One of the bigger releases of this fall in a somewhat sparse year is Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws, a single player game in the series shedding Jedi Fallen Order’s linearity and uh, Jedi. You instead play a Solo-like scoundrel blasting your way through open world maps and now reviews for the game have come in.
They’re pretty good, at least so far. Not amazing, but good enough for many Star Wars fans, most likely.
At the time of this writing, Star Wars Outlaws currently has a 76 Metacritic score on PS5 where the most reviews (45) are in. It has a 77 on Xbox (12 reviews) and a 77 on PC (17 reviews, albeit one a distant outlier at a 3/10).
In the good old “everything is between a 6-10” video game scale, mid-to-high 70s is solid. The “really great” metric is usually 85+ however, by overall industry standards, like them or not. And 90+ you’re in GOTY contention. These are loose rules, and certainly games in the 70s are well-liked. These are good scores, and around what most of Ubisoft’s recent Assassin’s Creed games have gotten, if not better than some.
What are critics saying? A sampling of the scores:
- Dextero (8/10) – “While Star Wars: Outlaws soars thanks to its spectacular open-world design, letting you loose across multiple gargantuan planets all brought to life with immense attention to detail, a safe and rather by-the-books narrative brings the package down from being an all-time great.”
- Washington Post (7.5/10) – “A strong reminder why the Ubisoft formula became so influential, so reliable and so popular.”
- IGN (7/10) – “Star Wars Outlaws is a fun intergalactic heist adventure with great exploration, but it’s hindered by simple stealth, repetitive combat, and a few too many bugs at launch.”
- VGC (6/10) – “Star Wars Outlaws is a pulpy, Uncharted-style adventure that doesn’t quite fulfill its potential. Kay and Nix lead a great cast through a well-paced, punchy story, but the game’s Reputation system, and syndicate storyline in general feels undercooked.”
So, solid, but not some surprise smash critical hit. It’s a Star Wars game, it’s not a disaster, so it will sell. But it does feel like just another Ubisoft release in the sense of these scores and the pros and cons. I will be curious to see what fans make of it, at least those not going to war with the game over a woman’s haircut they don’t like.
I didn’t play a review copy so I will be starting in early access this week. Looking forward to seeing what it’s got.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
