Star Wars Outlaws Review Roundup

well the Star Wars Outlaws reviews are in and they're not quite as high as I was hoping to see I thought this game was going to kind of land in the low 80s on Metacritic and open critic the more we sort of saw from the game previews the more we looked at the game I thought it had gone through some degradation and it looked like some of the game play was going to feel a little shallow uh also feeling like maybe the game was a little too broad you know going to be a mile wide and an inch deep was generally where I saw it Landing so we are seeing it land in the high 7s I was thinking it was going to land low 80s and it's Landing a little bit below that and so we're going to be going through a review Roundup here for you I've got a 90 an 80 a 70 60 50 and a 40 like all the way down receiving quite a low score from Euro gamer and we're going to be looking at exactly what everybody is saying cuz some people are saying hey I'm having fun I'm having a good time with this game While others are saying it lacks so substance it feels like it sort of gets into like outdated ideas about game design and missions and quests and things like that so if you like this kind of content make sure you're here for the live shows and you can be here when these reviews drop we tend to do this uh I don't really have a schedule that works for putting in a bunch of time in a game and reviewing it but I have somebody that did and the second segment today will be with Kirk from what's new video games we are going to read his review he got in close to 40 hours in the game and he gave it an eight and so he's going to be our eight when we go through these reviews so if you're here in the live audience guys thanks so much for being here you are starting the street the week strong for the member goal you're getting to roll over over a 100 members from last week because you guys went beyond the goal beyond the stretch goal and I thought well you guys are just being so crazy awesome and generous I'm going to give you credit for the extra 106 that you did and then a couple people did some in morning coffee so consider becoming a member or gifting a member and we did do that IRS stream I kind of streamed in my backyard for member plus and above that's a great reason to upgrade every Milestone we hit I will do an extra stream like that for you and we have a big huge goal where I'll build a PC on stream for you and people I think they're going to think that's going to be hilarious I guess so smash the like button let's get our first 100 likes and let's take a look at the first review and Joker Quinn is starting the day off strong for us and giving us our first gifted member of the day Han shot first and so did you thank you so much for doing that and and getting this into a really nice spot there at 110 so this one is coming from uh games Hub and it's showing a four out of five here but it is being interpreted as a 90 on Metacritic so I'm not sure if they give Metacritic a different score I was even saying this morning and morning coffee I really really wish that a lot of these uh Outlets would just switch to scoring the game out of 100 because they all get funneled into Metacritic and open critic and everything's out of 100 and a lot of people might think like oh three and a half Stars that's not that bad of a score right or three out of five stars is not that bad but then it gets interpreted into like a 60 or a 70% which is viewed I think as not great scores so I think maybe they need to reconsider that and maybe that's what this company did maybe they gave it a four out of five stars but they said hey no we're just saying it's not perfect so give it a 90 John lowski gifts a member thank you so so much and so this is going to be one of the higher uh highest SC that we're going to read today and they say lots of fun no matter how you slice it and I do think this is a takeaway I'm seeing even from the more negative reviews I am seeing people saying listen it's there's fun to be had here you can have a good time with this let me see if I can get the text a little bit bigger for you guys uh those of you that are watching on mobile especially and they open up and they say there's really something to be said about staring down the barrel of a Stormtroopers grenade launcher as you dip and dive from cover to cover and the Pew pews of Miss shot narrow openings and reloading weapon Fields equal parts invigorating and nostalgic this is what many of you grew up with this is adrenaline personified this is what Star Wars means so it sounds like they really enjoyed the combat uh I had a lot of people saying that the combat wasn't great um and you know they they do acknowledge here vocal descent from the worst part of the internet is not uncommon in this community and so developing an open world game with a female protagonist that largely tries not to get too involved with the conflict of Jedi versus 6th it could have gone on either way Cod lover thanks so much for renewing your member Plus Membership that moves the line so when you guys upgrade to member Plus or VIP you get to impact the goal every month when you renew I mean I certainly think this this played a role here um and a lot of the argumentation about kvest just gets muddled and lost in the fact that it's an engine level problem I think the engine makes the you know the the the human characters look pretty bad uh regardless okay so let's let's skip down a little bit here and see what they have to say star Star Wars Outlaws tells the story of KVs a two-bit scoundrel from kto bite who finds herself in some serious hot water when a job goes downhill with a death mark on her name and nowhere in the galaxy to safely hide she and her merol how do you even say that mall companion Nicks team up with a slew of unexpected allies in an Oceans 11 esque Heist that would change all of their lives now we're going to get on this subject when we get to Kirk's review the apparently the Droid is not a huge factor in the game is that true Kirk if you're here in the audience can you weigh in on that and a VIP renewal from RPG thank you so much for renewing your membership like it seems like it's mainly Nicks um and not not the uh the Droid that we saw from the trailers uh anyway the they say that winning is the friends you make along the way but not since Mass Effect 2 have I felt that sense of a crew accumulation and found and found family Kay is an enigmatic character who sure doesn't always make it easy for her friends to trust her but once she's on your side she'll stay there and boy can she accumulate a ragtag bunch of misgens the big point to make when critiquing a game is do you choose to have fun when playing the game or do you just choose to hate it I think that's too simplistic I think there are people who don't choose to hate and they end up you know feeling rather frustrated whether it's her relationship with Nicks who is f by far the best character in the entire game when I take uh hot Droid nd5 into account or it's the new found sense of loyalty and vulnerability that she discovers with the wider High screw K is a vehicle for growth both for the player and the team so it sounds like she liked the the story elements um it could have felt easily like drudgery to be traing all over the universe seeking out shadowy figures who inevitably want you to scratch their back before they scratch yours I could also very easily have felt ill