The Outer Worlds
detailed review inside
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It's alright.
Looks ok. Looking forward to when it’s £20
Looking forward to when you're £20
MaliA wrote:
Looking forward to when you're £20

My value only goes up
Mr Chonks wrote:
MaliA wrote:
Looking forward to when you're £20

My value only goes up


As you go down.
It plays like a cross between fallout 3 and borderlands, but it's very clunky and I expect there will be a lot of quality of life improvements being released at some point.

Getting to the map is a chore, you can only have one objective showing at once, inventory management is awful, it's crashed on me a couple of times, finding downed enemies to loot is hard etc...

If it had been released 10 years ago it wouldn't have been a surprise, but the world has moved on a bit and they haven't kept up.

Gameplay wise it's basically fallout, which is no bad thing.
Story and writing is pretty good though, and it's keeping my interest despite the problems.
Jim Sterling really likes it.

I played through basically the first 'chapter' this evening, and it's a real delight. It's very fallout, but thematically has a lot of borderlands to it.
I've seen a couple of video reviews now and I'm sold. Deffo picking it up when I get home tomorrow.
I played this for five hours straight last night and only stopped because it was getting late and I had to go to bed.

Lovely game, splendid writing and voice acting, immediately got me interested in its world and characters.

Yes it's a bit 'old fashioned' in some ways, but for me that's a positive, a traditional RPG-action style game with swizzy modern graphics.

Early impressions are very good.
I played about 40 minutes of this last night. Not my style of game typically, but I like it so far.

I can definitely see the attraction and it came at the right price.
Truth be told it's not really my type of game either (I've said before how I bought Oblivion, Skyrim and Fallout 3, and didn't complete any of them).

However, the reviews of this were so good, and so many games have gone to shit of late with live service horseshit, microtransactions, pay to win, buggy as hell and so on, I thought I'd give it a go.

As Mr Sterling put it, games like this make Bethesda obsolete.

Thoroughly enjoying this so far, though a couple of niggles have developed:

1) Weapons feel samey, and upgrading them feels like it's not really doing much. The range of upgrades is quite limited and unexciting.
2) You get tons of upgrade points, easily enough to breeze past all the conversation checks (lie/intimidate etc).
3) The perks are really boring.

Gameplay and immersion wise, I love it. Character and gear progression though doesn't thrill me.
Cras wrote:
2) You get tons of upgrade points, easily enough to breeze past all the conversation checks (lie/intimidate etc).

I'm assuming this is going to get harder as the game progresses. I had an Engineering:52 one last night, which I was in no way ready to tackle.
Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
Cras wrote:
2) You get tons of upgrade points, easily enough to breeze past all the conversation checks (lie/intimidate etc).

I'm assuming this is going to get harder as the game progresses. I had an Engineering:52 one last night, which I was in no way ready to tackle.


Cor, what was that for?
Cras wrote:
Cor, what was that for?

Tiny spoiler for a small side quest in the Emerald Vale:
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
Repairing some automechanical that was stuck in a junk yard. I could get Parvati to do it for me, though, so the quest wasn't blocked.
Another solid evening of play on this last night, only stopped because of STUPID BEDTIME. Roll on Friday when I can play it into the small hours.

I'm not even out of the first main questing area yet, Emerald Vale, despite a playtime of over ten hours, but my obsessive streak has kicked in and I'm determined to do, and find, absolutely everything.

I've got some pretty cool guns now, which I've been modding and tinkering with to make them somewhat devastating.

Character wise I'm tending towards a badass with ranged weapons who can also smooth talk his way through just about any situation.

I love the graphical style and colour palette, it's a stunning game to look at.
I had a quick go at this last night. It's great, so far seems like Fallout but a bit less clunky. I wish there was some way to get rid of the chores of inventory management in games like this, though.

They always give me a similar feeling of low level anxiety as I get when I go in the loft at home. I'm running out of room, I clearly don't need all this crap but then I might throw the wrong thing away. Not fun.
You can unlock stuff nice and early on to increase your carrying capacity quite considerably, I can lug around 160kg now and I'm still in the first questing area.

In simple terms this means I can comfortably hoover up anything and everything I come across, and then vendor/breakdown at my leisure when I'm back in town. I haven't hit my carry limit once and I'm being a right magpie.

