Star Wars Outlaws Xbox Series S Gameplay Review [Optimized]

this is Star Wars Outlaws we're here on Xbox series s be sure to like the video subscribing is great as well so this is the Apparently first open World Star Wars game outside of galaxies where you dive into the shoes of Kes who is basically a Han Solo type character who keeps kind of accidentally throwing herself into worse and worse situations and eventually is attempting to build a crew in order to do a crazy Heist I'm calling her fem solo although I do think there is a lot more behind this character a lot more kind of heart and really distinct elements to her individual as she kind of makes a bit of an awkward name for herself in the galaxy and she's joined by NYX her faithful little companion that's like a dog an adorable little thing that helps you out and allows you to basically do a lot of the dangerous tasks that you were going be doing as you are somehow the greatest infiltrator spy type character in the existence of the Star Wars Galaxy it's actually kind of ridiculous some of the things she does in this game and it's really hard to believe that she's not a Jedi even though you are doing a lot of the things that you do in other modern Star Wars games where you are basically like climbing things doing parkour she's got a bit more of a a blaster Blaster kind of style going on I mean I'm dressed as Lando basically which is kind of funny but uh yeah you you are basically all purposes kind of going around doing the basic modern Star Wars kind of like movement things you just don't have a lightsaber which is a an interesting choice to uh go with for this particular game and it works out like you actually spend a lot of this game as odd as it may sound literally just moving through pipes vents and other places as you attempt to make a mark in the Galaxy survive and and get the job done actually quite a lot going on in this one it's a rather interesting and pretty lengthy narrative focused experience where you are attempting to make your mark on the Galaxy which is intriguing so let's uh talk a bit about what this game has to offer on the series s so unlike the series s you're kind of getting really really basic gam play uh kind of options in terms of visuals whereas the series X offers three different graphical modes the series s only has the one here which is using FSR as expected 30 FPS and it looks like it's Dynamic 1080 pish depending on the scenario where it goes either quite a bit up quite a bit down uh depending on what's Happening and some of the planets are a lot more demanding than other planets and uh yeah your mileage is really going to vary based on the type of situation you're in and the planet that you are kind of exploring along the way it's a interesting visual set and I do wish they would have taken things a little bit further for the series s but it makes total sense to me that Series S uh kind of is how it is and uh yeah let's let's just quickly dive in and take a look at that there's a photo mode too there's also HDR support so yeah displaying Graphics uh no graphic options like you would have on the series X you do have the option though to Move It from 219 to Bill screen which looks really really weird you can turn off film grain you can change the motion blur density but yeah essentially they've kind of done at least in my opinion they're doing a trick that we saw with like hellblade or basically 360 or stuff used to do in order to keep the uh performance level up you would cut off parts of the screen in order to make less of a picture quality that you are actually outputting uh that's the idea so less of a resolution and then if you do the full screen it looks really awkwardly squished and it just doesn't really quite look right I don't know know if it does to you I don't know how it looks on YouTube to you but this just looks really unnatural like it's kind of weird like when I first started the game I kept sitting there being like man I really wish we could have a full screen game and then I tried their full screen sort of option fill screen option and it just looks weird and I don't know I'm assuming that there's going to be a future XBox kind of console down the road that will allow us to you know have a full screen option or maybe a next version of the game or something like that down the road that will help out because it is uh you know it's it's a little rough having to basically deal with that element of the the game where it's kind of like you don't see the full picture and like the series s does seem to have some performance type issues and stuff too and yeah I mean like it's not too bad like it's decently clean enough it's the full game but you know it's Series S kind of being the series s right let's dive in and let's talk more about the characters so KS as I've mentioned is someone that is building a team you stumble into these circumstances where you are essentially having to create a squad with a bunch of different people that have been picked out for you you have a weird fascination with your robot pal which I find kind of could have used a little bit more work and you go on these adventures in order to put together a team you have a couple open world type planets that you get to visit we were just on Tatooine we're kind of going to like the main Planet which acts as a bit of a tutorial and your main portion of the actual experience and yes you can fly around out in space they essentially took the components of I guess you would say I think it's starlink and they turned them into kind of an open space World type area where you can do little space battles and collect resources and items and stuff like that very much your open world Ubisoft type of game in terms of like random events that you can dive into and little activities and stuff like that the strengths of this game do lie within its single player kind of set up uh linear areas I I actually found that like some of the weaker parts of this game actually had to do with the open world and I