one to have the creu relationship suddenly thriving without all that effort Star Wars Outlaw strad straddles that line well with enough connection and payoff to make the questing seem engaging um I hope the game's more interesting than Avatar because uh of the dumb the dumb pre-order oh you already pre-ordered it KK says it's not so much that nd5 is not a factor he's just not present at all for a third of the game or more that's a really interesting decision Kirk because what I gathered from your review view is what a lot of people are probably going to feel is that felt unexpected he's sort of center Shot Center frame during that first reveal in trailer and he's in all of the dadgum key art he's in all the marketing posters that they put out there that seems like a really strange choice to punt him so late in the game um I feel like he would have been there right from the beginning you know and he also looks cool it's like I felt like he was going to join you and be shooting people and stuff I didn't expect the game to delve so keenly into uh the found family versus the real family Trope with flashback Snippets demonstrating exactly why Kay has such a chip on her shoulder when it comes to relying on anyone other than herself but that conversation is handled with a degree of nuance that was unexpected even if some of the supporting characters could have been fleshed out more in a world where scoundrel is as scoundrel does where syndicates and Crim Lords betray and backstab Wily neilly it's all more welcome when someone you didn't expect to have your back winds up coming through and all the more tense when it's the other way around uh and while K and nicks really do form a symbiotic core that keeps the heist crew together seeing the friendship and interactions between other members helps make it feel like much more of a team effort all right I'm going to skip a little bit here they're they're praising the story elements and the character elements that's great what about uh the other aspects of the game the open world has a new potentially risky endeavor uh there have been uh definitely some games that have claimed the descriptor before yet not quite lived up to the mark but there was no disappointment from that here not only are there countless quests Intel hunts minigames contracts experts and more but there's a whole lot of space to explore with only four orbits Tashara uh kajimi Akiva and tatween you'd be forgiven for thinking the world may feel somewhat limited instead the expans of star dotted space feels open like a yawning mouth of pirates debris and planets each of the visitable planets has a distinct biome and flavor and it helps take your mind off the fact that you're likely once again heading into one compound or another to take off one faction or another environmentally thematically and practically it never feels as tires as tired as it would have every right to feel that's not to say that it doesn't have repetition from the Uncharted like platformer routines through to a steady trickle of vents that K clambers through we're seeing a lot of the same but there's enough of what's different to make it feel balanced out I believe I've seen other people highlight this in their bullet points of pros and cons that there is some repetitiousness to the game which that's going to happen in an open world game the question is is what gets repeated enjoyable enough to make you sort of ignore the fact that you've done it before from snow covered buildings in kajimi uh to the steady pitter patter of rainfall in AA the landscape shifts just enough to keep you on your toes though it stops short of inflicting frostbite or trench foot thankfully growth growth in a new form so the expert system uh is how they did this so instead of just like progressing an XP bar and then spending skill points you go and do things for experts that then give you a new uh a new ability right and she they're saying here this could be as simple as Landing a head shot 15 times getting a perfect score on the lock picking mini game three times or even simply making ncks Jealous by petting another creature uh again this system helps Foster a growth trajectory that feels organic and mindful rather than haphazard uh on the surface I actually like that they made this decision I actually haven't engaged with it yet but I think this was a good choice to avoid something that would feel sort of like hey I've kind of done this before um Kirk says uh bombastic side eye at the wide openen space assessment it feels fairly limited and restricted the way they described it Kirk it was almost like they were just saying like the star map makes it feel like it's open wide but that the game itself isn't that's that's why I thought that section was a little strange when they said that uh a smattering of Star Wars Outlaws mini games um there are mini games hidden hidden throughout some are more obvious like the lockpicking mechanic uh is one of the first elements you'll encounter it asks you to match the rhythm of a clicking safe with your controller and the slicing mechanic asks you to complete a line of Code by choosing the right numbers in the right order others will have you uh like food Mini games you can't find at each space Sports handy oh you can find at each space Sports handy little Droid operated restaurants it features a selection of quick time events K and nicks will indulge in to spot a new treat to eat uh which unlocks a new ability or talent for ncks as someone who does not super into q&as as I'm sorry qtees as a rule uh I didn't initially gravitate towards them but the developers knew what they were doing each interaction is so unbelievably adorable that they're impossible to resist all right roaming around for roaming sake okay the biggest signal for how much I genuinely enjoyed Star Wars Outlaws is how fervently I am kicking my feet in anticipation of playing more with so many different opportunities and challenges that you can face the world is one that I'm happy to just let myself live in there are still tiny gripes as there are pretty much with every game at one point a glitch meant uh my enemies were unintentionally invisible for a minute or so which admittedly did raise the stakes considerably a lot of the vent environments feel identical and if you look exclusively at the core gameplay loops on paper I can see why it would feel repetitive nevertheless uh it had a grip that kept me well and truly entertained that's all I want out of a Star Wars game I actually saw some commentary on this I believe um Jean was uh was commenting on Twitter uh quite a bit about elements of this about how like it just felt good to be sort of like in uh the Star Wars Universe uh even though there was repetitious elements not going to inside baseball but when you're reviewing a sizable game like like this a lot of your free time goes into making sure you've uncovered every rock and stone which I'm incredibly conscious of the privilege uh for some games this can almost feel like a chore for Star Wars Outlaws I felt genuine excitement every time I booted up the console it's not perfect but neither are the Scoundrels in the story that it relies upon where some might look at the lack of Polish and feel wanting I feel comfortable returning to this universe every day the past week was something that I felt eager to do uh not just obliged in any kind of way what massive entertainment has achieved is genuinely impressive