Maroc - 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - 31/Aug 03:05

Star Wars Outlaws – Review

It’s fair to state that not all Star Wars game projects have been a success in recent times, and even many retro projects were a bit of a hit-or-miss scenario. We still have extremely fond memories of 2002’s Star Wars: Rogue Squadron or 1999’s Star Wars Episode I: Racer, all of which mainly revolved around piloting vehicles from a galaxy far far away. The recent Star Wars: Jedi Survivor sadly didn’t perform as well as many fans hoped, and their gaze was turned to Star Wars Outlaws, a project that got a lot of backlash after the reveal trailer was shared. Was that backlash warranted, however? For the most part, not really. Story If Ocean’s 11 took place in space, then Star Wars Outlaws might have been an ideal framework for it. The game revolves around Kay Vess and her trusty companion, Nix, who are living on the planet of Cantonica. She currently lives her life as a sort of mercenary for hire to do all types of shady jobs. Most of them revolve around stealing items, and she’s quite good at what she does. Nonetheless, she gets a bit cocky when she accepts a job that was a bit above her skill level, and she then ends up on the radar of Sliro, who leads the Zerek Besh criminal syndicate. Kay and Nix manage to escape by stealing Sliro’s favorite spaceship, the Trailblazer. Crashlanding on a different planet after being chased puts her in a new precarious position. She’ll have to do jobs for all the different crime syndicates in order to escape and head to safety in the furthest reaches of the galaxy. As a whole, the story isn’t bad, and it fits the Star Wars universe perfectly. While many may disagree, we were quite pleased to be playing a normal human character, rather than an overpowered Jedi who has no issues fighting everything that crosses their path. All in all, the narrative was entertaining, most characters were likable, and the story progressed at a steady pace (if we didn’t get distracted by exploring the different environments). Graphics Graphically, Star Wars Outlaws left us with mixed feelings. The environments and sceneries in the game are absolutely breathtaking. We stopped on multiple occasions just to take in the scenery, and we can easily say that Massive Entertainment respected the source material. There’s an authentic Star Wars charm from start to finish, and we simply loved exploring the populated areas. Sadly, the different planets themselves felt a bit empty at times, and the same could be said about many of the smaller outposts that are littered around the map. When NPCs were present, things felt lived in, and it was just a lot of fun to see how the NPCs moved around and even interacted with one another. Sadly, the deserted outposts felt a bit bland and often had the same assets thrown about to reward the player with some loot. While the environments still scored highly, the janky movements of the characters and the many visual bugs made us lose our general immersion more than often. Many characters had a lot of rough edges, even Kay from certain angles looked a bit peculiar, and there were so many texture pop-ins. Things got even worse when we clipped through the environment on multiple occasions, rendering us stuck in the terrain. We have also seen so many NPCs walk through shut doors or even magically teleport to higher ground. We hope some much-needed visual polish is added with future patches, as it’s an outright shame because it’s clear that the developer knows how to properly create a beautiful Star Wars-themed game. Sound The sound design isn’t too bad. You’ll get a decent soundtrack supporting the adventure that unfolds on the screen, and the many SFX sound very authentic. We enjoyed the blaster noises quite a bit, and even impact sound effects pack a proper punch. The voice acting is also great here, and you’ll encounter many fully-voiced characters along your intergalactic travels. All in all, the sound design adds to the overall atmosphere of the game and works well with the amazing sceneries. Gameplay Star Wars Outlaws is a third-person action-adventure title with a heavy focus on (undercooked) stealth mechanics. You’ll find yourself on a few different planets fighting different syndicates while performing tasks for their rivals. The offset is quite simple, and it’s a fairly standard open-world action-adventure title for the most part. The general gameplay loop proves to be entertaining, but a lot of the actual gameplay feels a bit rough around the edges and unpolished. For the most part, you’ll be wandering around the different environments, trying to complete missions for some of the different rivaling syndicates. The game follows a fairly standard third-person action-adventure format, where you obtain new items and skills that allow you to reach new areas and so on. How you approach missions, however, is supposedly up to you, but that’s more than often not the case. The game heavily relies on stealth, as going in guns blazing might mean that enemies will just keep spawning for ages before you can progress. The gunplay in general isn’t that satisfying though, as you are quite limited in terms of arsenal, and weapons enemies drop only have limited ammo. Stealth, sadly, doesn’t fare that much better, as you are not really able to do proper wall hugs when sneaking around. On top of that, when you knock out or kill enemies you cannot drag away their bodies so other NPCs don’t stumble upon a lifeless body, alerting them of your presence. It feels very barebones in this regard, especially when combining this with the wonky controls throughout the entire experience. Even so, general exploring is entertaining, and small battles prove to be quite amusing too. When you’re roaming around freely, it’s when the game does manage to shine, as you find things to do all over the place. Having the option to choose what syndicates you are going to work with and which ones you’ll betray is also an interesting touch. Even though we were probably one of the most wanted people in the galaxy, we quite enjoyed sitting down to play a few friendly games of Sabbacc. This card game reminded us of some of the gambling we did in Red Dead Redemption, and it’s also fun to use Nix to help you cheat. Nix, which we haven’t really mentioned that often throughout our review, is a valuable partner when traversing the different parts of the galaxy. Nix can open doors for you, fetch items, steal from unsuspecting NPCs, and even help you distract enemies. It’s a fun mechanic, but things also feel a bit clunky when it comes to the general controls here. Conclusion Star Wars Outlaws does a lot of things right when it comes to recreating authentic Star Wars environments, implementing great sound design, and having a cast of likable characters. Sadly, it also does a lot of things wrong, due to many graphical issues, general bugs, dated gameplay mechanics, and unsatisfying stealth gameplay. Even so, Star Wars Outlaws proved to be a rather enjoyable experience, and with a bit of additional polish, this could be one of the better Star Wars games in more recent years. We are hoping things get patched soon, and if that happens, we’d love to spend even more time with Kay and Nix.