Gaming Star Wars Outlaws Hands On Preview - An Undeniable Star Wars Adventure Despite Its Flaws

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Massive Entertainment's upcoming action-adventure game, Star Wars Outlaws, launches on Xbox consoles August 30th. Thanks to the kind people over at Ubisoft, we've had the chance to play the game on two separate occasions. The first was at Summer Game Fest in June, which took place inside an immersive Star Wars Cantina bar. With questionable 'blue milk' on tap, and a squadron of Imperial Storm Troopers patrolling the hotel lobby, we sampled an hour-long demo of the game back in June. Unfortunately, the second occasion was in a stuffy home office - which was far less thematic! Unsurprisingly, there was a slight shift in our opinion between the two demos… and we're not blaming the blue milk!

Anybody with access to the internet will know there has been a lot of speculation surrounding Star Wars Outlaws - especially following that IGN video featuring 10 minutes of unseen gameplay. That being said, there's an equal measure of excitement for the game too. From our initial impressions, we'd wager that whilst plenty of force-sensitive fans are going to love this one, we expect a large number of players will find the game all too familiar and samey to feel that they're getting their money's worth.

During the first three hours of our session, we zipped around the savanna moon of Toshara on our rattletrap speeder. We spent a bit of time sampling the lucious open-world environments, a handful of story beats, and optional side quests. For the final hour, we were transported far, far away to the frosty world of Kijimi for one last heist. Outside of the blockbuster main missions, quests in Star Wars Outlaws are your typical levy of intel gathering, fetch questing, and open-combat scenarios. Y'know… the cookie cutter hits - and for the most part these all marry up pretty well. But then, we feel anything with Star Wars DNA woven deep into its underbelly is going to have an advantage.

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Star Wars Outlaws tells the tale of Kay Vess, a scoundrel constantly on the run as she attempts to make a name (and some credits) for herself. When we took control of our morally ambiguous heroine, she was in a hurry to fix up the Trailblazer; a republic era spaceship. If there's one lesson Massive Entertainment promises to teach us throughout Star Wars Outlaws, it's that everything comes at a price, whether that's credits, your reputation, or worst case, your life (in-game of course… you're okay, we promise).

Since we mentioned reputation, one core pillar of this interstellar adventure is who to trust and where to stash your marbles. The life of an outlaw is fraught with deception, lies, and betrayal - plenty of betrayal. For Kay to stand a chance, playing this dangerous game of reputation is her only choice, even if she's a god-awful liar. Star Wars Outlaws comprises four familiar syndicates spread throughout the galaxy, and gaining favor with them provides Kay with credits, discounts on cosmetics, and, most importantly, quest opportunities.

We doubled down with the shadiest syndicate of all, the Crimson Dawn, sneaking into restricted Pyke territory and double-crossing the Hutts for extra head pats from our shonky overlords. We'd have made Kay a Crimson Dawn mascot for all our credits' worth until we sniffed a whiff of stinkin' betrayal headed our way. We won't spoil whether we were left high and dry, but it turns out we did destroy our reputation with the other syndicates, leading to a shoot to kill order on Kay Vess if we were to stumble into their territory. It's not the most complex system, but messing with the syndicates and watching their own people turn on one another was jolly good fun.

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What we found immediately likable about our sampled slice of Star Wars Outlaws was the intentional absence of Jedi, Sith, and 'Force' rhetoric. Instead, we get a scrappy, Han Solo-flavored outlaw in Kay. With a silver tongue, a modified blaster, and an adorably violent companion, Kay can turn the tide in any duel. However, Kay is not an unstoppable force capable of toppling the entire Empire. Combat and stealth are a balancing act in most of the missions we played, and whilst we're onboard with the overall setup, we're not so sure about the execution.

It turns out we're not the type to shoot first, instead we preferred to skulk around in vents and tall grass where applicable. Stealth in Star Wars Outlaws isn't going to give Metal Gear Solid anything to sweat in its cardboard box about, but it was still our preferred way of tackling each open-combat zone. For the most part, Kay's fluffy companion Nix is a cute and cuddly sidekick - which yes, you can pet if you'd like to (it's almost industry standard at this point) - but the merqaal knows a few handy tricks to help Kay slip through most areas undetected. Pulling from the opossum handbook, Nix can play dead to distract patrols, tamper with all things red and 'splodey, and also latch onto enemies long enough for Kay to wind-up her one-hit haymaker. Nix controls well and is undoubtedly helpful in almost every scenario (traversal puzzles too) but what we appreciated most was to instruct Nix to open doors for Kay like some sort of fuzzy gentleman.

As we hinted at before, what irked us most about gameplay was the combat. Blasting foes in Star Wars Outlaws feels muddy and disconnected, like playing Call of Duty without the 'hitmarker' sound. Kudos to the Gears-inspired active reload system though—we love tapping reload at the right time for a damage boost. If stealth isn't an option, you'll need to use Kay's blaster mods wisely. There are three ammo types: plasma for traditional kills, ion for robots and shields, and a limited stun option that one-taps any foe. Nix is handy in a fight too, scurrying out of cover to fetch ammo and incapacitating enemies for you to either blast, or uppercut—dealer's choice. There's also a Red Dead Redemption-style adrenaline meter that slows down time for a cinematic pew, pew, pew. However, the camera angle feels off each time you use it. Whilst it's not bad to control, we simply found the combat a little dull despite drawing clear inspiration from some of the greats.

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Feeling somewhat satisfied with the core pillars of Star Wars Outlaws, this was our first time experiencing one of the game's several open-world spaces. Having recently achieved immersive excellence with Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, the expectation for developer Massive Entertainment to deliver those same living, breathing worlds with a Star Wars twist was quite high. From what we sampled, Toshara's windy glasslands provided plenty for us to gaze upon, as did its dense settlements. It's obvious that a lot of care has been put into crafting this Star Wars universe. Walking through the grimy retro-futuristic streets of Mirogana felt on-point, and coupling the sights with the iconic brass and woodwind sounds that the Star Wars franchise is known for definitely marks a job well done for Massive Entertainment—even if the team falls a little short of what it achieved on Pandora.

Despite some underwhelming aspects, Star Wars Outlaws offers a solid experience with vibrant worlds, interesting characters, and enjoyable stealth mechanics. Whilst it might not always be extraordinary, it remains a fairly good game that fans of the franchise will appreciate, if they can justify the hefty price tag. We'll have to wait for the full game to settle our thoughts on Star Wars Outlaws, but when Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft promise an immersive and expansive Star Wars adventure, it's hard not to remain a bit excited despite a few drawbacks.