Outriders Review – Big and nice looking linear levels with co-op, crossplay, DLSS 2.0, small quirks and sporadic hangs | Performance and workaround

Clipping and translation

The 3rd person perspective is ok as long as you don’t stand inside yourself. Unfortunately this happens often, especially in close combat, and it can be really confusing to see only half of your weapon and otherwise only semi-transparent fly screens where your character is standing. But so far I haven’t gotten stuck unsolvably, which is also worth a lot.

Furthermore, the German translation is missing in a few places, but you can get over that, because then the English original is there. Might as well. The soundscape is good, but not mind-blowing, the dialogue is tolerable to good. So you can leave it at that.

It is playable and the server problems of the first two days have been solved by now, even if it takes ages from time to time. But it’s also good evidence that the servers are (still) full.

Workaround against jerks

After only a few moments you’ll notice that the game is quite demanding and that not much is possible below 6 cores/threads. But then you don’t need more and it doesn’t scale up even with 12 cores. The latest PC hardware is therefore at least no obstacle to still be able to gamble the game bravely with the highest settings, and if you even speculate on Ultra HD, then even a GeForce RTX 3080 and a Radeon RX 6800XT are puffing for air quite decently. The GeForce can at least use DLSS from Turing onwards, which can once again make the difference between hectic hopping and smooth scrolling, especially in Ultra-HD, and saves the smaller GeForce RTXs from being run down in WQHD. So in the end, with DLSS and “Balanced”, even a smaller GeForce can annoy AMD’s Radeon from the next higher performance class.

However, if you encounter various hangs and jerks (and you certainly will), you should completely exclude the game’s installation directory, or better yet, the entire Steam directory, from Defender. Easy-Anti-Cheat is also a nasty brake here, which sporadically interferes from time to time. I ran the benchmarks with the trainer and the EAS patched out in the launcher, but excluding the installation directory should be enough, because we are in a legal grey area here. So please don’t ask for these files or the way to get them, even if there are only 8 KB left of the launcher as executable. It was just a means to an end here.

In addition, you should also keep the EAC directory at the respective user under AppData/Local away from Windows Defender. Rule it out and that’s it. Then you’ll be fine with Outriders.

Gaming performance in hands-on

I’m not a specialized gaming tester, but I had the test system with the new Core i9-11900K still here. Along with that comes 16GB of DDR4 3733 with Gear 1 and a fixed SSD on an MSI MEG Z590 Ace. Due to time constraints, I have limited the graphics card selection a bit and am only using an RTX 3080 FE as well as the RX 6800XT reference in Ultra-HD for now, but that’s enough for a first impression. As a savegame I use the point with the cable car and the corresponding animation including a decent view. This bumps in pretty well without stopping everything completely.

And yeah, the game really sucks resources when you play on max beauty. I wouldn’t want to miss DLSS 2.0 anymore and even on “Quality” you still easily gain 15% to 25% in performance. And it even looks crisper. In “Performance” mode it’s even well over 35% gain (peak up to 50%), but it already starts to flicker badly in some places as long as you’re moving. “Balanced” is the most sensible alternative here, in my opinion. But we know that already. A snazzy chain link fence with DLSS in Quality would make any firecracker shrub explode with ecstasy. AMD really needs to step up their game here, because this is a real game-changer in many places by now and even the rather timid RTX 3060 chases a Radeon RX 6700XT quite decently. But for both, WQHD is the highest of feelings and we will have to wait for the final benchmarks.

Without DLSS, you’re stuck with a GeForce RTX 3080 in this scene in Ultra HD at around 65 FPS (51 FPS, 1% Low FPS P1), with DLSS on Quality it’s then just under 100 FPS (88 FPS, 1% Low FPS P1), the Radeon RX 6800XT is just behind the 3080 FE without DLSS with 60 FPS (50 FPS, 1% Low FPS P1). And in WQHD, both the GeForce and the Radeon are slightly above the 100 mark, with slight advantages for Team Green. I would only use DLSS here if you absolutely think you need 120 or 144 FPS. But it doesn’t look as crisp as it did in Ultra HD. At least the GeForce RTX 3060 with DLSS and the RX 6700XT without DLSS still manage usable frame rates in WQHD. But it’s only really fast if you tone down the graphics defaults a bit.

Summary and first conclusion

Yes, the game can please, even if the very big enthusiasm has failed for now. The optics are ok, thanks to Unreal Engine 4, the performance is also right, but only if you can assign 6 fast cores. And the graphics hardware is properly challenged when you set the hose run to maximum pretty. The rest is individual optimization and adjustment of the settings. Here often enough with only one step less equal to significantly more. So test, test and keep testing.

Let’s see how much more time I will invest here myself and if a complete benchmark run is still worth it. Or I leave it to my colleagues and get back to the serious things in life. Let’s see how I do this week after my Corona shot. I hope it’s not the gold one. But don’t worry, even if your stomach is a bit tingly from excitement. And then why I wrote the article anyway and without a lot of bar graphs?

The conclusion I wanted to get rid of: you can play well to very well, also in the co-op group. Even with console gamers in the crossplayer support group if need be. Of course, the danger of having to clear the same monsters, mutants, or raiders over and over again is always and constantly the best companion. But shredding here is quite fun and effortful, even if you as a perfectly creeping contemporary nevertheless only get further when the complete cleansing is really final. In fact, that would be my only real criticism. The rest is the same anyway.

And then this afternoon comes the launch article of a brand new AiO compact watercooler. So stay tuned, at 13.00 o’clock it’s time!