermark to expose their cheating ways

People Can Fly has issued a stark warning to those who cheated in the Outriders demo, vowing to brand their HUD with a …

www.eurogamer.net

That’s interesting and commendable for any game with an online competitive component.

 

[sXeth]

Outriders dev promises to permanently brand cheaters with a HUD watermark to expose their cheating ways

People Can Fly has issued a stark warning to those who cheated in the Outriders demo, vowing to brand their HUD with a …

www.eurogamer.net

That’s interesting and commendable for any game with an online competitive component.

As far as anything I observed or read, there is no competitive component. There isn't even a trading system from what I can tell.


Which does kind of hit the elephant in the room.... theres literally no reason this needs to have a forcibly online state given at this point. OR really for anyone to care if someone was cheating unless they join in your session and just bullrush through it when you're trying to play normally. Like Monster Hunter World had obvious cheaters with impossible Hunter Ranks or flubbing drop tables in offline mode, but even when they showed up it was never super-detrimental, just kind of a laugh.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

As far as anything I observed or read, there is no competitive component. There isn't even a trading system from what I can tell.


Which does kind of hit the elephant in the room.... theres literally no reason this needs to have a forcibly online state given at this point. OR really for anyone to care if someone was cheating unless they join in your session and just bullrush through it when you're trying to play normally. Like Monster Hunter World had obvious cheaters with impossible Hunter Ranks or flubbing drop tables in offline mode, but even when they showed up it was never super-detrimental, just kind of a laugh.

It is odd. Apparently it’s just a persistent online single player, with the drop-in co-op type of deal. I’ve only played the training area of the demo so far, but everything from story to visuals to the feel of the gunplay is par for the course at best; or in other words about as underwhelming as I’d imagined. It feels like it would’ve been par for the course as a launch title for PS4 or XBOne, not something more than a generation later.

I guess the big draw here is the different classes with unique abilities, but the general shooting is just taking cover>unload clip into meatsacks til they ‘splode. It’s like they’re combining one part Division and another part Gears but the result is somehow something less than either by itself. I might just be a bit cynical of the looty-tooty-cover-shooty genre though at this point. At least the aiming feels smooth, and it seems to have some compensation for acceleration to keep assist off.

It also appears to be going all-in as yet another “cinematic story driven” affair, though pretty much any Sony exclusive or AAA third party action/adventure has done that at a much higher quality most of the past generation. I thought People Can Fly made a name for themselves with outside-the-box kind of fun design in shooters, but this feels like they’re chasing a tired trend. Maybe it will have a decent following looking for the next fix for this type of game, but it will probably need to rely on gimmicky add-on’s in the long run because the core gameplay itself feels uninspiring IMO.

 

[sXeth]

It is odd. Apparently it’s just a persistent online single player, with the drop-in co-op type of deal. I’ve only played the training area of the demo so far, but everything from story to visuals to the feel of the gunplay is par for the course at best; or in other words about as underwhelming as I’d imagined. It feels like it would’ve been par for the course as a launch title for PS4 or XBOne, not something more than a generation later.

I guess the big draw here is the different classes with unique abilities, but the general shooting is just taking cover>unload clip into meatsacks til they ‘splode. It’s like they’re combining one part Division and another part Gears but the result is somehow something less than either by itself. I might just be a bit cynical of the looty-tooty-cover-shooty genre though at this point. At least the aiming feels smooth, and it seems to have some compensation for acceleration to keep assist off.

It also appears to be going all-in as yet another “cinematic story driven” affair, though pretty much any Sony exclusive or AAA third party action/adventure has done that at a much higher quality most of the past generation. I thought People Can Fly made a name for themselves with outside-the-box kind of fun design in shooters, but this feels like they’re chasing a tired trend. Maybe it will have a decent following looking for the next fix for this type of game, but it will probably need to rely on gimmicky add-on’s in the long run because the core gameplay itself feels uninspiring IMO.

The covers basically irrelevant if you keep an eye on how your class heals and/or use mobility powers. Its one of the things off with the presentation. Dodge rolling like you're in Souls works pretty well too. And there's various team heals and defensive buffs if you look in the trees. I imagine some of the non-human enemies are melee based too which'll make it irrelevant.


Which goes back to the demo being kind of weirdly bad at showing any strengths.


The only time I really needed to use cover was fighting Gauss solo, and even that was cause i was too stubborn to either turn the world tier down 1 for it, or rerun a few repeatables to bring gear up to snuff.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Hey let’s predict this game’s meta score. Going by the fact I can’t even find a date for the review embargo lifting yet, it’s not exactly a good sign.

73, but that might be a bit optimistic.

 

[CriticalGaming]

This game looks incredibly generic and uninteresting. But I'm not a shooter guy so maybe it's doing something unique and I just can't tell?

 

[meiam]

Hey let’s predict this game’s meta score. Going by the fact I can’t even find a date for the review embargo lifting yet, it’s not exactly a good sign.

73, but that might be a bit optimistic.

Eh, 7/10. Functional but nothing special, if you and your friend need something to play it'll do the job.