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 Raróg’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.

outriders rarogs gaze legendary special weapon upgrade rifle people can fly
Guns don’t kill people. I kill people.

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.

outriders boss chrysaloid monster world tier people can fly
You’re One Ugly Mother******!

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.