so oh this is why they gave it uh it's a four and a half out of five stars not four stars so the thing at the top just isn't reading properly so they give it four and a half out of out of five stars this is one of the higher scores that we've seen uh and it is that's a 90 all right and here is the review over on pure dead gaming by none other than Kirkland gray uh regular co-host of mine on Monday afternoons and we will have him on to discuss this uh he put in about 40 hours and he is giving it an eight and he went with sort of the headline of uh and we're going to put this on the thumbnail and the title of that stream that it's fun over substance so again that um we're we're seeing that theme uh sort of poke through in all of the reviews that it's fun but maybe maybe it needed a little bit more time in the oven right or maybe they needed to do a little bit more uh depth in uh in some of their things uh and I'm not going to read every every single bit of this because I'm I'm just going to give you guys a scroll sample uh it's uh yeah I'm still scrolling I'm not I'm not done scrolling I'm not done scrolling it's kind of like when I have him on the show um it just keeps going uh we love you Kirk but he is a verbose person and uh not not surprising he's a verbose writer so what we're going to do is we're going to skip the fluff I know he's a good writer I read this um he did he in in and to be transparent here Ubisoft provided him a code uh and he says that I want to be clear uh I want to clear the air about visual Fidelity and image quality on the PS5 I reviewed it on PS5 not PC and the difference between the footage you might have seen from various outlets and creators during the preview cycle for this game which was captured on PC and what I was playing in the first uh in front of me on PS5 may be rather Stark Star Wars Outlaws is not an excessively pretty game on PS5 at least when assessed by modern standards Hogwarts Legacy Horizon forbidden West Final Fantasy Etc and it looks more like a PS for game okay so this is important for those of us that were like hey how's it look you know cuz the the footage was very different every every time we watched it right perhaps proving more comparable to something visually to the still visually striking Assassin's Creed Odyssey in my estimation the somewhat dated visuals don't undermine the overall experience to the extent that it becomes unenjoyable not even close but I felt the discrepancy was important to note given the footage that is out there along with people's expectations for what a PS5 game their purchasing is going to look like my evaluation is of my experience with Star Wars Outlaws performance mode specifically since that is the graphical setting I use for 99% of my times in games this is why we have Kirk on the show he's obviously an intelligent person uh I did switch to Quality mode briefly and did not notice any significant or or noteworthy improvements to visual Fidelity that would warrant the reduction in performance I also utilize the letter box cinematic mode the entire time I played to ostensibly boost the visual since fewer pixels needed to be rendered on screen my assessment is that with that feature implemented that being said the performance aspect of the performance mode was stable and reliable now I'll obviously have to test this for myself he and I had very different experiences in Rise of the Ronin he thought it was largely very smooth and not that bad I thought rise of the Ronin was pretty terrible in the open World areas so I think he is uh a little less sensitive to it so just bear that in mind all right I think he's I think he's telling the truth he he had a reliable experience but I don't feel like he's as sensitive to frame dips and stutters as some of us might be I do not think I ever dropped below 50 frames the entire 40 hours I spent with Star Wars Outlaws and the majority of the time I felt like I had a consistent 60 frames per second at least to my somewhat untrained eye so I appreciate that he says you know he's it's not I don't even know if his eye is not trained I just think some people aren't as sensitive to it right I think some people are not as sensitive to frame dips so they think that if they happen they're less severe or they just flat out don't notice them right uh you start in a gambling tourist attraction of kto uh happens with it happens to be her home I don't think anybody's really interesting uh in this uh as far as story goes but how do they set up the setting Stormtroopers patrol checkpoints asking for papers occasionally talking amongst each other uh an an Ambience or Ambience of a public address system for nearly uh for the nearby Spaceport locals are laughing and arguing with one another vendors are advertising their wees so it sounds like they set you know good good mood the indoor mood lighting implemented in Star Wars Outlaws usually showcased in Vivid Reds blues and greens duap posed with dark shadows and dimly lit textures is also phenomenal and does some serious heavy lifting in terms of making it feel like the player is actually in a Star Wars Cantina back alley or city epicenter I think it's good to point this out because from what I could tell from the trailers like they were trying to make at least those internal areas especially really feel uh like Star Wars thank you guys so much for tuning in and watching this Star Wars Outlaws review Roundup take a quick second and smash that like button uh double check that it's saving it make sure the thumbs up is sticking uh that does help me out helps my channel out hit subscribe we're going to be interviewing Kirk who wrote this review for our second show today he says the extent to which Star Wars Outlaws feels like Star Wars brought me an immeasurable amount of joy that didn't wear off in any short order this reminds me of some of the stuff that Gene Park was saying that like it feels like you're in Star Wars and that that does some of the as Kirk say some of the lifting right it makes it it makes it an enjoyable game because of that without doing extensive homework I'd contend that Star Wars Outlaws most isely Spaceport on tne is probably the most authentically Star Wars thing to ever exist in a Star Wars video game which amounts to ubisoft's intentional use of Hub space locations are filled with Organic and Lively NPCs and outlaws Faithfully adhere uh adhere sorry to and replicates the Aesthetics and tone of Star Wars um okay I just don't want to go to repetition if we're still talking about the same thing okay outside of these Lively authentic Hub cities to give it a sense of Star Wars functionality as a video game it fundamentally it's fundamentally Ghost Recon wildlands with the addition of Tomb Raider and Uncharted like spelunking intr troversial elements and with a pristine level of adherence and attention into detail to the Star Wars Universe additionally Ubisoft has gone uh for the type of Blockbuster single player narrative experience offered in those latter two games which has proven to be slightly outside its Wheelhouse in the past I offer Wildland specifically as the closest one toone example because I spent considerably more time with that uh than the recent breakpoint and because Star Wars Outlaws feels Cut From the Same Cloth as wildlands in respect to its rustically grounded open zones it's assortment of available side missions and treasure seeking opportunities and it's heavy emphasis on