| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| PC | 6.80 |
| Overall | 6.80 |
|
Let's get right to this, if you have been disgusted by Ubisoft style games or have open world fatigue you can probably skip this. If you enjoy Ubisoft style games, you can stay. If you are indifferent about Ubisoft games and are a big Star Wars fan you are me, that is the perspective this review will be based on. Star Wars Outlaws is being billed as the first open world Star Wars game, yes technically I guess it is but it doesn't use the open world in the way it should. In reality there is a good game in here that takes very little chances and plays everything very by the book. Outlaws stars Kay Vess, a young thief that starts off seemingly clueless about the Star Wars criminal underworld but is still excellent at everything. Don't expect a story of someone learning to be a master thief, she just stumbles her way to greatness, but even with that she is a character that is very easy to like and root for. With her is Nix, a cute creature that will for sure appear in stores at Disney World, Nix is basically a substitute for Watch Dogs hacking, this little guy will do all kinds of long-distance actions for you. Kay tries to rob a rich crime lord and fails miserably getting a death mark in the process, instead of going into hiding a mysterious man presents her with a job to hire a crew to once again try to rob the vault of the crime lord, she accepts and we are off in our adventure. As you travel the galaxy (four planets) you recruit new team members to your ship, the main one being a droid in the service of the benefactor ND-5, who has the most compelling storyline in the game. I enjoyed the comradery aspect of assembling a crew and getting to know them. This is far below the storytelling of say a Bioware game, but I really enjoyed the story missions, honestly if this was a more story driven linear game it could have been better. As I played a would constantly notice mechanics and pieces of different games, this is one of those Frankenstein games where the pieces aren't really better than the other games that used them. By far the game this mirrors the closest is Watch Dogs, essentially most of the open world has scattered bases where some of the missions or contracts take place. Now you can attack the base head on and play like a shooter but the way the game pushes you to play is to be stealthy. The aforementioned Nix will serve as your "hack" and allow you to disable alarms, set off explosions, deactivate locks, and distract enemies. You navigate the base, taking down guards one at a time, avoid cameras, hack a computer or two and find chests with items you want to collect. Is it functional, yeah, its fine, it never reaches the level of Watch Dogs' stealth missions as those games had way more options at your disposal. Kay has the greatest punch in the galaxy as she can knock out nearly any enemy with one punch, full stormtrooper armor or not. So much of navigating the base is simply crouch walking, learning the very basic walking patterns of enemies, and getting behind them or whistling them over to do a stealth punch KO. If two enemies are blocking a door it gets more complicated as your options aren't great. Kay's blaster has a stun blast which is the only suppressed fire she has and its an instant KO, but once you use it you have to wait a minute or two for it to recharge (there are abilities to make it go faster), so shooting one alerts the other. This leaves you with one option which is use Nix to distract them and hope that means the other guard is turned around enough to not notice you taking out the closer guard and then you can get the second. This is pretty janky, sometimes it works great, sometimes they "hear" you I guess, I don't know, it was always a toss up when this situation occurred. Oh I guess you can send Nix to attack one of them, Nix then attaches itself to their face and you can then take out the one guard while the other is struggling to get the animal off of him. Funny if you let him be he will be like "what was that" and resume normal patrol, cause having a creature eat your face must be normal at imperial bases all over. What I am saying is this stealth isn't winning any awards here, its serviceable. In fact when the bigger missions design a set path for you to go through it works better giving you the illusion of masterfully evading capture in a tense location, this is because they make sure every encounter along that path is scripted. When you are left to your own devices to infiltrate a base it could go well, I have done some no alarm runs but many times something off happens, something happens with the AI where I am like "but why?" and then all hell breaks loose. When Kay has no choice but to fight, we have the other part of the gameplay, the shooting and just like the stealth, its fine, just fine. Cover mechanics work like every shooter, you have med packs to heal, you carry grenades and smoke bombs. The weird part of this game is that Kay has one blaster, that's it. You can pick up enemy weapons but only carry them so far until you have to use your hands then she drops the weapon. Need to climb a latter, drop the weapon. Activate a door, drop the weapon. Get on your bike, drop the weapon. Only one gun can be carried by her, remember this is an open world game where having a playground is part of the joy, you get one blaster. This blaster can be upgraded and has different fire modes like normal, ion and plasma which is heavy fire. As you play you get equipment to make reloads faster, stronger shots and can even customize the kind of firing like rapid fire or large slow but heavy damage shots. What I do like is these different fire modes are used in exploration and puzzle solving as ion activates electrical conduits and plasma can burst through big rocks letting you explore more. During combat the blaster is serviceable, you have all the tools to take down every kind of enemy, the only ones really causing problems are the ones with shields, a few ion blasts takes care