I find myself in a bit of an unusual position with Star Wars Outlaws on Switch 2 in that, having already played through the entire thing and reviewed it for our sister site Pure Xbox in 2024, I feel like I’m getting a quick second chance to see if my 8/10 score was justified. Spoiler alert: it was absolutely justified. So that’s that bit sorted.
I was a little surprised when the reviews dropped for Massive Entertainment’s take on the Star Wars universe because, for my money, they’ve actually outdone Respawn in a few critical ways. As much as I love the Jedi series, it does feel like a great big Star Wars rollercoaster that throws all the stuff you expect to see at you as you careen through at high speed. It’s like climbing and fighting on a big film set. And that’s fine.
Star Wars Outlaws has depth, though, to its environs. It’s a richer world to inhabit as a character, a more interesting collection of places to explore. Massive Entertainment takes a step back from non-stop, flashy Jedi action in all the places you know to give us the down and dirty side of Star Wars. The hucksters, the criminals, the guys with big, long necks who are always in the cantina off their faces on Angry Bloody Rankors (it’s an actual drink and I hope you like rum). You know the den from the movies, the hive of scum and whatever the rest of that sentence was. This is a game about that. And it rocks.
Now, standing back and taking it all in, I can fully understand — sort of — the lower scores; this isn’t a stunner in the looks department (mostly with regards to character models) in the same league as a lot of modern adventure games, it sticks to tried and tested mechanics, and I think Kay Vess gets off to a little bit of a bad start as a character, likeable enough as she becomes as things progress. It’s also a game that plays differently than you might expect. It’s heavy on stealthy stuff and sneaking about in crouch mode until you rip your Kessel Runner pants.
You can, of course, pew-pew if you so choose, but this game wants you to take your time in appreciating the world that’s been constructed around Kay’s core mission – which is, essentially, to run away from her crimes and get out of the scoundrel lifestyle by putting together a crack team and pulling off a space heist. I mean, who needs dry-arsed pilgrimages to find Jedi powers and discover your true feelings when you can rappel up a wall, CQC some stormtroopers, and steal all their credits and clothes…and I might as well have all that spare wire and circuit boards, too. Cheers, fellas!
Set between the events of Empire and Return of the Jedi which, let’s face it, is way, way cooler than anything that’s happened in Star Wars since (old man Klaxon), Kay must pit her wits against the ruthless villain of the piece, the admirably slimy Zerek Besh. As the leader of a powerful crime syndicate, Besh is after you, so you’re going to need to work overtime in putting together a team to pull off your heist, whilst also doing missions for an assortment of underworld syndicates.
The fun part here — and the bit that sells it all quite well as a sort of ‘Han Solo simulator’ — is that you can play all the syndicates off each other, make them really angry with you or your best pals. I loathe the Hutts, as an example, and I’ll always stick the knife in when I can, so I constantly choose to do them in when the dialogue or mission opportunity presents itself.
The ramifications of this are that Hutt territory becomes hard for me to work in, so when a future mission calls for me to engage them, I may have to sneak in and space-murderise everything that breathes, rather than calling over for a cup of space tea and a space chat to work things out. It works well, doesn’t try to be too fancy or too much, and is all the better for it.
That’s a theme that runs through a lot of what Star Wars Outlaws is doing. Nothing about the gameplay loop here is new or fresh or designed to stun you into heralding the arrival of a brave new era in digital interactivity. No, instead you’ve got a little Deus Ex, MGS, Dishonored-lite, Assassin’s Creed vibe going on — a real mish-mash — in how the world wants you to read and explore, creep around and make a few decisions as to how you proceed.
It is 100% not the best at everything it’s doing, and that’s fine, because what it chooses to do fits Kay, it fits the story and situation, and it’s all very well put together. There were a few issues at the game’s initial launch, mostly to do with insta-fail stealth bits, but these have long since been patched out.
It feels good to blast folk with laser rifles and all the cool gear from the movies, too (yes, they make all the correct sounds), just as it feels good to sneak through vents and plot and plan ways to take down areas full of bad guys. If you’ve ever thought, “I quite fancy a Star Wars skin on my Assassin’s Creed,” well, this is fairly close.
I say “fairly close” because to compare Outlaws too directly to AC would be to do it a disservice. Kay’s adventure is vastly preferable to me in how it chooses to unveil its world map, you see, and in how busy it wants to keep you with faffing about and time-wasting. This is a roughly 30-40 hour story, with another 20 or thereabouts on top if you want to get everything there is to collect and see. It’s very doable, and that’s another feather in its cap. Alongside a character that grows into a highly likeable one, and a story that keeps things rattling along just fine — no spoilers from me — this is just a very good slice of Star War. It feels authentic in ways Jedi just doesn’t, and it has loads of fun little nods and lore to find and explore for fans.
Away from the core shooting and stealthing about, Kay also has a speeder bike, a rappel, and a bunch of other tricks and tools for exploring that come courtesy of her pal Nix, who…look…let me be a savage for a moment: I don’t care about Nix, or any of these goofy wee furballs that you’re pairing me off with. But I understand that they are a way of making opening doors more interesting, so all-in-all, I’m not gonna mark the game down for having a Nix in it.
The speeder bike, though. Now, this is where we can finally start discussing the most important part of this review: how the game actually runs on Switch 2. You see, there’s a moment in Outlaws that I was dreading — out of Switch 1 review habit, I guess — when Kay gets on her speeder bike for the first time and the game’s first open world area is laid bare for you to zoom around at high speeds. Surely this was where the experience, which had been running very well to that point, would fall apart.
Alas, reports of poor performance have been greatly exaggerated. Not only is this a stutter-free experience 99.9% of the time, it’s actually right up there and in the mix with other versions of the game in the old looks department. And it has motion controls, and cross-saves, and touchscreen inventory management to boot. Oh my goodness. Wait a minute, this is actually a fine port. Yub nub!
Does it have a slick 60fps frame rate? No, it does not. It’s capped at 30fps – super smooth and responsive, though, especially indoors and in handheld, to the point that it felt better than 30 at times, possibly down to the game’s motion blur (which can be disabled). Motion controls are well-integrated, you get lots of options for dialling in or switching it off for certain things, and alongside lots of camera sensitivity and accessibility options, we are on to a winner here. Even in docked, stretched across a 47-inch screen, this game looks great on Switch 2.
So, in summary, Star Wars Outlaws is a great Star Wars game overall. It’s a little ramshackle in places, a little rough around the edges at times in its execution, and it sticks to tried and tested gameplay loops, but that sort of suits the vibe – it suits the setting with its low-lifes and liars and deadbeats and diehards.
It also feels like a ‘moment’ of sorts for Nintendo’s new console. I’ve been worrying, you see, with Daemon X Machina not performing so well and rumours of this game being a shambles before it arrived, that we could be in for trouble with Switch 2. However, based on this evidence, I’m now quite excited all over again for my new console. Utinni!
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