stealth based gameplay uh it's more evident from an early stage okay justifying the comparison is great let's get into more of the meat here stealth and I think this is important to read Because this is where some of the criticism we're seeing from people is landing is that the stealth can be bad frustrating or not that great and he says here when the stealth doesn't work however it's just plain frustrating so he up here he was saying that uh you know the moments play out almost as well as if they're scripted and they're nothing short of exhilarating there were many instances during my time with Outlaws where I felt like the coolest darn Smuggler infiltrator in this side of the outer rim so the stealth can be uh enjoyable but he says down here when it doesn't work it is frustrating he says I genuinely don't think it's a skill issue either because I played more than 200 hours of Hitman 1 2 and three and I'm a perfectionist when it comes to being covert and I don't think it's a skill issue either we're seeing other reviewers uh say say similar things about the fact that the stealth can be can be kind of frustrating I think it comes down to Outlaw's slightly rudimentary oops stealth mechanics and its insistence on over utilizing them despite their rudimentary nature encounters can quickly devolve into a total and utter chaos and it's not always a particular good kind on higher difficulty settings K can feel completely outgunned when going up against the empire which while realistic doesn't allow much forgiveness once the alarm inevitably sounds what's more Gunplay and combat generally don't feel all that engaging or multifaceted offer in surface level fun and bombastic moments but not much else the all too frequent tendency for stealth to devolve into an all hands- on Deck situation can often result in K being put down with Imperial Prejudice forcing the player to start again from a checkpoint which is likely much further back than desirable that's never enjoyable um that's not to say things can't be fun when they get hectic at one point I had an atst on my heels with what seemed like an entire Imperial Battalion in tow I was able to utilize corners and cover to make uh many Troopers or to take many Troopers down and slip into a ventilation shaft to elude those remaining however by that point I was playing on the lowest difficulty setting specifically for enemies I happily stuck with that setting because of the lower difficulty's propensity to create frenetic and exhilarating moments when the inconsistent and unreliable stealth caused the ban theodo to inevitably hit the fan got to love the the Star Wars uh idiom I'm not even slightly ashamed of that either given that storm troopers are notoriously terrible shots anyway according to Canon and it also saved me no small amount of time and frustration across a dozen or so infiltration type missions and added considerably to the fun Factor when the stealth lucky stars didn't want to align so it sounds to me like Kirk had a much better time by lowering the difficulty not because the game was hard but because the stealth just consistently kept devolving into chaos which it was like okay that doesn't really feel like what this is supposed to uh you know what's supposed to be happening you know I would I would imagine that many might feel the same way I would be interested to see too if others felt rushed I believe Jean Park indicated they felt rushed um to to get their reviews done without the crippling feeling of Oppression uh company uh Star Wars Outlaws placing me in situations where I was completely outgunned and would lose all my mission progress if I couldn't navigate the seemingly random variances of stealth I had an abundance of Fun Since whenever things got out of hand I just started blasting I was the hero of course I evaded the Empire and won the day that's just classic Star Wars now as previously noted the other half of Star Wars Outlaw core gameplay Loop is spelunking and rock climbing in the vein of the Uncharted in Tomb Raider Series this isn't exactly my cup of Corelli Cola so I can only say that it's more than serviceable the traversal certainly amounts to more than mindlessness uh to more than mindless although it's utilized with amusing frequency whenever K needs to get from point A to point B during the campaign and delving deep into derel caves and tunnels to acquire some lost data pad or coveted cash of upgrade parts has an unmistakable air of player fulfillment I noted earlier that Ubisoft has gone outside its usual recognizable formula and an attempt to deliver single player narrative experience the results are mixed personally most of the time I'd rather have been doing anything besides following the golden path okay so this is interesting for starters whether this is actually the case or not it feels like it takes more than a considerable amount of Parx to actually get to a point where K has a fully functioning ship that can travel to a location other than Tashara I estimated it took at least 10 hours to be granted the ability to go to another planet or Moon I may have stopped to smell the roses too many times which feels like a really long time in a game where the major selling point is being able to warp around the Star Wars Galaxy to a variety of ecosystems both literal and sociopolitical out dated Mission types contributed greatly to this extensive onboarding period I must have been forced to retry several different missions or collect uh uh of collective dozen times because they had an autof fail State built into the mission design such as being spotted in the stealth Mission or not staying close enough to a particular NPC while we jetted away on Speeders from an imperial Pursuit why do I need to stay close enough to a particular NPC or else be forced to replay a certain Mission segment why am I not given access to my blaster or combat abilities for a non-skippable stealth section that isn't Fun and isn't necessary are we still doing this with um are we still doing this with game design in 2024 yeah I mean I think in general this is fair feedback that like listen I the the staying close to the NPC thing we just don't need that ever again in any game uh chasing somebody why I we don't need Chase we we don't I think in games with like cars maybe it makes sense and maybe that's why they put this in there because they're Speeders I I loathe those types sub missions I don't think they're satisfying or fun it never feels like there's a skill there's an amount of skill that plays into it it's literally just like you're just holding down the trigger as long as you can and taking the best turns that you can it doesn't it doesn't lead to satisfying gameplay um yeah the the Spider-Man Chase missions are also equally terrible they just don't feel fun I don't know why they keep putting them in games who walks away from a Chase Mission and says I'm really glad they did that you know I want to do that seven more times to get a check mark um the brand of Storytelling isn't at all interesting Kay comes off as almost unbelievably naive and unpracticed for someone who uh purportedly grew up as a street urchin and has to utilize a particular skill set all of her life and able uh to be able to survive while this inherent contradiction is admittedly endearing in some scenes it can require an excessive suspension of Del of disbelief from the player likewise the plot and the premise of K unwittingly breaking into