of that. As you shoot and get hit you build up an adrenaline meter taken straight from RDR2, you can then target a certain amount of enemies and instant kill them. A lot of the fights I had was me just building the metere and then unleashing a quick dose of death to everyone. The enemy weapons you can pick up are better in general, like the classic Stormtrooper blaster rifle does fast accurate damage. You can pick up the shield generator miniguns, that's fun to mow down enemies with. There are some sniper rifles but none are suppressed so if you fire someone probably hears you, though if you are far enough away they will remain confused and not know what to do. And that's about it, there is no heavy artillery, no rockets or anything of the sort. There are a few AT-ST enemies and guess what, they are invincible, nothing you can use can hurt them. They are there to simply be avoided and they can be avoided extremely easily. I thought at some point there is going to be an AT-ST boss fight, there is ALWAYS an AT-ST boss fight. Nope, never happens, the open world Star Wars game has no AT-ST boss fight. A staple of open world games is the wanted meter and since you are a criminal this game of course has one. Like most of the open world mechanics in this game, even the wanted state is as basic as can be. Perform crimes in front of imperials and you will become wanted, keep doing crimes and the wanted meter rises, that works. First its some troopers on speeders chasing you, then small transports of enemies will land, eventually AT-ST's will appear. But here is the thing most of these things don't chase you, yes speeder bike stormtroopers do but speeder bike combat is awful, you can only fire by using the adrenaline skill, most of the time just riding forward is enough to get away. The AT-STs they just stand around, like giant pillars with a gun turret, just avoid them. There is no reason to engage with the AT-ST and they don't really chase you. The only time they are a hindrance is if they appear in a base you want to infiltrate, but you probably should get rid of the wanted meter before doing that anyway. Sometimes you hear the screech of a TIE-fighter overhead, that's just for show, TIEs do not look for you or fire on you. When you reach max wanted a huge message appears DEATH TROOPERS ARE HUNTING YOU, oh here we go an elite squad of killers will chase me down. Except they don't chase, what happens is the game gives you a marker on the map and tells you to go there are kill THEM to get rid of the death mark. This is the equivalent of the empire giving you mail stating "you have acquired a death mark, please report to this location so we may execute you, thank you". They just stand at a small base forever waiting you to arrive, and when you do you can just stealth kill them all easily. I can only assume this is some broken system that they never fixed and just wanted to keep the death troopers in the game. This goes for everything, you would think a crime centered open world star wars game would have dynamic bounties on you with well known bounty hunters chasing you around the galaxy, nope. Jedi Survivor, the Metroid like action game had way more bounty hunters chasing you than the open world Star Wars game. To me this is where this game pisses me off, it doesn't try to be anything but the most standard of Ubisoft games. Can you imagine a Star Wars open world game but made by Rockstar. Being able to hijack any vehicle, finding giant rockets. A bunch of Ewoks were able to hijack an AT-ST you are telling me a master thief can't? Stealing a TIE from a hanger and using it to blast AT-AT walkers, just mayhem everywhere. A full Star Wars playground where you can ride beasts, spaceships, landspeeders; do you know how much fun that could be, NONE of that is in this game. You get one bike, that's it! You get one ship, that's it! Ok I think I got most of my anger out, now to pull this review back, I did really enjoy my time with this game because they nailed the atmosphere and feel of being in Star Wars. Honestly my favorite parts of the game was when I was walking around a city talking to seedy types getting leads to a mark, a score, to hidden sabaac game. That part felt like living the Star Wars smuggler role. I enjoyed exploring parts of the city and say overhearing a conversation that leads to a clue about rigging canto bight races, then learning who will win and betting a large amount on that one to win money. There was a great quest line with Lando where you need to infiltrate a high end sabaac game and beat him to gain his trust. He then sends you to another planet to win some trinket of his off of a gangster, it turns out that was actually important rebel information and all of a sudden you are in the middle of a rebel hide out, tricked by Lando into helping the cause. I enjoyed managing the different gang factions, though even this could have been fleshed out so much more. There are four main gangs and doing contracts for one usually results in hurting another. As you gain favor with any one faction you get perks from them like being able to move freely through their territory and gain access to store deals and if you max out the loyalty you get exclusive gear to keep. So all you really need to do is hit max once and you get the gear, then you can betray them and try to max another. Once you learn how to game the system you can easily keep everyone in good standing even if in the story you really push the envelope, normally a gang would murder you but here they always give infinite chances. The easiest way to gain reputation and money is to do contracts, these are like randomly generated missions that come in a few variety like infiltrate, kill, smuggle, after a while you will see these missions repeat. Its great the first times as its all new and exciting but it works in such a simple video game rule kind of way that it takes away from the magic. Still its neat thing to have to manage as you play, there were times early on when I really wanted to keep my good standing with a group so I