I’ve been continuing to play Outriders solo on my New Xbox Series S with Game Pass. Despite its flaws and bugs, Outriders is starting to become fun. About halfway through the main quest, I finally started to get nice weapon drops, which included the Legendary RarĂ³g’s Gaze. Doing more damage and having more interesting weapons and mods really upped the fun-factor in Outriders, even if I still have to occasionally drop my World Tier down to 3. This was all fine and dandy until I hit a brick wall that is the Chrysaloid boss.

I could not beat the Chrysaloid boss in Outriders, no matter what I tried.
I dropped the World Tier down to 2, swapped my abilities, changed my weapon load-outs; none of that mattered. I died over and over again from its Radiation Breath attack, an attack that visually shows you its area of effect in red.
I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong. I would dodge behind the boulders that were clearly there for cover when the attack was going off. I attempted to dodge through it, roll behind cover, run all the way to one side of the map, but nothing saved me.

Getting extremely frustrated, I caved in and looked up a walkthrough of the boss on YouTube. Then it hit me. This isn’t a difficult boss fight at all. I just need to take cover when the Chyrsaloid’s radiation attack is being used. That’s right, there is a cover system in this game!
The reason I forgot there was a cover system in this game is that, up until this point, it has been completely useless. The cover system doesn’t seem to work. Every time I go into cover I would still be hit by bullets as if I were standing out in the open. Not to mention, enemies are ruthless while you lean up against a building or wall, as you always seem to be immediately bombarded with grenades.
Outriders is not a polished, AAA experience.
You would think a developer who worked on a Gears of War game would understand how to properly implement a cover mechanic. It’s not just the cover system, either; on both Xbox One and Xbox Series S, I run into this glitch many times where the controller vibrates in pulses…in perpetuity. During side-quests, I occasionally find myself the button prompt to continue to the next area, gone; extremely frustrating to deal with. I consider myself lucky that I haven’t had their inventory wiping bug.
People Can Fly clearly needed more time.
The beginning hours of the game were boring and buggy. I stuck it out and am now close to the end of the campaign with my level 22 Devastator. I’m curious what the end-game content looks like, but that curiosity is a fail for Outriders. I should be pumped and excited to hit level 30 and find all the legendary weapons, but we’ll see how I feel. It might be time to move on to another game.
Have you been playing Outriders? Let me know your experience with the game if you have been.
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