Hey, everyone! This week, Ie review Square Enix's attempt to take a bite out of Bungie's lunch. Is this game a Destiny killer? Or, is this game messing with the wrong Guardian?
Let's find out!
The MMO action genre has been around for decades. The "a true pioneer" of the genre came in 2004 when Blizzard Entertainment released the highly popular, highly addictive World Of Warcraft. This game showed the entire world that is persistent, online world, filled with thousands of players is the future of we would play video games. Today, the World of Warcraft is still maintaining a healthy, active player base.
This idea of thousands of players, playing in a massive, dynamic, online world came to consoles, as legendary first-person shooter developer, Bungie created Destiny, in 2019. Since that game's release, Destiny has attracted hundreds of thousands of players, particularly in the second entry of the series, released in 2017.
Earlier this year, Final Fantasy developers Square Enix, and the Bulletstorm developers, People Can Fly decided to take a chunk out of this, highly popular market by releasing this game.
The game itself is set in the not too distant future. Humanity passed the point of no return, in terms of climate change. Natural disasters are becoming more and more frequent, eventually surpassing humanity's ability to mitigate them. We have, but no choice to leave our ancestral homeworld of Earth.
So, humanity finds itself on an exoplanet, called Enoch. Your player character is a member of the Outriders, an elite of human commandos, whose mission is to prepare the planet for human colonisation. However, a strange seismic anomaly destroyed all the colonies advanced technology, which traps every single human colonist on the planet to a small area, rocked by civil war.
fighting over the planet's precious few resources. You wake up from a 31-year cryo sleep, in the middle of it! It is up to you to find a new place to colonise, safe from the anomaly while fighting off a planetary insurgency, to find a safer, more suitable location for humanity to thrive on the planet.
The access ability scores are as follows-
Visibility 10
there are a whole host of accessibility options available. There are interchangeable colourblind modes that can be changed on the fly. There is also, a high contrast mode. When this mode is enabled, subtitles are shown behind a black background. This is somewhat similar to the subtitles you would normally see on a television broadcast. So, this game is very easily playable for a player with a visual impairment.
Audibility 8
there are subtitles that can be enabled and disabled via the options menu, the high contrast option, which I have mentioned in a previous category also has a positive effect on accessibility, in terms of this category, as this mode also affect the interface, while navigating the menus.
Also, there is an option to a large in the font size and the menus, and subtitles. However, the difference between the text size is quite hard to notice. So, suffice to say, it's a bit of a swing and a miss. So, this game should be somewhat playable for a player with a hearing impairment
Mobility 6
Okay, this is where the biggest criticism of this game lines. In terms of customisation, the number of control options available are limited. There are numerous stick layouts to choose from, but, interchangeable button layouts is pretty much non-existent.
This can cause a major issue for a mobility impaired player as if you cant use the controls present in this game due to your impairments, you will not be able to play this game.
So, the players with mobility impairments. might want to give this game a pass. Try before you buy, guys. That's what game pass is for|!
Gameplay 9
In, short, this is a hybrid cross of the third person, duck-and-cover mechanics of Gears of War, mixed in with the MMO, Grindey, loot-based elements of Destiny. This game is quite fun to play with friends or on your own. If the story is rich and engaging the action is very fast-paced in some cases, too fast-paced.
The classes system is again, very similar to destiny's. Instead of having the Titan, Warlock, and Hunter classes, you have the technomancer class, the long-range, support class, the Pyromancer class, the medium-range specialist, which, as the name suggests, can conjure fire spells, the trickster, a close-quarters specialist, but favours more hit-and-run tactics. Last, but certainly not least, we have the Devastator, close-range specialist, can soak up a shed load of damage, allowing you to stand your ground.
This mechanic emphasises the dependency on teamwork, which is the norm of most MMOs. It would be a good idea to have a good spread of the classes when picking which character you play as. The grind-based, Destiny elements encourage you to playing the game more. But as you Albert Einstein said "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results\" so, playing this game for a long session can feel a little tedious.
In summary, Outriders is a fairly decent alternative to Destiny. The third person, duck cover mechanics makes this game feel fresh and unique. The enhancements that are available for the Xbox series X/S looks amazing. Playing this game makes the rather pricey hardware upgrade worth it. If you have been bitten by Destiny and is looking for something new and fresh, this game is a good option. This game is currently on game pass, so, at least give that this game a try!
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