the biggest mansion on her home planet within the game's opening hours necessitating her to assemble a crew to break into it again just doesn't land for me I like K on the run in the outer rim navigating The Wretched hives of scum and villainy and earning the respect of the favor of the Huts not we have Oceans 11 at home even beyond that so now he's going to talk about nd5 and this is the part of Kirk's review that kind of made my eyebrows go up um it felt like in uh any story relevant character I formed an attachment to ultimately stabbed me in the back which made me wary as a player caring about any new additions nd5 the imposing Droid Showcase in the game's cover art doesn't even make an appearance until about 10 or more hours into the game and he isn't even K's Droid he's essentially a Lackey for the wannabe Hot Shot who commissions Kay to do the heist and what's more nd5 and K have hardly any chemistry together moreover those looking for a Cassie Andor and k2so type of relationship here will likely be disappointing so yeah those are light spoilers I feel fine reading that that's that's kind of a bummer cuz he seemed like a real centerpiece of the marketing moments with K and nicks are a highlight but the consolation just further lends itself to how circumstantially isolated K feels to me it was K and Nicks against the Galaxy and the other characters consistently felt like Sideshow distractions the entire narrative premise pushed me to elevate her reputation and capabilities in The Syndicate driven underworld almost exclusively through side content rather than accurate untrustworthy uh I'm sorry rather than aure AC crew untrustworthy allies to pull off a heist I had no interest in undertaking since the game had already had me break into the Mansion before uh when the entire culmination of the story is a sensibly built around doing something that the player has already experienced I'd have to imagine what is going that is going to push players toward wanting to do almost anything else um I bounced off Star Wars space combat exploration quite hard but that's admittedly very subjective I had difficulty controlling the ship especially when Scavenging derx I couldn't replicate docking in an imperial space station when I had docked there earlier in a scripted mission of the campaign leaving me to conclude it was just a one-off dog fights were fun at first but once I'd experienced a few it felt like I had a grasp of what they offered overall the ship gameplay just wasn't for me alternatively it was the syndicates and the side activities that I found to be the most compelling by an extensive margin so it seems like he enjoyed the side content more than some of the main content uh the levels of intrigue to the seemingly vast underbelly of the Ubisoft massive has given life uh it can hardly be understated um I don't want to read all that the side content's good is essentially what he's saying trying to get the bullet points because there's a lot of other reviews we want to check out um the syndicates come to play I have to attest that they are the game's best feature early on K is introduced three major syndicates that are fighting for uh they're fighting a cold war against each other for influence and control uh they essentially amounts to factions that Kay can earn favor with depending on her decisions and side jobs that she takes uh furthermore there are several instances in the main campaign where Kay must choose which syndicates to court uh often in the middle of conducting high stakes job it is consistent and it's consistent consistently at the expense of The Syndicate that she doesn't choose to align with the result is a balancing act where the player is trying to rise up the ranks of recognition in the Underworld and acquire access to additional jobs with higher payouts but also needs to balance favor with all three factions so as not to become a pariah with any of them in fact K's reputation can get so low with The Syndicate that they will actually put a bounty on her and the player will have to contend with hit squads since to take her down conversely K can become held in such high regard that she receives exclusive gear sets with unique abilities such as being able to elude the empire higher and more effectively and guards will even speak to her with a certain reverence I even found the difference uh the different contract Brokers essentially handlers to be much more compelling than any of the reoccurring characters in The Game's made story story shout out to Dana uh these details make experiencing Star Wars Outlaws so engaging and cool the systems are so intrinsically gratifying that I can't conceive that a Star Wars fan would not get ample enjoyment out of engaging with them I couldn't help but smile when a pike guard said this one can be trusted she has proven been a proven great help to us as Kay walked by a checkpoint where she was previously denied access before working to gain substantial favor with the organization it made it all more personally difficult when I had to double cross the Pikes later but such is business after putting 40 hours into the game I can say engaging with these systems become significantly more shallow and repetitive later on exemplified by the fact that I've been able to maintain an excellent reputation with all three major syndicates without much difficulty but that cannot undermine the sheer Bliss I experience during those first 20 to 30 hours yo Dan welcome back to member plus guys always remember to celebrate those uh member plus and VIPs they count towards our weekly goal you guys have a huge Head Start because you went crazy on Friday and I rolled over uh some of the ones the 106 of the members that you did on Friday that were EXC uh that were uh extra all right here's what Kirkland gray uh not just friend of the show but you know sort of a an ongoing member of the show he's my co- post uh for my second show every Monday and he says here and we're going to interview him about this game and his experience with it for our second segment today he says Star Wars Outlaws is an obvious labor of love that accomplishes certain things that no prior Star Wars game has achieved before to that end Star Wars Outlaws offers the most visceral lived in Star Wars Video Game World for players to engage with and enjoy despite its glaring shortcomings and deliver a largely wholesome experience I think I want to ask him about this in particular it offers the most lived in Star Wars Video Game World for players to engage with I want to ask him about that on the show comparing it to Fallen order and Survivor cuz I feel like Fallen order and Survivor are very very good in that regard uh with each player's momentto moment experience may vary oh I'm sorry while it may vary given Star Wars Outlaws propensity for frustration inciting moments or for raise into the mundane the closeat hand presence of immersive fun and wonder remains a constant there it is Kirkland gray here's his here's his list he gave the game an eight and he says good stuff Uncharted adjacent tra travel and exploration high level of immersion in Star Wars adherence organic populated Hub spaces with intriguing NPCs abundance of fantastic side activities engaging Syndicate progression uh and regression and then the bad stuff over Reliance on inconsistent stealth mechanics inclusion of outdated autof fail Mission types lackluster narrative storytelling clumsy and unintuitive space