liked it a lot more when you were actually doing story stuff cuz basically like the open world you'd be like push from like hey here's one place go to the other side of the map and then go to another part of the map I don't even know if I mentioned that in my S X review but that was a big part of it too there I could talk about this game for a long time because it's just there is quite a lot lot to it like it's decently long um uh it is polished enough there are some bugs uh there are some like things don't properly work but then you just like reset a checkpoint or something you're good to go or reset a level uh some funnier bugs but for the most part it was pretty smooth in terms of playing through it it does offer it like I said a decently lengthy story and then you can go beyond that and take in the open world and blast Stormtroopers find hidden stuff do side missions it's a neat because you can kind of go into these cities and you can talk to people and these different people might have like Quests for you or you might get like a different random mission that you can dive into like there's actually a fair bit that can happen within the world if you leave uh well if you you leave the confinements of doing the main narrative and I think it's a little different too because it would have been cooler for me to have spent more time going out and about because I was sort of so focused on getting the story done in a timely matter cuz it would have been neat to go and you know Explore More Of The World of Star Wars Outlaws so another big part of the game is when you're working through the story you're actually able to interact with a variety of factions so there's first off there's your characters right your core character gay vest with nxs and then moving past that you can interact with characters such as uh these different factions so I wanted to align myself with like Crimson Dawn and there's a few different factions here so we got like the Pikes we got the dawn the cartel the ishiga clan so there's different factions and then your reputation goes up and down based on how you kind of do things and attract with these factions so I would be like oh well I'm really into Crimson Dawn but then like as I would be working up a reputation for them I'd go and do a main story Mo mode which would then force me to basically be in bad terms with them and I'd be like well what is the point of that where you know essentially you're like forced to anger them in different ways and I think the faction thing almost makes more sense when you like finish the game and do secondary stuff like afterwards like where I'm at and definitely performance issues on series that's for sure it and it's it's just kind of like it's a little we weird right that you are kind of like pinge and hold into doing certain stuff where I was kind of like the faction systems really neat but like it it doesn't really do much if you basically are forced to cause problems cuz it's cool like if you're your pals with the Red Dawn you can go into their base kind of unnoticed and like do whatever you kind of want really within reason unless you they catch you like stealing or something and then they might get mad at you and then you're not buddy buddy or what whatever but that in itself is also never really too explored gameplay wise yeah I I don't know it's it's quite strange how that kind of works out because you're wanting that faction system to be a little bit more Dynamic so that you can do crazier things and I don't know if it ever really feels like it's fully like realized holy performance dipping in this the series s version of this game for sure woo don't drive your speeder off a cliff the speeder also has some issues where it's like you tend to bump in to a lot of things and like bail out and almost die and stuff and can be a little Annoying yeah for me though like it was kind of neat visiting a different part of Star Wars but at the same time so much of it was oh this isn't where I wanted to go so much of it literally was also Star Wars that like we're so familiar with and we've like seen so many times and done so many stuff with and yeah I don't know like it they both wanted to escape the confinements of Star Wars but also Nestle itself really tightly in there you know it was kind of nice that we had a protagonist where she literally did not really care specifically about different factions like she herself wanted to be free Rebels who cares about the rebels you know everybody's in it for themselves and it still kind of worked along the way where everything kind of of went back to those sort of tropes and that in itself was a little disappointing because I was really hoping they would break out of that a lot more and it just kind of LED back to it it didn't fully embrace it but it it did kind of you know in a roundabout kind of way go back to that sort of thing so that was a big part of the story element of it still a nice balance of like some stuff you can do in space some stuff you can do on the different planets a few different planets you get to visit the element of doing like a heist kind of thing I wish some characters had a bit more time spent with them so we would get to know them more and and kind of care about their individual more so that we like had a stronger faction thing it was weird pacing wise like it was really really slow like this this area here this world's like basically the tutorial world you spent a lot a lot a lot of time here and then like you know you go to a different place and it's kind of really quick there and then you know the ending seemed like it really went on for quite a bit and yeah it's it's kind of strange the the variables in this game in terms of like where you go and what you see and the things you do it's like it's pacing and the game itself is like pretty okay like it's it's a it's a solid game I both enjoyed it there were some parts of it that felt like they dragged a bit and weirdly the difficulty like scaled up quite a bit towards the the end of it