I played Star Wars Outlaws on the Switch 2 at PAX West last weekend, just days before it launched, and I couldn’t believe how bad it looked. Granted, I can be a bit of a graphics snob. I’m one of those people who gets a headache playing games at 30fps.
But when I say Outlaw looks unbelievably bad, I don’t just mean it looks bad to my well-trained eye. Even the most forgiving fan will have a hard time seeing past how muddy and low resolution this game looks. It’s your everyday kind of bad.
It’s unbelievable. I mean, I can believe that a 2024 triple-A game runs poorly on the Switch 2, but I can’t believe Ubisoft would release a game that looks this rough. This wasn’t an overworked Switch 2 that had been running all day on the show floor either. This was in a private room for media during the first session of the day, and I was the third or fourth person to play it. I’d love to play Outlaws on the Switch 2, but not if it looks like this.
Star Wars Outlaws Gold On Switch 2 Looks Like It’s Streaming On Bad Wi-Fi
To be fair, I didn’t play Star Wars Outlaws when it launched on console and PC last year, so the only thing I can compare the Switch 2 version to is the trailer and, well, every other game on the Switch 2. But if the original version of Outlaws looked this blurry, I think I would have heard about it by now.
In the gameplay vs. graphics debate, I stand on the side of gameplay as long as poor graphics don’t hurt the gameplay, which is what is happening in Outlaws. I clocked the issue the moment my demo started. I’m looking at Kay Vess and her furry companion Nix as they prepare to fight their way out of a space station.
Or rather, that’s what the dialogue is telling me I’m seeing. What I’m actually seeing is a mushy mess of browns and grays with no defining lines to separate one solid object from the next. If I lowered the graphics all the way down to the minimum in the PC version of Outlaws, turned off all the optional settings like dynamic shadows, ambient occlusion, and volumetric effects, it would probably look something like this.
I was an early adopter of game streaming (RIP Stadia) and Outlaws reminds me a lot of playing games over a bad Wi-Fi connection. If your connection isn’t consistent, streaming platforms will maintain a constant frame rate by lowering your resolution. It was somewhat acceptable in the early days when streaming games were still a novelty.
But playing triple-A games on the Switch hasn’t felt like a novelty for a long time. With the Switch 2, the seamlessness was an active selling point. This is just a game that can’t meet expectations on the Switch 2, and it shouldn’t have been released.
There Are Limits To Sacrificing Graphics For Performance
All that being said, Outlaws ran smoothly during my demo. I didn’t have any true performance issues, like frame rate drops or hitching, and I didn’t see any weird pop-ins or bugs. Ubisoft clearly had to make visual sacrifices to get Outlaws to perform consistently on the Switch 2, and while I can appreciate that it aimed for a sweet spot, I still don’t think this version Outlaws is what we’d call a viable product.
Maybe you can look past the blur and see the outlaws hidden in the mud. Maybe I’m just too much of a snob to enjoy an imperfect version of a game that, admittedly, wasn’t quite my taste in the first place. But when I’m standing on one end of a hallway, Stormtroopers are flooding in from the other end of said hallway, and I can’t tell how many there are because they all blend together into one big gray blob, I think that puts Outlaws at a quality level no one should find acceptable.
Star Wars Outlaws
3.5/5
- Released
-
August 30, 2024
- ESRB
-
T For Teen // Violence, Simulated Gambling, Mild Language
- Developer(s)
-
Massive Entertainment
- Publisher(s)
-
Ubisoft, Lucasfilm Games
- Engine
-
Snowdrop
Source link
