LifeisXbox’s Outriders Worldslayer review | Outriders is a third-person looter shooter by People Can Fly, the team behind the wonderful Bulletstorm. It launched on April 1st last year and, despite its funny release date, wasn’t a joke in any way. I tried it via Xbox Game Pass and was happily surprised by its fast but brutal gameplay and addictive levelling system.
If you want to catch up on the main game first, be sure to read Raf’s full review HERE. He gave it a nice 86% score and if you were wondering: I would have probably given it a comparable score myself. I really did enjoy my time with it and I’m more than happy to dive back in with new story content to discover.
Outriders Worldslayer picks up after the events of the first game, which had a grindy end-game full of increasingly difficult challenges, but never offered any closure on the fate of the surviving humans on this hostile alien planet.
Most Memorable Moment
The best experience for me here was probably discovering that my build still very much worked wonders, with an infinite ammo trick, Area of Effect blasts taking out lots of enemies and each kill near me healing me back to full health. Lovely!
ℹ️ Reviewed on Xbox Series X | Review code provided by Day One MPM, this review is the personal opinion of the writer.
What we Liked!
- Story Content | The main game and expansion ended on a kind of cliffhanger. Sure the biggest issue was solved with pods falling from the sky and providing new resources to further cultivate Enoch as a place to live, but there was still a war raging and people had terrible living conditions. Worldslayer finally gives a happy ending to that… If you stop playing at the halfway point.
- New Gear | This isn’t something I was waiting on myself, but the people grinding for new legendary equipment were probably pretty excited to finally get some new outfits and weapons to play with. I only switched an SMG for a sniper rifle but other than that, kept my loadout from the main game and kept levelling them or upping the attributes.
- Transmog added | This was actually available before the Worldslayer content, but I was very excited with this added feature. You can now change the look of your weapons and gear to any weapon you collect, making it possible to keep the best stats for your build, but still make cosmetic changes to your character. Sadly it only applies to what you collect or what was in your inventory and I had already sold everything I didn’t need. Still happy with how badass my Outriders ended up looking though.
- Apocalypse level | New passive upgrades and difficulty settings were added as well. And I can’t state enough how much of a fan I am of Outriders’ way of handling difficulty. You can set the world to a lower level than yourself, allowing you to cut through enemies like a hot knife through butter, or you can make them up to 75 lvls higher than yourself, giving you one heck of a challenge, but dropping the most powerful loot imaginable. I loved getting back to grips with the gameplay at world lvl 1 and then upped it after an hour once I was comfortable again.
Mixed Feelings
- Tarya Gratar Trials | Worldslayer adds a replayable trial mode that offers big rewards, I did about 3 runs through it and it’s a nice way to get some extra gear and levels, but the experience remains largely the same each time with only minor changes, so it’s not something I’d see anyone enjoying for hours on end.
- Length | While I don’t enjoy games or stories that have been too stretched out, the amount of content available here will run thin surprisingly quickly. If you paid the full price for this DLC, it’s likely to leave a sour taste unless you are among the biggest Outriders fans out there. For me, the 4-5 runtime was the perfect length to dive back into the game and rekindle my interest for the title.
What we Disliked
- Cliffhanger ending, again | If you successfully beat the optional bosses at the end of the Tarya Gratar trials (which were PRETTY challenging, to be honest) then you are rewarded with a final cinematic of your Outride riding an elevator down to discover the darkest secrets that Enoch has to hide… But I was kind of hoping for this DLC to offer some closure on the game, and that was not the case.
- Not possible to do the Tarya Gratar run in multiple parts | After beating the main story of the DLC, I dove into the trials and beat the first round, thinking I’d pause the game and come back for the rest another day. But while I was only playing the solo mode, the game still saw this as a failed attempt and took one “continue” away from me for taking a break in the middle of the run.
- Weird loading screens | Remember those staircase or door scenes in the first Resident Evil game, cleverly hiding a loading screen and letting the game load the assets for the next zone? Well, in 2022, Outriders Worldslayer still tries to get away with that technique. Expect seeing an awkward cinematic every time your outrider needs to jump a small game or climb up a ladder.
How long to beat the story | ~4-5 hours
How long to complete | The DLC is rather easy to complete, you can get all new achievements in around 10 hours. Much less if you were already high level.
If you want to see the game in action for yourself, here is the first hour of gameplay on YouTube:
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Robby lives and breathes video games. When he’s not playing them, he’s talking about them on social media or convincing other people to pick up a controller themselves. He’s online so often, he could practically list the internet as his legal domicile. Belgian games-industry know-it-all.