for sure uh which was a bit strange like the ending stuff there was like weird difficulty spikes and okay time to go I don't know like it's kind of it's it's okay it's solid but I definitely kind of wanted more from it like I I really did feel at times like I was sort of going through the motions playing it where I'm kind of like just going in and Blasting stuff and not thinking too much about it and yeah I don't know it's it's an okay Star Wars game it about hit my expectations for it which is fine but like it would have been cool had it kind of exceeded expectations or done something a little crazier gameplay wise that kind of went a little bit out of the path of things we've seen in the past and kind of surprised me more that was the biggest thing now the series s version obviously you've been seeing some performance like tanky and that it's not the worst situ ations and honestly if you're used to playing on the series s you are going to be totally fine with this like it looks okay it's clear enough it would have been nice to have other performance modes but you know nowadays obviously the series s is a lot more of an afterthought in certain situations so I kind of get it for sure yeah I don't know this this one is is interesting cuz like it is kind of weird right like you are somehow just like the greatest not detective but you're like this great Spy Stealth person and the stealth was kind of hit our bits too honestly like some of the stealth stuff like it was weird how they would just know where you are and then other times they wouldn't like know at all where you are and that was a bit strange too and there's a lot of stealth stuff in this game like a lot of stealth segments and yeah it's it's kind of strange cuz like open world I'd be like where am I going cuz the Speeder bike was a little hard to understand where I was like kind of writing on it and you do a fair bit of that it was basically like anytime I was in the open world it felt like an inconvenience whereas the regular story missions I was kind of moving through them and being like okay how do we do this how do we do that solving some light puzzles nothing too intense and you can scale your difficulty and settings and everything too in the game there could be lots of different options for fine-tuning the Star Wars Outlaws experience to be kind of what you need it to be which is nice and you you know that's accessibility options and all that which are expected these days especially from Ubisoft big companies big Publishers I just kind of wish it would have went a little bit more I don't know if dark is kind of the phrasing cuz Star Wars stuff is always like light-hearted and and fun in that but I I would have liked maybe a bit more of a mature element to it cuz it it really feels like at times you're just kind of like randomly popping up with like new characters suddenly and then you're just like accepting that they're there and I don't know some of it felt a little silly wow did that speeder almost just like Blow by me and just where did why what like I said the speeder it's got like a mind of its own honestly like sometimes it's really good and sometimes it's just like really just gets you kind of killed awkwardly and stuff like that Hut territory oh no I've got a bad bad setup with the huts all right that's not good but at least it'll give you some action and regular gameplay is a lot more action-packed when you're actually moving through the story doing stuff instead of uh got the Garian guards in here oh wow oh yeah no dep I remember the Garian guards being here they were annoying yeah I don't like I don't know I was just kind of expecting a little bit more of a surprise from it just because it felt so kind of tame to a degree if that makes any level of sense like I was kind of expecting a little bit of a darker oh we're a heist team kind of thing and it's like they wanted to do that and they kind of Never Fully embrac doing that and yeah it's got both moments that I think are oh no fun and exciting and then other parts where you're just kind of like I don't know about this and it it kind of creates a bit of an uneven sort of thing where I both liked it but it was kind of like middling and it was okay but it like like if it had been a little more finely tuned I think there was like a lot more that they could have got out of this game like it could have done like it could have provided a lot more than it did oh this looks just like FSR soup water is always the biggest H for like AMD technology yeah like if if you had a really like the series X version of this game looks okay and if you had like a a really good PC I I think this game would be just straight beautiful and you can tell they're doing their absolute best to kind of make this like run and be like semi smooth for Series S but you can tell those board consoles just like absolutely buckling under the weight of trying to to run this kind of modern game and that in itself is sort of fascinating for sure I think Star Wars Outlaws uh some will find it kind of intriguing if you're looking for some kind of like mind-blowing next kind of Star Wars game I don't fully know if this one is going to be that kind of thing for you but I could definitely see how some folks would really find this to be an intriguing little adventure and you know I like the story I kind of like the characters yeah I don't know this this one this one's really really intriguing to me CU there's a lot of like little things that kind of add up where I'm like I wish this was handled better or that was handled better but I'm still like also like oh it's a game you know you're here to have fun and play and blast things and enjoy Star Wars but yeah I I don't know gameplay wise they kind of play safe for mechanics and stuff like that you don't really break from the mold too much and it's sort of it's okay is what it is it's a it's a solid Star Wars experience but kind of really lifted by a good main character I would say other than that so so for Star Wars that was