flight navigation General lack of depth the combat and systems um you skip the part that explains that about saach about the out what Outlaws essentially is sorry I know you've uh devoted a lot of time oh oh oh WHYY it's lived in well no that's great Kirk now we're giving reason people for people to watch the second segment if you guys want to know why he thinks that that'll be in the second segment today I'll interview him about it uh rather than give away the farm for free right now um wait hang on we don't want that on screen I don't want Star Wars clips on screen all right so IGN gave this a seven so we're going down in score as we read through this if you've never been here before I'm usually in this scene just talking to the audience doing a daily gaming talk show I will be jumping into Star Wars Outlaws gameplay tomorrow so make sure that you don't miss that I'm I'm obviously wanting to give my thoughts on it this is one of the games I was really looking forward to this year but the more I saw the game the more worried I became I said it's probably going to land in the low 80s on Metacritic it's Landing in the high 70s so I was pretty close in that prediction um and worried that the game is largely going to disappoint me but Kirk's review gives me some hope let's continue to read reviews that just we going down so we read a 90 Kirks was an 80 basically an eight is an 80 and then this is a seven this is a 70 uh grey Bush gaming with 14 months says thank you for all the great work L always give me comping listen in the morning well thank you so much if you guys are enjoying the show a great way to support the show is to hit the like button and then consider gifting a member or becoming a member right now we're working on a milestone we would love to see 600 people at member plus and above meaning if you have an uh if you have a a membership here that's either gifted or you're paying for it uh upgrade to the $6 uh member Plus or the $10 VIP that gets you into more content and we celebrated just this last Saturday I did an IRL stream in my backyard and just hung out with member plus and above and you can unlock another one of those as well as some other great things people want me to play like a dating simulator and at a thousand I'm going to build a PC on stream so um I don't like reading the opening fluff keep in mind guys that this game does take place during Empire and Jedi which is the height of Imperial power um and thank you Joker Quinn for gifting a member and bumping the line uh you guys are off to a nice strong start this uh week every 25 I gift five so uh keep that going and then I'll I'll pay up whenever we hit those those uh those goals each day all right so let's scroll down here and get into the meat of it uh here we go they say what follows is a 20-hour string of Reckless rescue missions and Shady underworld dealings as Kay and nicks crisscross their way around the main planets okay um they say that the story is consistent entertaining and it takes Kay through some recognizable places like Java's Palace on Tata and some new like the hulking High Republic Cruiser wreckage on Tara okay so they seem to like the story they say it's entertaining throughout although 2018 solo a Star Wars story treaded similar Turf on the big screen to underwhelming effect Outlaws Crime Story feels like something fresh at least as far as games go since it's almost entirely removed from the Godlike battles between light and dark wielders of the for and case profit-driven motives mean it's mostly only adjacent to the Rebels versus Empire conflict of Andor Instead This is a straightforward Heist story uh that just happens to be set in the rich sci-fi fantasy universe that so many of us grew up with and adore and it is a lovingly Recreation as it's ever been Outlaws is a bit like a guy Richie Caper only with Pikes in place of Pikes and by its end I'd witness enough shocking crosses uh I'm sorry crosses and double crosses that its plot started to resemble the tangle of HDMI chords behind the television I said go that's it's pretty good all right um her speeder can be upgraded it's not just about getting from point A to point B breaking in okay K has her own special set of skills when it comes to sneaking her way into a facility uh here we go this is what I was looking for overall Outlaw stealth is somewhat uneven sometimes it's far too easy like when I was able to do the Trident tested Assassin's Creed distract and dispatch routine on multiple enemies luring uh one after the other to where I was hiding in the exact same Thicket of long grass and stacking up their unconscious bodies like firewood yet at other times it was wildly unpredictable like when I'd somehow trigger an alarm performing a stealth takedown even though it appeared that no one else was around instead more often than I'd like my efforts to remain hidden would oh more than often I'd like my efforts to remain hidden would evaporate things would get loud and a number of other problems would present themselves yeah this is what I was interested in cuz we are seeing feedback about the stealth uh as well as the combat that's that's not all that great it's not that it's bad the reviews generally read as if it just isn't that great Outlaws combat serves up some solid cover-based shooting with authentic sounds and Punchy smoke and Spark effects with each Blaster bolt impact but precious little in the way of new ideas it's less bad batch and more basic bit uh it's always seemed like a red Barrel delivery it always seemed to be red Barrel delivery day in every combat Arena that Kay arrives in and I use these explosive targets um in almost every encounter to thin the Stormtrooper and scumbag hordes before picking off the survivors and using an old school active reload mechanic to manage my blaster's heat there's always the challenge of knowing when to detonate them or to take them out uh most of the enemies but that's the same thing we've been doing for decades so while it's effective it doesn't make Outlaw combat stand out these simplistic shootouts um can also be brought to a faster conclusion via the use of K's adrenaline rush move which charges up while she's under attack and allows her to slow time and then Mark and execute multiple Targets in one rapid hit firing burst almost identical to the Dead Eye targeting from Red Dead Redemption it's useful and satisfying for the most part although I did find Kay would occasionally bump some stylish would pump some stylish slow motion Blas rounds directly into the cover in front of her rather than the target I had selected that's never fun uh it felt a bit limiting that Kay can only permanently carry her Blaster and grenades in her inventory but weapons dropped by enemies like the a300 Blaster rifles and the shield equipment Z6 rotary Cannon can be picked up used and discarded once they're out of ammo in a neat touch Nicks can be sent out to collect these weapons for you like it's a game of firearm fetch however what really irks me about Outlaw's approach to secondary weapons is how much it goes out of its way to make you drop them do a melee attack drop your weapon crawl into a vent drop your weapon climb a wall or ladder drop your weapon who programmed this RoboCop yeah I actually think that's fair feedback right it would be nice when you're you know going from one location to another to not feel like oh I got to drop this secondary weapon uh that I picked up what's