The Good and Bad of ‘Star Wars Outlaws’

There have been reviews posted for Star Wars Outlaws, and while they’re generally pretty good, I’ve noticed a few that are really, really bad. Now, after playing the game for a while myself, I know which category I fall into. And I don’t think it’s going to make me play more.

Star Wars Outlaws is the first truly open-world Star Wars game, but it doesn’t take advantage of that as it should, and as a result feels dated and clunky in several ways. I haven’t been able to get into the story in depth enough, but here’s what I’ve experienced so far:

THE BAD

• Much, much too much discretion – Although I understood that you play the role of a villain and a thief in Outlaws, I did not realize that the game would be This The game relies heavily on stealth at almost every turn. First off, the stealth is not great compared to other stealth games. There’s not much to do other than sneak around boxes hitting square, use a stun gun once after a very long cooldown, or send your pet out to distract enemies while you circle around or take them out. It’s extremely minimalistic for something that’s jammed into so many encounters, and again, I don’t think the game was clear that it was going to be like that in its marketing. You’re definitely not Han Solo, that’s for sure.
• Instant Stealth – There are even sections where stealth is an instant fail, like in 2005. Sometimes it’s when you’re seen, sometimes it’s when the alarm is raised. But in these larger areas, it’s nearly impossible to track down a whistleblower, and unlike Far Cry, where you could just fend off reinforcements, here you’ll often automatically fail the mission. And with a bad checkpoint, it can often send you far away. Getting caught in an enemy part of town, for example, can get you kicked out through a completely different entrance than the one you came in through and back in is extremely annoying.

• The fight is average – I have no problem with not being a Jedi. In fact, I am. thrilled not to be a Jedi for once. But the shooting here, which you can The use when breaking stealth or in one, at times, is just mediocre. The game has bullet sponge issues with many enemies (this was done by The Division studio) and the weirdest decision was to have Kay use a pistol and a pistol only with a few different mods, for the entire game. Any other weapon you pick up is temporary and will be lost when you do basically anything. Leave an area, perform an action, get on your bike. Anything. You drop it. So you’re shooting a pistol for 90% of this game when you’re not doing takedowns behind crates.
• Speeder Motorcycles – There are a lot of weird decisions here, where the object is far too fragile to go down most cliffs, causing you to die or explode frequently. But the weirdest part is that you will often be chased by enemies shooting at you with their speeders and you… won’t be able to fight back. There is literally no “shoot a gun while riding a speeder” system. except for getting hit enough to charge your adrenaline gauge to launch your “eye of death” attack, which really feels like something they forgot to do because it makes no sense.
• Modeling dated characters – As I will say in the “good” section, the environments are often gorgeous, but outside of the cutscenes, the character modeling in this game is terrible and feels exceptionally dated. Talking to NPCs feels like it hasn’t evolved in five Assassin’s Creeds and they often look like Styrofoam mannequins. No, not every game needs the level detail and motion capture of Last of Us, but this is very, very bad and jarring and mediocre for a story-driven game.
• Lock picking – Worst minigame I’ve ever seen. I instantly turned it off. Horrible. Even worse, because you’re often supposed to do it in stealth sections repeatedly, because enemies will keep patrolling while you’re playing it. No thanks.

THE GOOD

• A living Star Wars world – Outlaws feels “alive,” like you’re living in a real Star Wars world, especially in the densely populated parts of the map. I think the attention to detail is excellent, and the visuals that go with it are top-notch, again, outside of the actual people. They did a stunning job on a lot of that here.
• Kay and Nix – I like them! I like Kay as a character and I think she would be a fun little scumbag if I didn’t strongly like almost all of the gameplay in the game. She deserved better. I also like Nix and the fact that he jumps on a guy’s face so you can punch him didn’t bore me.

Yeah, sorry, that’s all. That’s all I got.

I’m certainly not as far gone as the critics and that’s not a review with a rating, because I don’t rate games I don’t finish. But everything I read tells me that the fundamental issues I have with the game won’t go away, and in some cases, will get worse. As much as I’d like to see the rest of Kay’s story if I don’t really enjoy anything about how the game actually plays, I’m not going to expose myself to more.

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