It is finally here, the Outriders demo, and boy, is it fantastic!
This is exactly what we needed. This game has brought a fresh breath of life to the gaming scene. Especially since we’ve kept being given all these broken, buggy triple-A games and Outriders is a solid rebuke to those games.
My name is Brad Hahn and welcome to my Outriders Demo first impressions!
Outriders Demo
The Outriders demo gives players access to two story missions and a couple of side missions. Honestly, we shouldn’t expect much as it’s just a demo. I know demos aren’t very common anymore, but we need to remember that they are usually designed to give players just a taste of what’s to come!
With this, the game only allows you to go to a maximum of level 7, and a world difficulty of tier 5. The higher the world tier, the tougher the enemies are, but also a higher chance of getting better loot and perks.
The demo also gives players access to all four classes which are the Devastator, Technomancer, Trickster, and Pyromancer. The gameplay in the video is from a live stream of mine. I jumped into Outriders the second it came out and went live for around 8 hours as the Technomancer and got some pretty awesome loot.
Before we get any deeper, I just want to say that I love this game so far. Again, I know it’s just a demo but from what I’ve experienced, I am already in love with it. That being said, there are some issues. However, I’m of the opinion that the positives outweigh the negatives, so with that let’s get the negatives out of the way first!
Cons
When first launching into Outriders on the PC version, you’ll find that your typical mouse and keyboard layout is a bit weird and I found myself customizing it instantly. These are weird things such as pressing “Q” to change weapons rather than scrolling the mouse wheel, or pressing “Z” to sprint rather than the shift key. Again, not a big deal, but rather strange for sure.
Another thing we came across was that all the cutscenes are locked at 30fps, which is extremely noticeable. Regardless of how expensive your PC rig is, the game plunges that fps down to 30 in every cutscene. And weirdly enough, when interacting with vendors, that also decreases your fps to 30 and locks it there until you’re done with your interaction. Not too sure if this is deliberate or a bug, but I’d really like to see that changed when the full game releases on April 1st.
The worst bug that we seem to have found when playing the Outriders demo is the game occasionally crashes. I do believe that the better the rig you have, the less likely it’ll crash, however, you can’t escape it. I’ve got a pretty heavy machine here and in my entire 8 hours of streaming, I only crashed once. However, some friends of mine were getting crashes every 30 minutes, and they have pretty okay machines that fall within the recommended requirements for Outriders. Again, I really hope this gets fixed before launch.
Other small things such as disconnecting from the game or randomly being booted from your friend’s team can be quite annoying, however, I believe that this is a server-related issue. The servers were likely working overtime with the number of players that were jumping into this game.
Those are all the negatives that I found within this demo and the only one really that’s a big deal is the crashing, which again, I experienced once.
Pros
Now, the positives! The voice acting in this game is phenomenal and you cannot help but really feel invested in both the story and character development. Everyone feels unique and different, with my favorite being Jakob who is both hilarious with his attitude and humor, while also being really loyal towards you.
The gunplay feels absolutely amazing. Nothing feels too heavy or too light, and every gun feels different and has its own kick to it, making you want to keep on trying different loadouts each time you pick up something new. What also feels impeccable are the abilities, and this game doesn’t hide the fact that it wants you to use these abilities as much as possible. The cooldowns for your powers are so little that on certain builds, you can quite literally spam abilities over and over, and the way they make this synergize with other classes when playing with a friend is just…So. Much. Fun.
For example, my friend Ben was using a Trickster which has the ability to slow down time in a dome. I was playing the Technomancer who has the ability to place down a turret that fires continuous rockets in a single direction. Ben used his ability to trap enemies and slow them down, whilst I threw out my turret in their line of sight and rained hell on them, causing a huge area of effect damage and, of course, huge explosions. Side note: the sound design for this is just something else too. Just wow.
As much as the game highly encourages you to use your abilities as much as you can, that doesn’t take away from the gunplay at all. Guns feel amazing to shoot and I can’t wait to see what builds I come up with. Guns rank in the same way they do in Destiny, whereby gold weapons represent exotics, being the best of the best loot you can get and I may or may not already have one…heh, heh.
The demo gives players the chance to go up against some bosses that also wield some type of power, so rather than just going up against other enemies with guns, you have the challenge of fighting other foes that are able to conjure up their own crazy combos. Those fights are super fun to play and you really have to change things up in your play style, such as invading attacks and making the right moves at the right times without getting critically hurt in the process.
Summary
Let’s round up what we have here: amazing voice acting, brilliant characters that you can genuinely care about, an intriguing story that keeps you invested, fantastic gunplay which encourages you to try new weapons as you pick them up, legendary (exotic) weapons that give you a purpose to keep running higher-level activities, the most phenomenal abilities that make you feel like an absolute god when using them, and all this just in a demo.
It goes without saying that I am truly loving Outriders, and I intend on sinking more hours into this game so I can bring to you guys all the latest builds and info I can. For more Outriders content, head on over to my channel where I’ll be live streaming and posting regular Outriders content.
Give Outriders a go. It’s a free demo available on all platforms! Let us know what you think in the comments below and I will see you in the next one! 🙂
Credits
| Program | Freedom! Scholarship |
| Author | Brad Hahn |
| YouTuber | Brad Hahn |
| Publisher | MGN TV |
| Game | Outriders |
Great article!