good feed I see you in the chat so far what we've read today guys what's your feedback do you feel like this is encouraged you to buy to wait or skip where are you guys on the on the on the meter right now if I pick up a sniper rifle it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect that I should be able to carry it with me to a high enough vantage point to best put it to use it's especially annoying given how often I was hit and killed instantly while behind cover by enemy snipers in elevated positions how come those Imperial jerks get Advanced carry weapon up ladder technology and I don't yeah I think that's fair criticism simple and reheated as it generally is I definitely warmed up to the combat a bit more as time went on particularly once I was able to upgrade my blaster with alternative shot modes like ion to turn droids into spark showers and temporarily disable enemy Shields and the power mode to unleash charged up blasts to blow up the heavily armored guards I'm seeing um I'm seeing wait wait wait skip I was hyped a little skip skip skip waste of time wait probably skip big wait long wait you be for me um Kirk says I would literally pay $5 all our Resident Evil remakes DLC to have a blaster rifle grenade launcher and a sniper just to carry around yeah it feels weird that they wouldn't turn maybe they just didn't want her to feel like a soldier they wanted her to feel more like this Rough and Tumble scoundrel that was like picking up weapons and kind of making them you know making do you know like we like we you see with Han Solo in the in the Death Star right he doesn't like keep any of the guns you know maybe they were going for more for that Vibe but I feel like given that it's a video game you got to consider is that going to be an enjoyable experience to constantly leave behind what feel like you know serviceable or good weapons you know um uh I already read this right here that effectively gives you three weapons to swap between okay that still isn't isn't great I also appreciated that Outlaw's use of in-game challenges to evolve K's ability set used in favor of the traditional skill tree added some rewarding uh bonuses and objectives to complete such as performing a certain number of melee kills to unlock the usual false surrender move to surprise enemies who are already aware of you still at no point did this combat system ever feel as flexible or as fun as the best games in ubisoft's own Farcry series and fights start to feel pretty repetitive outside of the rare encounter with Pro droids or the one off scrap with a Rancor which changes things up slightly by incorporating even larger red barrels moped Mike with three months as a membership says glad I'm able to catch the stream every day uh been three years on the night shift uh soon hope to be back listening to you every day again you haven't missed a beat thank you so much moped Mike I appreciate that renewal of your membership speeder Speeder Bike combat is even more restrictive although it does serve as the best source of intentional comedy you can find in Outlaws annoyingly uh you have no option to free aim while in the saddle instead you have to try and Dodge the Blaster bolts of any attackers in Hot Pursuit while your adrenaline meter charges until you can finally unleash a slow motion blast to bring their Chase to a fiery halt the problem is because you're usually firing enemies behind you often times the camera would take too long to swing back around to face forward and I'd come out of one of these takedowns and crash straight into a rock that I couldn't see coming just like one of those Scout Troopers chasing Luke on endor's Forest moon face planting into trees uh by the same token I got plenty of laughs from speeding headlong towards Cliff faces pumping the brakes at the last second and watching my pursuers Blaze right by me and smear themselves against uh the ENC the incaran so at least speeder combat seemed as perilous for them as it did for me um what are what are some of you guys saying here wait until all the DLC is released and it's packaged at like $40 uh says Eugene yeah I mean I'm definitely reading almost what I expected to read you know it it's it seems like everything is just sort of serviceable it's like the combat's fine you know the speeder combat's fine everything's just sort of fine like it it just it's all serviceable it's all getting the job done but they just it's not really it's not really um you know going Beyond uh beyond that so um so since this is Star Wars Outlaws also feature space combat and rarely could I ever emerge from a light speed jump in case Trailblazer ship and not crash headlong into a dog fight that felt authentic to the films slinking off to bully some Tie fighters uh did offer a nice way to blow off steam every once in a while as a break from the face to- face skull dugery uh skull duggery down on each planet's surface although I didn't invest too much in the ship modifications outside of the can I just stop that from rotating thank you it's like constantly flashing um I didn't they dided the addition of an auto turret and a rapid fire Cannon uh since the modest challenge presented uh by my orbital stop um just stop seeing this ad uh I've seen it multiple times uh in fact I didn't spend a great deal of time exploring space in general since although there are resources to be found floating amongst the various chunks of debris my scoundrel pants Pockets were always overflowing uh that I swiped from almost every flat surface in every base that I entered so it didn't seem worth the effort to ever go canvasing for more so it sounds like they didn't feel the need to go into space my man Fen with a f i just stop it um thanks for the $15 Super Chat Sven been meaning to send you some beer money anyways but sounds like Outlaws is perfectly fine Star Wars action games nothing groundbreaking or revolutionary and that's oh hey um you're going to play it on UB plus says Lone Wolf if you want me to buy anything at your recommendations Fen let me know cuz 15 is that's that's an easy that's an easy scoop up uh I've been in the mood to try some new stuff anyway um a lot of you probably seen Star Wars game before but one of the Outlaws most interesting and novel features is The Syndicate system which reminded me of the reputation system used in the outer worlds basically you can't really complete okay so they're going to explain how it works and here's the thing we just read this in Kirk's review and Kirk seems to think similarly that this is like one of the better parts of uh of the game um you can't really complete a quest over the course of the campaign without taking off one of the four main families right yeah yeah yeah and and and Kirk um oh my gosh hang on a second what in the freak did I do this is why this is why people run ad blocker okay this is why people run ad blocker you understand that like it's it's obnoxious like it I've seen the ad Move Along Move Along move along it's just it's annoying at this point Point constantly flashing and it's making it's making the website chug like look I can I can now highlight text without any lag or any weirdness and when this thing Cycles it like makes it to where I can't highlight text it like makes the whole page lag um Melrose Mike with the VIP uh 43 months uh one month closer to four years love the content keepy the excellent work dude thank you so so much um like I don't mind ads dude I know ads make