Parents' Guide to

Outriders

By Paul Semel, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 18+

Violent, mature shooter/adventure is a fresh space tale.

Game Google Stadia, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S 2021
Outriders Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this game.

Community Reviews

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age 12+

Based on 4 parent reviews

exis13416
exis13416 Parent of 7 and 10-year-old
August 10, 2022
age 2+

READ

No blood no gore no swears

This title has:

Educational value
Great messages
Great role models
Easy to play/use
nuenjins
nuenjins Parent
June 13, 2021
age 16+

Another rocky start for the "looter shooter" genre with ALOT of room for improvement..

If you can get past the horrific hellscape of a story intro, it's cover based beginnings and loot/ mod system keep things interesting for awhile. Strategy, knowing when to take cover whilst using the enviroment / enemy placement, and how to enter combat with the best setup all all engaging. As you progress, gain powers and customize your character, possibilities for loadouts and powers open up and you are introduced to some boss fights and interesting challenges. Combat is fluid (when it works) and staying alive feels like a real struggle that's earned overall. Most of this is alleviated exponetially as you buddy up in a squad (up to 3 in tota)l as you inflict different stats and damage to enemies along with the benefit of not being the only target on the field for enemy aggression. Enemy variations become rather samey and stale near the last half to quarter of the campaign with no real surprises toward the end. The worst offense is that the difficulty spikes change the game entirely. Cover based shooting is almost completely abandoned at some point in the latter half requiring you to have a build to "withstand" damage outright or have your equipment powerful enough to put up with the nonstop bombardment of enemies while and the game just changes most of the interesting startegies of planned movement and tactics with a nonstop onslaught of aggression. Once you get to the Challenge Tiers, this endgame time based loot system ramps it up to "kill, kill, kill" level that abandons cover or thoughtful movement completely. Yes, the launch was terrible, but 3 months later most of the connectivity bugs have been worked out. Anthem suffered similar problems with a release that was unstable at best and fell apart once released into the wild, but, it was a coherent product finally at the end of it's life cycle, although being too little too late and inevitable being axed. Unfortunately, Outriders has succumbed to many of the same issues and bugs that have killed off other titles in similar fashion. If you enjoy this "type" of game, it's current state is worth a playthrough, although it wasn' the case upon release. And, although you can adjust difficulty at any time, going solo especially is nigh impossible with some of the outrageous difficulty spikes. As it stands, Outriders is still a work in progress, and with it's lack of inspiring endgame and often horrific RNG, the time you spend with it isn't going to keep most players locked in for the long run. Improvements are definitely needed in several key areas, especially end game content, if this is ever going to be a viable franchise that people would actually look forward to. In it's current state, Outriders is way behind the curve compared to content and stability of the Destiny or Borderlands franchises for instance. Meaning, creating competition for a studio that's been doing it for decades now like Bungie or Gearbox has these franchise rival wannabes playing catch up, and seemingly encountering major problems being schooled with the complexity and difficulty of creating a rival game that even comes close to the best out there.

This title has:

Too much swearing
See all 4 parent reviews

What’s It About?

In OUTRIDERS, humanity has moved to the planet Enoch after laying waste to Earth. As an Outrider, your job is to secure a place for the colonists to set up camp. But after being injured during an unexpected electric storm, you're placed back in cryogenic stasis, only to wake up 31 years later to find that the world is violent, unruly, and at war. You also quickly realize you now have special abilities that will help you in your ultimate mission, which is to make things right or die trying. A role-playing game with real-time, gun-based combat, players use their new skills, and a lot of weapons, to kill tons of bad guys who'd rather the world stayed chaotic. Players will also have the option to face the hordes of Enoch on their own or team up with friends to eliminate their targets.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (4):
Kids say (3):

By doing something different with the combat, this third-person, sci-fi shooting adventure manages to feel fresh and new. In Outriders, you're cast as a soldier on an alien planet who's supposed to secure the landing site for the future residents of a human colony. But after you're injured in a freak electrical storm, you get placed back in cryostasis, only to emerge 31 years later, and to a chaotic world at war. That's why you -- or, if you prefer, you and some friends -- spend the entire game trying to make things right by shooting tons of enemies, gathering supplies, and running side missions and errands as well as completing tasks that advance the main story. All of which works well, thanks to the game's fluid and intuitive controls.

What makes this different from such similar games as The Division 2 or Borderlands 3 is that the combat here is rather varied. For starters, your special powers recharge much faster than is usual in these kinds of adventure games. The shooting is also somewhat different, since some of the battlefields are large and have plenty to hide behind, so some enemies take pot shots from afar, while others get up close and personal. As a result, you often have to quickly switch from using a long-range weapon and the available cover to a more short-range firearm and tap the dodge button to avoid incoming fire and explosives. Further mixing things up are aliens who will swarm you, as well as mini-bosses who refuse to use cover but won't rush you, either. Granted, this game does have some issues: It requires a constant online connection, so you can't pause when your pizza arrives, even if you go it alone. The story is also dull (but easy to skip). But even with these problems, the varied and rather unique gunfights still make Outriders an effortlessly fun shooter.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about violence in video games. Is the impact of the violence in Outriders affected by the fact that you're mainly killing people instead of animals or aliens? Would the impact be lessened if you were killing creatures or aggressive aliens instead?

  • In Outriders, dialogue incudes profanity such as "s--t" and "f--k," as well as conversations that are sexual or suggestive. Do you think this adds anything to the game? Does it make the story feel more real, given what's going on, or does it seem unnecessary or gratuitous?

  • In Outriders, people have traveled to another world because Earth has been destroyed. Does this make you think about how we're treating the planet, especially given that we don't have the ability to move to another world?

Game Details

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