A couple years back 2 games out of Poland were announced basically simultaneously that both boiled down to “grimdark third-person destiny”. One from People Can Fly (Outriders) and one from some other company from the founders of People Can Fly (Witchfire). Outriders finally shipped a demo this past week and . . it sorta isn’t good. For me.

It’s weird because it’s absolutely built like a live service game (Diablo, Destiny, Division, Anthem, Avengers, etc), but they’re saying it ABSOLUTELY it is not a live service game. It plays like Gears of War but with Destiny-ish powers. The powers are on super short cooldowns, which is awesome, but the powers are all kinda samey? I played THE TRICKSTER and my abilities were: Melee, Melee but in a wide arc, Bubble, and “Teleports Behind U”. Functionally these all had basically the same effect: apply a debuff, and if you kill they explode.

So the skills were all pretty same-y. The guns? Also sorta same-y. The environments? Incredibly same-y. Enemies? You guessed it, same-y. Mission design? Pretty uninspired. Several times in the demo their encounter design was “Fight dudes as you run across this room. Oh no! Dudes have spawned behind you! Turn around and clear the room backwards now.”

The tone was the most off-putting. The writers really like the word “fuck”, and appear to be going for some sort of record based on its frequency in the dialogue. When characters aren’t constantly saying “fuck”, the setting is just . . bleh. Incredibly grimdark, all characters are irredeemable assholes, except the player character, who sort of doesn’t care because he’s been frozen for 30 years. Near the end of the demo there’s a mission where it’s more self-deprecating and is trying for dark humor . . but it just got old for me fast.

If the combat was a little snappier and the game interface a little less clunky I could probably overlook the setting/tone. As is, it’s a pass from me. Grats on not being a buggy mess like Anthem or Avengers, but they just didn’t nail it.