Before Outriders was first released in 2021, gamers were eager to see what People Can Fly’s next title would be after Bulletstorm and Gears of War: Judgment. After the game’s launch, many fans were left disappointed. Between a buggy launch, cross-platform issues, and lack of end-game content, the player base dropped off quickly and only a devoted fan base continued to play the game; this was partially due to the game being available through Xbox Game Pass. Despite an average player base, Square Enix and People Can Fly believed that a strong DLC could bring some players back. So how does Outriders World Slayer compare to the base game? Better yet, is it worth picking up?

Jumping Back In

Going into Outriders World Slayer, we went in with relatively low expectations after a rough launch. In fact, most of the staff at Maroonersrock did not complete the game at the original launch. Because of this, we had to choose either to go back to where we last left off or start over fresh. Most of our staff decided to create a new character to re-experience the story rather than jumping in blindly.

I chose to resume where I last left off and after a few minutes I was able to relearn the controls and used context clues to remember what happened in the story. This allowed me to refamiliarize with this bleak world and get through the base game faster, getting to the Outriders World Slayer DLC. Rather than playing as a group, we decided to tackle the base campaign individually this was so we could each form our own opinion of the base game and DLC rather than being influenced by each other.

This made the story feel sluggish and a bit of a grind while playing solo. After playing for an hour, I knew that this was not the path to go and convinced some of my friends to play through the base story again with me. Playing through on Co-Op makes the gameplay feel a lot better and more of a journey rather than a slow grind.

Outriders World Slayer Gameplay

When returning to Outriders, I was pleasantly shocked at the amount of work, love, and care that the People Can Fly team has put in to improve the overall quality of the game. Yes, we did notice a few visual bugs during our playthrough, but the gameplay was a lot smoother compared to the initial launch experience. No longer did we have to suffer as our targets fell through the map, bullets fired with a major delay, or the game continuously crashed. Instead, we experienced a few crashes while playing or loading. The only visual glitches we noticed were when our armor decided to glide through the environment during cutscenes, which were humorous but broke the immersion factor.

With all the updates we were able to kill enemies with relative ease. Yes, it is still possible to die in the game, but players can lower the World Tier difficulty to accommodate their needs. This increased difficulty also appears in the Outriders World Slayer DLC but as Apocoloypse Tiers. Rather than a 1 to 15 in the World Tiers base game, Apocalypse Tiers go from 1 to 40. This expands the World Slayer DLC significantly past the original run’s difficulty constraints. This expansion grants the player additional rewards and skill points to level up their character but provides an increasing difficulty to match the stronger gear and abilities.

Final Thoughts

Overall, the Outsiders World Slayer DLC is rather short when comparing its price tag to other games on the market. We got through the World Slayer story in about two hours. After completing the story, we tried our hand at the post-game content, Tarya Gratar; Tarya Gratar is similar to a Destiny raid where players progress through the area while taking different paths and killing enemies as they go.

Even with average gear, a squad of three players should easily be able to run through. As the Apocolypse Tiers increase, so does the loot; however, if you are looking for someone to play with online you may encounter someone dropping glitched loot that will be better than anything you can pick up at Apocolypse Tier 40.

Outriders World Slayers’ story is an enjoyable journey and the final boss fight will leave you feeling satisfied with the battle but not with the overall journey. If there is more content associated with this DLC that will come out at a later date, then it will eventually be worth it. As it stands now, the forty-dollar upgrade price feels way too steep. Was it fun to play through? Yes, the first time, but it doesn’t have that compelling of a story when compared to other games.

Special Thanks to Caleb “Warchicken” for assisting with this review and playthrough.