Star Wars Outlaws

This is a quality game, outside of a handful of bugs, this game is immersive and beautiful. It tells a unique Star Wars story and puts you right in the middle of various syndicates and let's you choose differing options to tell the story in varying ways.

I metered my expectations based on some reviews but was more than pleasantly surprised with the detail and gameplay. The open world can be overwhelming but you'll find chests, fights, and stories everywhere to keep you busy without burning out doing the same thing over and over.

Your companion, Nix, is equivalent to a droid from other Star Wars media and helps you along the way, either by stealing, opening, or blowing someone up.

Star Wars: Outlaws is an undeniably passionate and personal jaunt through some beautiful and painstakingly curated locales. Curiosity and exploration are rewarded while an emotionally punchy tale of a lovable rogue in Kay Vess sells an adventure dripping in 80s sci-fi goodness.

Marred by some pretty significant technical issues that scream to be left in that development oven just a little longer, some thoughtful design choices help balance the experience out, delivering an overall satisfying open-world action adventure with rudimentary but flexible mechanics and a colourful cast of bandits whose knives are primed for Kay's back.

What happens when you take Ubisofts formulaic garbage and mix it with one of the best franchises of all time? You get Star Wars: Outlaws. Another subpar gaming experience from the geniuses at Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment.

I have put in just a little over 70 hours in this title, and quite frankly, I'm exhausted from talking about this game, so I will try to make this short.

The story is uninspired and is the same tired heist plot you'd find in your average Fast & Furious film. The characters are basic and are just interesting enough to not be completely boring. The gameplay is fun enough but nothing we haven't seen from other far superior titles ie Uncharted and Tomb Raider. The graphics are passable but are incredibly inconsistent. At times, environments and characters look good, then in others, it's downright bad.

Which, by the way, inconsistent is the perfect word to describe this game. In some aspects, this game can immerse you as you enjoy mini-games like Sabacc or work different jobs to increase your reputation with the four different syndicates or fly around the galaxy in your ship as you engage in aerial combat. But then, for all the moments of enjoyment, there's an equal amount of immersion-breaking, painfully dull ones.

Then this game, which was advertised as an action/adventure title, is, in fact, a horrendous stealth game. There are more stealth sections and instant fail states that any "action/adventure" game has any business having. Now this wouldn't be a complete disaster if the stealth was good. Unfortunately, the stealth in this game is half-baked and almost felt like it was tacked in and forced to be a major mechanic.

Finally the bugs and glitches. This game, on multiple occasions, either crashed or caused multiple progression-halting bugs. By the way, do not play this on PC. I had more issues playing this on my PC than I did on my Series X. Granted, my computer isn't the best thing on planet Earth, but it is a good one, and in most games, I can achieve 60 to 100 fps (Frames Per Second) consistently not with Outlaws however. Though at the end of the day, console or PC, this game is not optimized properly in any way.

I wanted to like Star Wars: Outlaws, being the massive Star Wars fan that I am, but this game not only has a serious amount of unmet potential but has too much bad for the good there is. This makes this all the more disappointing because the good that's here is fun and can be expanded upon; unfortunately, it's just not being utilized.

Anyway, if you're a massive Star Wars fan like me, then maybe... maybe you can squeeze every bit of Star Wars fun out of this average game to get your money's worth. If not, then I highly recommend waiting for this game to hit the bargain bin or, like me, getting a month of Ubisoft Plus and then immediately canceling for the best value.

Here's hoping Ubisoft's next title will bring some originality or at least be good. Either way, I'm not holding my breath.

Final Score: 5/10

Played on Xbox Series X and PC with Ubisoft+

Why does Kay's face look like play dough on PS5? An ambitious project to be sure but there are countless bugs, especially graphics wise. Space needs a serious fix as it's super tedious to pick things up with your ship. Toshara is a great bloody blur in the wilderness. Clouds are pixelated when you take off in the ship. It's 2024 people! A lot of side missions are super tedious. Furthermore, if I put something in easy I shouldn't die like I'm playing Tomb Raider on "normal." I suspect this was not finished for PS5 at launch time. Get moving on the fixes. Far to expensive for the mess you made with the graphics.

I've been playing for a few weeks now and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I am biased, I've been a huge Star Wars fan since early childhood so I'm already pre-disposed to enjoy this, but, it's a great game. I think it's mainly highs but there's a few lows: Its huge, there's at least three very big planets to explore and they are packed with well-hidden secrets, easter eggs and treasure to sniff out. Sometimes the worlds feel small, because you are on a speeder going very very fast you can cross the map very quickly. The speeder is sometimes too fast, I've crashed and died on a rock too small to notice. Thats not a bug, that's working as intended, but frustrating. I wish the speeder would auto-follow roads.

Combat for the most part, is fairly fluid and fast paced, its not perfect, there's flaws - but Kay isn't really supposed to be an action hero, adrenaline rush is your friend! You're really meant to be stealthy.

Stealth needs one or two tweaks. I'd prefer a ranged stealth take down and I'd like a way to mark targets while in stealth and an improvement on detecting enemies whilst sneaking around. It's frustrating when you're sneaking around and someone you had no-way to detect or notice spots you, and that's the mission finished. Enemies have zero peripheral vision. But they can see past the curvature of the earth directly in front of them. Their pathing can also be frustrating. A technician can be working at a console for ages but only moves when you're sneaking around the room. They've not noticed you; they just happen to be randomly moving. Some of these things could be argued as being more realistic - but it's a computer game so it can feel frustrating - especially when some missions are auto-fail if you're spotted. Save game is disabled in certain areas and missions for some bizarre reason.

I think a lot of things in the game aren't explained or taught to the player (marking enemies with the electro-binoculars, the contract terminal on your ship etc, there's probably more.) there needs to be a much bigger tutorial.

The expert system instead of skills or levelling up is a plus. The reputation system is good but can be a bit grindy - the contracts can be a bit repetitive, standard computer game fair. Nix or BD-1? I can't decide. But there's been a few instances where I've stealthed and/or battled through huge crowds of storm troopers just to realise Nix could have pick-pocketed a security card, at range, from safety.

Theres a few mini-games, the eating mini-game is... bizarre? Can I turn it off? Lock picking is tedious. I tuned that off. Slicing computers is pretty easy - once it's been explained in a YouTube video. There are actual arcade consoles all over where you can play 80's style arcade games, including the swoop racing from KOTOR. But most importantly- Sabacc. I Love it, its surpassed Pazaak and its up there with Gwent. Here's a hint, something it took me a while to realise - CHEAT. You are supposed to cheat. Its part of the game. Gimme more Sabacc.

Overall, yes, there's flaws, but its still a great and enjoyable game.