can navigate their locations, so I would make sure to do a mission that involved attacking their base in full stealth. If they don't see you they never know it was you and you get no penalty, unless its a big quest, those usually have a final bonus and penalty too the two factions involved. It's neat, every faction gets a cool storyline to explore and I actually liked needing money and having to do these jobs to get it. The way the world is structured and the upgrade paths are really well done, not the usual boring tower junk from most Ubisoft games. The map is open from the start of landing on a planet, nothing will be labeled until you explore that area. As you navigate cities and talk to NPCs you will get clues about hidden caches somewhere in the world, now your quest log and map will show its locations. It all comes from conversations and natural exploring, not hitting a tower and then having icons everywhere. Don't get me wrong, as you play and talk to many people you will end up with many icons, but it feels so much more natural. Most of the stuff to collect is gear or cosmetic gear, so many cosmetics. The gear is great as to upgrade the blaster, your bike, or ship you will need components and these can be found all over the game world. One of the best parts of exploring is many locations are like small platforming challenges or have some simple puzzle to reach. On the first planet there are these wind tunnels and you need to upgrade the bike so it can turbo its way in, once inside you will uncharted climb your way through a cave, maybe have to hit a switch or two with the on blast to open a locked door to find a hidden treasure. This adds a small element of the classic Zelda/Metroid formula of needed that item to access that area, many times they take the effort, however small to make you think about how to reach it, for me that goes a long way, I want to explore because of that even if the rewards most of the time is a new color for something. I really enjoyed the way learning abilities is handled in this game. As you meet different characters some are experts in certain skills, this unlocks a series of objectives to accomplish which can give you a new skill. For instance, a skilled marksman will have skills that allow you to target more enemies with the adrenaline meter. Another will give you more grenades, or add larger explosive effects to them. Some give Nix better abilities, able to distract more enemies or set traps. To gain the abilities you have to do some set action like say "quick draw kill 5 enemies" or "complete an infiltration contract without being seen" or "get 5 headshots in a row". Some require to find a specific component which becomes an objective on the map. I like that you get small challenges to complete and that makes your character grow. These new abilities cover every facet of the game from combat to stealth to space flight and even sabaac skills. Complimenting the abilities is your gear which further allows you to customize Kay's skill set. Certain clothes and accessories give different bonuses if worn as a set, some focus on defense, some enhance your stealth (I guess by making the enemies AI see worse?), or giving more grenades and so on. These skills are hardly necessary, this isnt a hard game even on the hardest setting but bonuses that give you stun recharge every time you do a stealth takedown is very helpful so I went with gear like that. Plus, cosmetically some of the gear looked great, you can change the look while keeping the perks which is nice. One of the best side activities in this game is a full version of Sabaac, the in universe card game made famous by Han and Lando's bet over the Millenium Falcon. The game is pretty simple, try to get two cards to match and have the lowest total, the fun comes from all the wild cards that can be used and the ability to cheat. Every player gets an amount of modifier chips with different abilities like say force someone to pass, or make them put in more chips. As you play the game you unlock better ones, some which can really put the game in your favor like change hands with another player or change the values of the cards. I loved the progression this game took, at first games are rather simple as you are learning the rules and the strategy. With as you gain more and more skills the games get harder and more complex. You have the ability to cheat with Nix where he can look at other player cards, you have to pass a QTE to cheat successfully. You can also hide a card up your sleeve, these are unlockable abilities. I really enjoyed playing Sabaac, it's not the best card game mini game (it's no queens blood) but it's a great mini game. Everything I have talked about has been in planet gameplay, there is also space though it's not as open as I would have liked it's still a very important part of the feel of the game. You only get one ship, a big cargo ship which can be upgraded to have better lasers, missiles and an auto turret defense. The feel is loose and arcade like, much more like the rogue squadron games than the X-Wing games for sure. When in combat you can press a lock on button which locks the camera to an enemy and there is an icon showing exactly where to shoot to hit the enemy, with the lock on you can just focus on getting the aiming reticle over the spot and unload. Missiles are infinite, they just take time to reload. Shields regenerate and you have a "heal" button to fix the hull if it takes damage. At least the combat feels smooth and responsive, there is little strategy here its mostly a lot of looping around and lasering enemy ships. Many of the environments have space debris whether it be asteroids, wrecked ship parts or nebulas, which add obstacles to what otherwise would be empty space. Each planet has a small area around its orbit to explore, it's not large, consisting of a few areas of interest and maybe two space stations. Random events will occur like pirates attacking certain groups, the faction system comes into play as you will see warring factions battling and you can choose