Outriders throws you onto Enoch, a colonisation “plan B” for humanity that immediately goes sideways. An anomaly storm turns the planet into a death trap and mutates a subset of people into the Altered — super-powered, immortal freaks with their own agendas. You play one of them, initially part of the Outriders vanguard, then thrown forward in time into a full disaster zone of factions, cults, and ruined tech.

Combat is third-person, cover-based on the surface — but the healing mechanics flip the usual behaviour. Each of the four classes (Trickster, Pyromancer, Devastator, Technomancer) heals in a different way: killing enemies in close range, burning marked targets, tanking damage, or leeching through abilities. Sitting behind cover gets you killed; pushing, flanking, and timing abilities keeps you alive. The game is built on that aggression loop and it’s where it feels best.

Loot leans into archetypes: assault rifles, LMGs, shotguns, sniper rifles, all with mod slots that let you attach weapon abilities and status effects. Armour pieces carry set bonuses and class-specific twists, letting you build into ability spam, raw gun damage, survivability, or weird synergies between skills. Difficulty tiers (World Tiers and later Apocalypse Tiers) ramp both enemy stats and rewards, giving you space to test how far your build actually goes.

Structurally it’s more linear than a Destiny-style MMO: a hub-and-corridor campaign with side quests and optional hunts, then an expedition-focused endgame that reuses and remixes arenas for time-pressured loot runs. It’s online-only, but not a live service treadmill; expansions like Worldslayer add more content and systems without turning the whole thing into a weekly chore chart.

In the Vault, Outriders gets the slot for “looter-shooter with actual teeth”: flawed, but very clear about one thing — if you want to live, you go forward, not backwards.