The Outer Worlds Reviews
It hurts me to say this, but I simply cannot recommend buying The Outer Worlds’ Switch port at present.
The Outer Worlds is a great open-world first-person shooter with well-written dialogue and world-building. But playing on the Switch does a disservice to the original game. It often begins to feel like a chore.
The Outer Worlds on the Nintendo Switch is the final straw for me. My heart can’t take the disappointment of these ports anymore. Time and time again, a port of an otherwise excellent game is released on the Switch (at full price, mind you) only to be a shell of the developer’s original vision. I get it, there’s money to be made, and there will always be that dedicated group of fans that can’t be told no, and will argue these games don’t look the way they do. But we all know that’s a joke. The Outer Worlds on the Switch looks bad, plays bad, and did nothing more than make me want to get the game elsewhere. I guess that’s a win for Obsidian.
The Outer Worlds is a great game, one of the best from last year. The problem is that we are facing a port that does not do justice to the game.
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I suppose if you don’t own anything else that will run this game, then this port is admittedly a way to play a game you’d otherwise have no access to. However, if you own literally anything else that will run The Outer Worlds, and don’t want a return to PS3 graphics with PS2 processing speeds, avoid this port like the Edgewater plague.
For a game that’s so dependent on its art style to drive home much of its personality, character interactions and the story are left to carry the weight of completing the sense of immersion, and most of the time that load is too great for them to bear on their own. The Outer Worlds on Switch just doesn’t land well without all of the aspects working together in concert. I’m not saying the game is unplayable, it just feels like the experience is severely hamstrung and it’s hard to get a proper sense of enjoyment out of it. There’s still fun to be had, but it comes in fits and starts, and it really doesn’t stand up to any of the other platforms the game is available on. If the Switch is your only gaming system, you’re really hankering for a space adventure, and you don’t mind or notice technical problems, then there may be something here for you. Otherwise, you’d do well to play elsewhere. To paraphrase the game itself, the Switch version of this game isn’t the best choice, it’s… well, you know the rest.
The Outer Worlds remains a memorable experience on Switch, but, at the same time, it’s all a bit of a blur.
It’s not the kind of game to stand the test of time and Obsidian has made much better and more interesting games in the past, but there is a pleasant experience to be had.
The Outer Worlds has a load of mechanics put into place, and while they are functional, they aren’t cohesive. They were implemented with little regard for how they would interact with each other and the game is a mess because of it. They had to make it so a player could complete the game no matter how they built their character. Obsidian succeeded, but only by making those choices matter very little in the first place.
Feeling railroaded and wanting to have something to show for my troubles, I shrug and press the button, wiping out an entire town with the kind of insouciance you’d expect from someone throwing away a food wrapper; no one who lived in the town was particularly memorable, and the party member who initially protested never brings it up again, so it’s hard to care. The Outer Worlds tries to replicate the magic of Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas, but it suffers from many problems and moments like this that become increasingly prevalent until the illusion is shattered and you realize that it’s just a hollow pretender.
The Outer Worlds's appearance on the Nintendo Switch is welcome due to the fact that it was one of 2019's best titles. However, while still fun to play, it doesn't leverage the Switch's hardware effectively and is subsequently unpleasant to look at. This has a big impact given that the game's charm on other home consoles and PC is due in large part to its visuals. For this reason it's difficult to celebrate it until it receives a substantial performance patch.
At the end of the day, The Outer Worlds succeeds in being a story-driven RPG that offers a lot of freedom for you to experience and play the game as you see fit. It doesn't look particularly good or run incredibly well. I don't want to downplay the importance of the story and quests, but The Outer Worlds feels like either a calculated cash grab or a team obsessed with making a game run on an inferior system for the sake of it, rather than trying to find a new player base. It's all here and playable, but play it anywhere else if you can because the trade-offs are larger than the benefits of playing it on a portable format.
If you liked Fallout, you would likely enjoy this game, but once again I don't think this is the place to play it. Even if your biggest factor would be the idea of being able to play it portably, sadly nearly every technical problem listed above is exacerbated a great deal in handheld mode, with the added issue of the game becoming a blurry mess on top of all of it. For some, the world of Halcyon will be a welcome place to visit, but unless you are super attached to the idea of a portable Fallout game, it is likely better to look to one of the other platforms for which this game is available.
If [the Switch version] is the only way you can play The Outer Worlds it may be worth the price of admission. Otherwise this ambitious port is sure to disappoint.
The Outer Worlds is a classic case of a missed opportunity. There are so many things it does right, and so many others that feel unrealistic, or simply don't feel balanced.
The Outer Worlds on Nintendo Switch is a passable iteration of Obsidian Entertainment’s excellent RPG, but arguably makes too many sacrifices to make itself comfortable on the portable platform. Visual, performance and gameplay quirks emerge frequently enough that I’m forced to ask whether adapting such a large adventure was worth it in the first place. If you don’t own a PS4, Xbox One or dedicated gaming PC, this is certainly an option, but even then I’d wait for a discount.
The game is so zany and so mired in its traditional progression systems that it ceases to say anything of note.
The Outer Worlds for the Nintendo Switch is an admirable, yet mediocre port of an otherwise great game - end of story. It runs well enough to justify its existence, but at the current asking price you're better off playing Obsidian's latest elsewhere.
For those that were disappointed with Fallout 76 going online multiplayer, this is the single-player RPG you’ve been looking for. If you’re hankering for somewhere you can while away the hours talking shit, chuckling and prodding at the locals, you won’t be disappointed.
At first glance, The Outer Worlds on Nintendo Switch falls massively short of the bar set by other ports to the hybrid console. Everything has been scaled back in an effort to get it working as smoothly as possible on the machine, but there are still major problems with how the game performs. Even so, I found myself still having a lot of fun playing The Outer Worlds on the Nintendo Switch, which is a testament to just how brilliant this game truly is.