to help one or the other. There are plenty of floating cargo containers to find which lead to upgrades for your ship. When there are missions or contracts that take place in space you probably in for a big fire fight or a fun escape. The story missions which end up in space thrilled me, some of the battles look pretty large even if you are just doing basic actions during it. Oh and flying to and from a planet is seamless, it never cuts away but there is a load screen as the ship goes through the atmosphere, still beats out another open world space game that promised full immersion. Outlaws is at it's best when focusing on the story and delivering scripted set pieces. There are plenty of missions where I feel like I was in an Uncharted like game and everything seems to come together and works great. One mission had me rescue a friend from an imperial base where you secretly board a transport, get off in base, use floating loaders to hide behind as you traverse the filled hanger. Go into the bowels of the base with big laser walls and platforming obstacles like giant pistons moving in and out. Take out some guards, hack some terminals and reach the captive only to have alarms going off and being split up, having to hack different doors to get him to you while blasting enemies. Your ship arrives to carry you off and then off you go into space with TIE-fighters blasting at you. Imperial ships scrambling to take you down as you activate the hyperdrive and punch it at the last second. THATS STAR WARS!!! Thats exactly what I wanted from this game; a lot of the story missions hit all the right notes to capture that feel. Outlaws should have ditched the open world and just been a straight Uncharted clone with space combat, I feel it would be more focused and hit the highs at a better pace. Every time I was kind of bummed out about the repetitiveness of the open world I would do a major quest and I was back on board. I greatly enjoyed the story, there were nice twists and turns. I cared about the characters, I wanted to see them succeed. Despite all the misgivings with shallow gameplay they nail a very important aspect, this feels like being in a Star Wars adventure. If you look at the score I'm giving it below a 7 even though this feels like the most 7 game for me ever, an entertaining game I enjoyed that didn't do anything too great but nothing was really bad. I am going to dock some points for some bugs, it being unpolished in certain areas and the worst part, poor save points. In terms of bugs the game crashed on me at least 6 times, hard crash, like nuke the computer crash. Every time this happened I was at the mercy of the save system, which to me felt like a game of sabaac every time I loaded it up, where will I be. I tried to figure out how this save system works, I gave up. I think when you start a mission with fail states you have to start all the way at the beginning unless there are story checkpoints. But if you are free roaming a base and get caught, I think the last point that's save is way before you enter the base, so say you opened 3 chests, killed almost everyone at the base but get killed by a grenade or something before you escape, you might lose all that progress. Or not, cause there have been times I am exploring a base and die and inexplicably I spawn inside the command room of the base, I have no idea why. Multiple times I lost upwards of 10 minutes of progress. Besides those there are the odd glitch and hiccup here and there where enemies will be floating, sometimes two stormtroopers are inside each other making taking both of them down impossible. If you go online I am sure you can find loads of videos of Outlaw oddities, its not the most polished game, it could have used a little more time. Graphically the game is beautiful at times, there are some stunning vitas and on a very good computer I am sure it runs well. I got around 60 indoors and like 40fps outdoors with drops during combat, its fine for my rig. Character models aren't the best, their faces don't compare to what Sony is putting out or even the Jedi games. When indoors there are nice details, especially in areas from the movies you will notice plenty of easter eggs, the artists knew what to do. I think some of the best visuals are when you are in space, frame rate is perfectly smooth and everything pops against the black void. On the music side Outlaws nails the Star Wars sound with one of the better original themes for a SW video game. It never uses music from the movies but you hear plenty of cues from the movies, especially in Tatooine where the music is heavily inspired from A New Hope. The voice cast is commendable, everyone puts in a good performance... well except for the worst Lando impersonator I've ever heard. Someone out there has to be able to do a good Billy Dee, come on. What a strange conflicted game this is, on one hand it can be the poster child for everything wrong about AAA games, a game so devoid of originality that it feels like checklist from other popular games. But on the other hand, there is a solid action-adventure game told with respect to the source material, a game that has tons of quality content, and provides satisfying journey through this galaxy I love so much. I think we will be hearing varied opinions on this one for years to come, plenty of people will out right dismiss it, call it vapid waste of a game and others may say it's one of their favorite ubi style games in years. I fall right in the middle, its good, its entertaining, it's also unpolished and by the book, takes no real chances. I am glad I played it, I am more thrilled I did the Ubisoft + route and didn't spend full price on it, I would recommend that at least until this is on sale. To me Outlaws is a game of wasted potential that still has enough good aspects going for it to be a fun game, I just hope they try harder next time, or we get a better developer. |
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Posted by Dvader Thu, 26 Sep 2024 04:18:45
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