Outriders is out now, with some stuttering launch issues on PC
Devs are offering workarounds
I find it difficult to get excited about beefcakes hiding behind low walls inside grey metal warehouses, because that's what I spent the mid-noughties doing. (And in games.) The looter shooter Outriders has pedigree behind it however, due to developers People Can Fly, and folks who played the game's demo reported that it was dumb, satisfying fun.
It's out today and I'm tempted to give it a go - although reports of performance issues on PC will probably cause me to hold off for now.
We played the game a couple of times at preview, and had a good time with it, as Alice L explained in this video:
In brief: it's a looter shooter with a lot of stats and upgrades, but where those RPG-lite systems don't interfere with the fundamental pleasure of making meaty brutes burst into their constituent parts.
The game is developed by People Can Fly, the developers behind Bulletstorm and the original Painkiller. They know how to make things burst. They were also a development partner of Epic Games for a number of years, working on Gears Of War: Judgement. Fine training also for laying out levels filled with cover and designing characters whose biceps are bigger than their heads.
Unfortunately the launch doesn't appear to be going smoothly so far. Early user reviews on Steam are 'mixed', and those reviews and the game's Reddit page both mentioning stuttering issues and other bugs that weren't present in the demo version of the game.
The game's official Twitter account tweeted (as seen above) to say that they are tracking reports of players encounter[ing] stuttering/microstuttering on PC", and to offer a link to a forum post of possible workarounds.
If you're still keen on the game despite its early days, you can grab it from Steam and a bunch of other stores for £50/$60/€60.