You'll probably get a lot of duplicate items or stuff that's clearly worse than what you and your partner already have equipped, in which case it's just choosing whether to vendor or break down for parts. (And Junk has its own tab, so that's a straightforward vendor.)
It's just the whole thing, like Fallout and Skyrim, it's the part I enjoy least about these kinds of games. Looking through lists of dozens of items, every single one of them with a paragraph of description and a page of stats to read to decide which ones to get rid of. It's like work.
markg wrote:
It's just the whole thing, like Fallout and Skyrim, it's the part I enjoy least about these kinds of games. Looking through lists of dozens of items, every single one of them with a paragraph of description and a page of stats to read to decide which ones to get rid of. It's like work.

Agree.
I don't think it's that bad in Outer Worlds TBH, although for those who just want to play the game I understand entirely what you're getting at.

As I said above, this isn't really my favourite genre of game, for precisely this sort of reason in honesty, but I'm not finding it onerous in The Outer Worlds.

My feeling is the systems are pretty streamlined compared to other games in the genre, and it's not taking me much time to decide what to keep, what to vendor, what to tweak (upgrade), what to mod, and what to break down.

Comes with the territory I suppose! (It also helps that the items often have amusing descriptions.)

In fact, overall I'd say it's less of a faff than doing inventory management in BL3.........
DavPaz wrote:
markg wrote:
It's just the whole thing, like Fallout and Skyrim, it's the part I enjoy least about these kinds of games. Looking through lists of dozens of items, every single one of them with a paragraph of description and a page of stats to read to decide which ones to get rid of. It's like work.

Agree.


Is it worth 100 gold? If not, Chuck it
DavPaz wrote:
markg wrote:
It's just the whole thing, like Fallout and Skyrim, it's the part I enjoy least about these kinds of games. Looking through lists of dozens of items, every single one of them with a paragraph of description and a page of stats to read to decide which ones to get rid of. It's like work.

Agree.


Agree. Inventories are almost always terribly handled.

It's no coincidence you can't spell inventories without Tories.
TOW does at least provide DPS figures for weapons, which is helpful.
Cras wrote:
TOW does at least provide DPS figures for weapons, which is helpful.


Yeah I'm primarily going off DPS and ammo type, and then having a quick scan around the other weapon stats and effects before deciding what I want to keep. (And just having a test shooty with them isn't a bad idea either.)

As far as these systems go (and this game is an action RPG, so they're going to be in there) - TOW does a really good job.
Got. Just downloading now. Decided to get it for PC, given I have two very capable machines. Hoping for 60 FPS, whether that means 1440p or 4k we'll see.

My PC won't know what the fuck's hit it. It's not gotten warm in anger in about 9 months.
JohnCoffey wrote:
Got. Just downloading now. Decided to get it for PC, given I have two very capable machines. Hoping for 60 FPS, whether that means 1440p or 4k we'll see.


I'm getting a solid 60FPS at 1440p all ULTRA-ed out on my 1080.

4K was somewhat out of reach for it, but TBH the graphical style lends itself perfectly well to lower resolutions. (And the 1080 never was a 4K card, really.)
Nice. I'm not completely opposed to 30 FPS but I now have two PCs around the same performance, so I'm hoping cloud saves work or I can carry a usb stick at worst.

Which is better than only being able to play it in one location.
BTW RE: the inventory. If I love the game and all of the items I don't mind so much. In FONV the new work benches did overwhelm me a little. However, you could ignore it and just plod on really. So long as you had a decent gun for each scenario. On playthrough part the Deux I figured it out, and scrapping crap ammo for decent .50 cal was useful.

It takes me a while to fully "get" games and I'll admit I've not built fuck all I didn't have to in FO4. I just googled how to build quest stuff to get me through and that was it. Building useless pointless tat* didn't appeal to me really.

*None of it really makes a difference. I still pounded the game to heck without bothering.
Really like it. About an hour so far but had to cook dinner.

It's gorgeous, and even though it's sorta nothing like New Vegas it feels familiar, like a comfy pair of slippers. It's also gorgeous.(ed, fuck I already said that. I blame Diazepam.)

I can see me sinking many hours into this. I've already chosen a side quest over the main story lol.
Mr Chonks wrote:
MaliA wrote:
Looking forward to when you're £20

My value only goes up

Disappointed no one replied with “Looking forward to when you’re £20”
I finished the first major questing area last night after ten hours of playtime, but I did (as far as I can tell) every last thing available to me, and I did every possible conversation fork I could for all character interactions and so on.

TBH I'm starting to feel very overpowered for NORMAL difficulty level, I can imagine I'll do HARD for a second playthrough. (There's nothing stopping me knocking it up a notch now, I suppose.)

