Star Wars Outlaws

Very authentic vintage Star Wars vibes with great music and sound production, and a lot of pretty locations and visuals. There is nothing ground breaking going on here in Outlaws, it's full of safe and established gameplay mechanics you'll have seen before in similar open world games. Collect materials and credits to unlock gear, take side jobs. Sneak or blast your way through the game. If you're like me and a sucker for side quests, sadly they can get a bit 'samey' with only around 3 or 4 variations of them, I actively started to avoid certain ones like 'take item from A to B' because they just got dull. Sneaking ones I ended up just blasting through them because it was more engaging, and quicker. Certain missions you get 'one shot' at which I guess raises the stakes a little. Saying that... Sneaking is quite fun, although not very deep. Exploration is often rewarded with a vent or a ladder or a way to bypass enemies and route to the objective- its generally obvious or easy, this ain't no MGS or Deus Ex level of infiltration, it's plot convenience vent placements or rope swings. Again, very Star Warsy. You use your pet rat[?] thing to help you as well, who can pickpocket people, press buttons and grab guns for you. It's a neat extra bit to the sneaking. Sneaking into Imperial bases is probably where the main fun was for me, because they look awesome, then blasting your way out - it just feels peak Star Wars when the alarm starts blaring and you're tagging endless Storm Troopers from all directions. There is a sort of 'wanted level' system going on as well which is pretty cool, eventually you'll face Death Troopers. The gunplay is alright, I found it fairly satisfying and consistent overall. Headshots count and there is a surprising selection of weapons, albeit all very similar. Your pistol has a few firing modes too. Like I said, blasting your way out of places, to me, seemed the most fun thing to do after sneaking deep into a base / mission. There are other systems at play too, such as reputation levels with various factions and gangs but it's very shallow and fickle. Doesn't seem to make a difference to the overall story and is mainly a gameplay mechanic for early-mid game. You can typically just buy your way up the reputation bar if and when you need to. I never had any issues with this, but it did make choices have a little extra weight at times. You can fly your ship into space around the various planets you'll visit and there is some respectable space combat to be had as well. Ok, again, nothing deep but visually impressive with authentic Star Wars sounds and music -these sections don't overstay their welcome, and there was enough going on to keep me entertained. What I appreciated most about Outlaws was the fast travel - it really is fast travel. I could be stood in the middle of the desert on Tattooine and fast travel to a location on a completely different planet for a different quest. That is a shining example of how fast travel should work in a game. If you wanted, you can get on your speeder, speed to your ship, get in the seat, fly into space, jump to the planet, land on the planet, back on the speeder and go there manually - if you wanted - or just appear there. The fact I can just jump from anywhere to anywhere is easily the most under rated feature of this game. It genuinely makes me want to go back to it to do collectables because this exists because it respects my time. There was a few bugs. I fell through the floor a few times, and got stuck in geometry, and I did crash to desktop (turning off all the ray tracing fixed this for me) but I didn't encounter anything quest breaking. The game autosaves practically every minute as well so, not really a big issue. I think my main qualm with Star Wars Outlaws is the writing of the main protagonist, Kay Vess. A name you'll hear a lot of since she introduces herself to total strangers with her full name in almost every interaction, like she suffers from a special form of tourettes where she can't help but blurt her own name out randomly, even though for the majority of the game you're literally a 'wanted dead' criminal, you'd think she'd use an alias or something; but in typical Star Wars writing style, she's just a super vanilla character, with no clear motivations or depth or edginess - the story throughout the game treads the line of goofy and serious and this even plays out at times, like when sneaking up and KO'ing Storm Troopers you do this sometimes with an overacted uppercut, or with the help of your little pet rat thing, is just like a physical comedy sketch - yet other KO animations actually look pretty legit badass. Often, Kay Vess in dialogues sounds like she has no idea what she is doing, even though she is meant to be some savvy criminal thief from the crooked casinos of Canto - I only really got invested in her as a person when [spoiler] she loses her pet rat friend briefly, she actually shows some emotion[/spoiler]. I think this is a me problem with the Star Wars franchise though, not really a problem with this game perse. Star Wars, generally I find doesn't ever go 'dark' enough, even though it could, and I suppose I find disappointing. Overall though, I enjoyed this one. The main story is quite short, but there is plenty of other stuff to do, which I may go back and mop up side quests and collectables and achievements later, thanks to that wonderful fast travel.