Developer: Motive Studios
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platform: PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tested on: PS4
Star Wars: Squadrons – Review
Like it not, Star Wars is one of those franchises that will stick around forever. While the main series of the movies may be finished now, there will seemingly always be new spin-offs, prequels, books, cartoons, games, and so on. Nonetheless, one thing seems to be the consensus amongst fans of the movies, namely that the original trilogy reigns supreme and still has a lot of untapped potential for all those aforementioned items. For Star Wars: Squadrons, we once again meet the OG villain, Darth Vader, after he has blown up Alderaan. Alternating roles between the Empire and the rebels, you’ll have a proper Star Wars experience.
Story
The story takes us back to the original Star Wars trilogy, to the point where Alderaan gets blown into tiny little bits. The Empire is going strong at that point, but the attack also causes more rebel resistance. While sometimes going deeper than that, that is pretty much the premise of this new Star Wars title, and we honestly don’t need much more for it to be entertaining. Interestingly enough, you always switch sides after each mission, going from your rebel pilot to your Empire one. A fun choice to do it like this, as it allows you to fight on each side of the fence.
Graphics
Graphically the game looks quite nice, albeit not overly impressive for being a release at the end of a console’s lifecycle. The ships’ interiors you’ll pilot look detailed and the different customization options create some variety in your cockpit. Space, ships and combat sequences around you look a lot less detailed however. As the game also supports VR on PS4, it’s clear that the developers aimed for a proper VR experience, rather than constructing every tiny detail. The game looks like Star Wars, feels like Star Wars and respects the source material, and some minor flaws can be overlooked. Nonetheless, certain environments and some of the bigger vessels look a bit bland when flying really close to them.
The characters you’ll sometimes see are properly modeled and the overall appearance of things outside the regular gameplay do look fairly interesting and appealing.
Sound
The sound design is actually quite nice with authentic tunes blasting through your speakers. Not only the music airs the proper atmosphere, so do the sound effects, making things a perfect picture in terms of how a Star Wars game should feel. There’s some voice acting present during cutscenes and missions and this complements the other elements perfectly.
Gameplay
Star Wars: Squadrons is a Space Combat game in which you can opt to play through the story, or dive into the multiplayer portions of the game, trying to find new customization options for your different spaceships. For the bulk of the game, you’ll be sitting in a cockpit, blasting your enemies into the next world and enjoying the view. Outside of combat and flying around you can customize your different spaceships and even your self-created pilot.
While it is advised to play through the campaign, even if it’s somewhat repetitive and not that much of a big deal, you can also dive into the multiplayer experience and grind for new parts for all of your ships. Of course, like many games in the genre, be it space flight games, or normal ones, you’ll be doing the same thing over and over again. This is basically the Call of Duty experience for those looking for a Space Battle game.
The game does have a few impressive features, such as full VR and HOTAS support. The first speaks for itself, as you can properly find yourself in the midst of a space battle with your VR headset on. How pleasant this is, actually depends on the player, as some get motion-sick quite easily, while others can simply press on without a single hiccup. The HOTAS support is also quite nice for flight sim fans who want to try their hands at battling in space. The game’s controls are fairly easy and are limited to only a few buttons, so having HOTAS support is certainly a plus and an amusing implementation from the developers.
Conclusion
Star Wars: Squadrons is actually a very interesting and decent Star Wars experience that has a lot of features under its hood. You can play the PC and PS4 versions in VR, you have full HOTAS support and the multiplayer mode allows for a lot of replay value. Nonetheless, some areas still remain quite shallow and a bit bleak as to how the game could have been. That being said, this is a proper Star Wars experience for the fans and lovers of arcade-ish space combat games that have a fair amount of rewards for those who like to grind.
Star Wars: Squadrons - Review,
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