What happens when you take Ubisofts formulaic garbage and mix it with one of the best franchises of all time? You get Star Wars: Outlaws. Another subpar gaming experience from the geniuses at Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment.
I have put in just a little over 70 hours in this title, and quite frankly, I'm exhausted from talking about this game, so I will try to make this short.
The story is uninspired and is the same tired heist plot you'd find in your average Fast & Furious film. The characters are basic and are just interesting enough to not be completely boring. The gameplay is fun enough but nothing we haven't seen from other far superior titles ie Uncharted and Tomb Raider. The graphics are passable but are incredibly inconsistent. At times, environments and characters look good, then in others, it's downright bad.
Which, by the way, inconsistent is the perfect word to describe this game. In some aspects, this game can immerse you as you enjoy mini-games like Sabacc or work different jobs to increase your reputation with the four different syndicates or fly around the galaxy in your ship as you engage in aerial combat. But then, for all the moments of enjoyment, there's an equal amount of immersion-breaking, painfully dull ones.
Then this game, which was advertised as an action/adventure title, is, in fact, a horrendous stealth game. There are more stealth sections and instant fail states that any "action/adventure" game has any business having. Now this wouldn't be a complete disaster if the stealth was good. Unfortunately, the stealth in this game is half-baked and almost felt like it was tacked in and forced to be a major mechanic.
Finally the bugs and glitches. This game, on multiple occasions, either crashed or caused multiple progression-halting bugs. By the way, do not play this on PC. I had more issues playing this on my PC than I did on my Series X. Granted, my computer isn't the best thing on planet Earth, but it is a good one, and in most games, I can achieve 60 to 100 fps (Frames Per Second) consistently not with Outlaws however. Though at the end of the day, console or PC, this game is not optimized properly in any way.
I wanted to like Star Wars: Outlaws, being the massive Star Wars fan that I am, but this game not only has a serious amount of unmet potential but has too much bad for the good there is. This makes this all the more disappointing because the good that's here is fun and can be expanded upon; unfortunately, it's just not being utilized.
Anyway, if you're a massive Star Wars fan like me, then maybe... maybe you can squeeze every bit of Star Wars fun out of this average game to get your money's worth. If not, then I highly recommend waiting for this game to hit the bargain bin or, like me, getting a month of Ubisoft Plus and then immediately canceling for the best value.
Here's hoping Ubisoft's next title will bring some originality or at least be good. Either way, I'm not holding my breath.
Final Score: 5/10
Played on Xbox Series X and PC with Ubisoft+
