I’mon the recordas aStar Wars Outlawsdefender. The galaxy far, far away is in a bizarre place right now, but when this current moment becomes a long, long time ago,Massive Entertainment’s open-world game will still stand as one of the best Star Wars games ever made.
Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order definitely belong ahead of it, but it has a solid shot at third place.
As much as I like it though, I do occasionally find myself annoyed by the game’s minor inconveniences. you may easily getknocked off your speederby obstacles in the road that you can barely see. Massive has since patched this out but, in the original release, there wereinsta-fail stealth sectionsthat felt straight out of 2009. But worst of all is how awkwardly guns and other weapons work in a game that isprettygun-focused, considering the lack of Jedi powers
Switching Between Weapons Is A Solved Problem
. My first, but smallest, grievance is that switching between guns is mapped to the top face button (triangle on PS5; Y on Xbox) instead of one of the easy-to-reach bumpers. I’m used to games that require switching between guns as often as Outlaws does slowing down time as you cycle between weapons. Outlaws doesn’t do that, so you just have to stand around pressing the triangle button until the UI says you have the right gun equipped. I feel like a sluggish sitting mynock whenever I need to do it.
Switching to grenades is even worse. You know how most shooters have throwables permanently mapped to R1? In Outlaws, where they’re just as big a part of combat, you need to select them by pressing left on the D-pad, then pressing X. Then, you still need to hold R2 to throw them.Three buttons!To do what most games would assign to one! Why was this the solution Massive settled on? This is the studio that made The Division 2, one of the best-feeling third-person shooters of the last generation! Massive knows how to do this!
Star Wars Outlaws Didn’t Need To Reinvent The Weapon Wheel
Equally strange is the way that Outlaws handles any guns that aren’t Kay’s trusty blaster. Kay can unlock multiple different modes for her blaster. One is basically a slow shotgun, one is a machine gun, and one is a stun bolt that you can use to stun enemies or open doors.
But the best guns in the game belong to your opponents. You can get your paws on these by sending Nix in to fetch them, or just by looting them off your enemies' corpses. As soon as you need to interact with something else, though, Kay drops the gun. Need to hop on your speeder? Bye powerful blaster! Need to climb up to a perch? See ya later, sniper rifle! When I was playing today, I found a grenade launcher that I wanted to take forward to the next room, but I kept having to drop it to shoot electricity-activated doors, then quickly pick it up and run through before the door closed.
In what world is exclusively carrying a blaster this central a part of the scoundrel fantasy? Sure, Han Solo uses a blaster, but Kay Vess being able to use other guns would not impede my sense of immersion. Instead, I’m left scrambling anytime I need to do anything other than shoot my blaster. And, even then, I’m still left in an awkward position if I want to change fire modes. These are all solved problems. It feels less like Massive is trying to reinvent the wheel and more like it forgot the wheel existed to begin with. The weapon wheel, at least.