Anyway, I've got my own spaceship now, and two companions, so I'm feeling pretty on top of my shit. I'm wondering if it'll be possible to get jiggy with Pavarti, but probably not.....
Hearthly wrote:
I'm wondering if it'll be possible to get jiggy with Pavarti, but probably not.....
Ummm... keep playing.
Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
Hearthly wrote:
I'm wondering if it'll be possible to get jiggy with Pavarti, but probably not.....
Ummm... keep playing.


:DD
I read that as "Pavarotti".
Few more hours in now. Really enjoying it..

Stupid question.. Does it have music? like is there a way to get it going like you do in Fallout? it's the one thing it needs. Some sort of soundtrack.
Erm, yes, there's music. Can you not hear it?
Time to buy some new headphones!
Hearthly wrote:
Erm, yes, there's music. Can you not hear it?


That? Yeah. It's not enough though. It needs music like Fallout has. I don't usually fast travel much. This game is pretty small compared to FO4 on each map, so I'm wanting to explore. And exploring in silence sorta isn't much fun.

I guess I could make my own soundtrack and play it under the game. Sadly it won't mute when I'm in dialogue etc.

Maybe it was a cost constraint that hopefully may change if they do well with this.

That's not bad going when it's my only real criticism is it?
I really like the music, I think it fits the game well.

But yes, if you want 'more' as it were, you could always have your own music playing.
I'm really starting to become very fond of this. The theme isn't really my cup of tea (I prefer nuclear devastation) and I was never a huge fan of Star Wars but yeah, really liking it now. I prefer the extra dialogue options too.
Becky and I have been playing this through on the PS4 (or rather, she's playing I'm pointing out all the loot/monsters/everything she's missing).

I think this games absolutely great, even for me as a person watching I'm entertained by the story and the graphics. Although hunting down science weapons where there are no real useful tips is very tedious.
I think i will get this. seems good reviews
I finished the main quest on this.

It's good, scratches an itch for a polished RPG, voice acting is good and the way the companions but in in conversations feels seamless. It's a bit short though, granted I didn't do every single side quest, but probably got around 35 hours or so to finish the main quest. Feels like it's mostly story based, the items etc didn't seem to do much, and making money was easy enough once you got past the first mission so it wasn't really a struggle to buy anything. I enjoyed it though.
The more I play it the more I like it. I'm still not a big fan of the whole space theme, but, as it goes on I am finding myself more interested in it to the point I am paying attention to NPC and what they have to say. Which is good, it is interesting me.

Which means I will probably do what I did with FO3 and play it through again, with a much better grasp of what's going on.
I've done 26 hours so far and still loving it to pieces.

Definitely going to do a HARD mode playthrough after this though, I'm just slicing through everything with embarrassing ease, but then I have been very anal about making sure me and my companions have absolutely the best of everything.

TBH it's the world, and the characters, and the dialogue that I'm enjoying as much as anything. I love all the stories there are to find and explore.

Very disappointed in how getting to shag Pavarti has gone though.
The world I'm on looks a bit crap tbh. However, there is stuff hidden there if you dig enough. I got lost in a cave the other night, god that annoyed me a bit. Reminded me of trying to find a certain part of the map on FONV. Turns out there's no way there at all unless you follow the road, and this was more of the same.

Oddly the only place I decided to attack turned out to be somewhere I could attack. So I did myself a right favour there, clearing out half of them before I even got sent there.
44 hours so far on my first playthrough but I think I'm getting close to the end now, might even get it finished tonight. Anyone who completes this game in 10-15 hours and then complains it's not long enough is flat out missing the point IMO.

Then I'll be torn between simply starting again straight away, with a completely different character build and gameplay style (I'm intending to be a total arsehole on my next playthrough, instead of a diplomat and peacemaker), as well as bumping it up to hard difficulty.

Either that or give Death Stranding a go, which I should probably take a look at.

The Outer Worlds is just so damn good though.
All done, only had an extra hour or so to do, so I'll peg it at 46 hours in 'linear time' for a playthrough (that's what my save said), but I did do quite a lot of reloading and trying things again, so probably more like 50 hours overall.

Will deffo do it again on HARD and play it completely differently, but I think I'll try DEATH STRANDING first.

Oh yes there's a fucking RIDICULOUS difficulty spike right at the end that the game doesn't prepare for you at all, I got through the fight in the end but it took me about 20 attempts.
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