Star Wars: Outlaws, PS5 Review
I am a massive Sci-Fi fan, so Star Wars: Outlaws should be floating my space boat.
Be it Star Trek, Star Wars, Mass Effect, Warhammer 40K, you name it, I will love it. So, the prospect of a Sci-Fi action RPG-lite title, set in the Star Wars universe certainly ticked some big boxes for me. Then overlay the video game design chops of Ubisofts in-house team, Massive Entertainment, who made The Division. It culminated in high hopes for a serious GOTY 2024 contender.
However, this is not what was delivered in Star Wars: Outlaws. To their credit, Ubisoft have nailed the “Star War-iness” I was looking for. But failed to deliver the quality, feel and depth a franchise like Star Wars needs, if not deserves in a video game.
Star Wars: Outlaws is set between Empire and Jedi. It is stand-alone story about a young woman, Kay Vess, living her best galactic-scoundrels life with her side kick dog-cat-thing, named “Nix”. Basically, Kay is a young Han Solo offering courier and thief services to all who have the credits. Doing jobs for various criminal syndicates. Playing them off against each other and eventually building a crew to get a “Big Job” done, to set her up for life.
At least we didn’t get Assassins Jedi in Star Wars: Outlaws.
It is an open world game, but split across five planets which serve as the unique biomes. On each planet the influence of each of the four main criminal syndicates features, with The Empire being a constant too. Doing jobs for a syndicate will improve your standing with them and in turn you get more favourable deals at their unique ‘sellers’. But more importantly, being in their good graces gives free-er movement through their controlled regions.
I have read some early reviews which raved about Massive Entertainments implementation of the ‘Snow Drop’ engine in Outlaws. But I just don’t see it. Sure, they know how to use it, The Division 2 had some of the most beautiful open world environments I have seen. But Outlaws, to me at least, looked “OK” on my PS5 and 4K TV… and that an “OK” at best. Sure, some of the sky boxes and weathers systems looked great, and when I arrived on Tatooine I was impressed by the detail, and “design loyalty” to the source material. But overall, I felt the characters and worlds were all a bit…… well, blurry.
This “blurry” feeling just didn’t go. I changed settings, mucked about with, film grain, motion blur, HDR and every other thing I could think of. It became “clear” (pun intended) when I finally saw the ever-anticipated Digital Foundry Tech rundown. The game just runs at a crazy low resolution in the 60fps mode.
When I say low, I mean LOOOOWWWW. Digital Foundry liked the game more than I, but noted Outlaws on the 60fps mode aims for 1080p, but would drop ats low at 720p! There is a 40fps mode which can be as low as 936p and the 30fps “Quality” mode peaks at 1620p. Basically, if you want those smooth 60 frames, you have to play it on Xbox 360 resolution!? That is mental.
Sound design on the other hand was excellent.
The Star Wars sounds we all grew up with, are here. Blaster noise, speeders hum, Tie-Fighters scream and each planets whistles and squawks with life. One gripe is the enemy ‘chirps’ become way too repetitive though, especially in stealth sequences. Storm Troopers will cycle through their series of ‘chirps’ in quick succession and as they say the same thing for the 6th time inside of 2 minutes, it soon destroys any semblance of tension.
Kay Vess is well voiced and her and the cast of main characters have great exchanges, at times being quite funny. Just like a Han Solo-lite should. Kay Vess however, doesn’t develop as a meaningful character. The Kay you get in the opening hour, is the same Kay you have 15hrs later at the conclusion of the golden path, which was disappointing. That’s not to say the game doesn’t have moments of impact, it does. But it is more situational or in a overall narrative sense, as opposed to being about Kay and her development.
This impact however, takes 10-12hrs to get too! In fact, unusually the best part of this game is the final four or so hours. Star Wars: Outlaws opening couple of hours are painful to get through, and the opening biome does not put the games best foot forward. At about hour ten, I landed on Tatooine and the game finally clicked with me. There was a story starting to form, characters arrived who were interesting. I was finally in a Star Wars story.
Mechanically the game plays like any Ubisoft open world game. Get mission, go to location, get distracted by a “?” on the map or HUD, do the mission and do the next quest. The combat is 3rd person shooting, with heavy nudging by the devs to be stealthy. And surprisingly, considering the developers behind The Division 2 where at the helm, the shooting is complete shite.
Thank the Force Stormtroopers cant shoot for shi…
There are no real cover mechanics, it is a weak-willed crouch behind barrels and low walls version of cover shooting, casung it to be floaty and frustrating to play. Kays blaster sounds great, but feels cumbersome and lacks punch. And if she picks up a dropped empire blaster, sniper rifle or grenade launcher etc… Kay drops it at every opportunity. Mantle cover, drop it, climb a ladder, drop it, use a grenade, drop it, do a melee takedown, drop it. Urgh.
Stealth is the name of the game in most encounters and Star Wars: Outlaws is built upon every stealth gameplay cliché of the last 20yrs. Nothing to see here. The only feature of note is how Nix is deployed to pickpocket, open doors, booby trap alarms, cause distractions and generally be handy. But as said, he is just doing what has been done for years by empty magazines in Metal Gear Solid and drones in Splinter Cell.
As with any open world game these days, there are side activities. Kay can take her ship into orbit and dog fight with Tie-Fighters, play fully fleshed out card games in dive bars, buy street food, hack safes and collect stuff to upgrade gear. Which has all been well implemented and is suitably Star Wars-ee. But none of it can cover over the nagging feeling of a game that had so much potential, but wasn’t quite fully baked.
As I said at the start, I was really pumped for Star Wars: Outlaws. It was going to tick a lot of boxes for me, and was shaping up to be a possible GOTY contender. It hasn’t hit that level I’m afraid, it’s still good, just not great. The last five hours are really good and if you love Star Wars, you will likely really enjoy this unique scoundrels outing.