the world go around like we all got to we all got to make our ad Revenue somehow but this is obnoxious um it's worth pointing out this isn't Mass Effect none of the numerous decisions I made in Outlaws seem to make a significant difference to the overall outcome of the story but they did effectively make me feel like a truly dirty rotten scoundrel well in the way that Kirk described it it does impact your gameplay like you can't go into certain areas and things like that or they won't talk to you so I I think that's cool I I think it needs to affect the the overall outcome of the game um okay here's some praise about the uh about the quest design see see it's lagged because of this stupid ad uh where Outlaws Quest design really excels though is in taking uh seemingly innocuously side objectives and spinning them out into exciting multi-stage Adventures that regularly took me by surprise this again seems to agree with uh with what Kirk was saying that some of the that some of the side stuff is more interesting than the main stuff Kirk essentially echoed this uh in his review one memorable example of this is a quest that sends you to find an upgrade part but one thing leads to another and another and another and another and suddenly you're emerging from a sarax m and straight into an exciting escape from a huge sandworm it's the Lively left turn stretches like these where Outlaws really shines by stringing together countless Star Wars references and Uncharted style moments of spectacular action and adventure and there are plenty of quests like this that I've undertaken so far given how I passed by plenty of side quest opportunities that looked just as innocuous as this one at first glance there are likely many more that I haven't found yet so it sounds like it's well worth going off the beaten path let's read let's read their verdict before we go on to some of the lower scores so we are doing a Star Wars Outlaws review Roundup right uh a little bit of a review Roundup here and we've gone and read a 90 uh an 80 and we just read a 70 a seven out of 10 and this is their verdict it's ironic that K ship is called the Trailblazer since there's actually not a whole lot of ideas in Star Wars Outlaws that haven't been done before in other action and open World Adventures instead it's quite like the Millennium Falcon a bucket of bolts held together with repurpose parts and prone to breaking down but at its best it's more than capable of jolting your pleasure centers into Star Wars uh hyperspace a clever Syndicate system brings real weight to almost every task you choose to undertake some of which uh have creative Quest designs that can conjure up some genuinely stunning blind sides having a pal like Nicks at your side the entire time only adds extra Dimension to K's fairly generic Smuggler character but also gives her an enhanced set of useful abilities but even he can't quite make its stealth and combat feel any less rich rigid and repetitive and the odds of avoiding the many glaring technical issues president launch are 3720 to1 but you probably didn't want to tell me me to tell you the odds okay that's clever ending uh this was written by Tristan on the PS5 and uh Star Wars is a fun Intergalactic Heist adventure with great exploration but it's hindered by simple stealth repetitive combat and few too many bugs at launch Jason shrier says review codes for Star Wars Outlaws went out last Monday with an embargo for this morning got to wonder how that impacted the reception it boggles the mind that a company would spend four plus years on God knows how many millions of dollars on a game and give reviewers six days yeah that does seem um that does seem short I mean Kirk got 40 hours in but I think Kirk's in a situation where he could devote an inordinate amount of time to one game the review a lot of these people probably don't feel that way um yeah hang on I've got to close their review it the IGN's page has just become a a dadgum nightmare uh Star Wars Outlaws is fun space adventure that doesn't quite reach its potential so this is uh VGC um Julian is the one that wrote this one and we got three out of five stars um so so let's scroll down here factions are introduced here we go the game does a good job from the outset of setting up the Clans like they're going to be a massive factor in your playthrough but the reality is far less interesting for example outside of two specific instances there is virtually no impact on the main story what impact there is is so minor that you can practically feel where the developer realized they'd have to execute the story moment in such a way that could fit every Clan Star Wars outlaw spends a lot of time telling you the clan you side with is important but the benefits are minor and largely cosmetic not only this but even if you're at the lowest possible rating with the clan you can buy your way back into their Good Fortune via easily found in-game items okay but here's here's my problem with this feedback that's more game impacting than most games I've ever played the fact that you had to go get items to get back into their good graces as Kirk pointed out there's actual rewards that give you certain abilities if you if you you know get all the way through and get all the way ranked up I agree that it's always a bit of a bummer when they don't want to just take the risk and say um you know hey we're going to have this actually impact the story right six days isn't enough says Kirk I've had to do much smaller turnarounds uh this isn't even my day job the other reviewers are doing this for a living I was very happy with the amount of time given uh Jason as usuals up his own butt I but generally speaking Kirk and this could just be maybe a lack of experience on your part I think that the typical turnaround time is 14 days the handful of times I've gotten review codes I've had two weeks and I've had other I've had other people other YouTubers and other review Outlets bemoan the fact that some companies go with the onewe turnaround and they're like that's really really tough I mean to your point I think you might be stepping on your own tail a little bit you're like well I don't do this for a living yeah sure so you were able to slide this into your schedule they do this for a living meaning they were writing reviews playing games and doing other things they also you have to consider that a lot of the industry was at Gamescom last year so they gave people one week to review this not only during Gamescom which means there's a ton of gaming news coverage and a ton of Articles and videos that have to be made and in the midst of that they're also supposed to play this this big expansive AAA game 14 days is 14 days is not normal some only give 2 to 3 days I think that 14 days should be normal 2 to 3 days is ludicrous how could you possibly review a game in 2 to 3 days if it has even a remotely sizable campaign that seems absurd you're missing the entire conversation by the review Community around it yeah the reviewing Community is all saying that it seems like that was a that was too short of a window especially given the window was quite literally during Gamescom so there's all kinds of trailers that had to be reacted to commentated on broken down discussed um written about um you know if it was like a really really dry news week I think a week is plenty of time so um okay moving on they say the clan system occasionally manifest in game play when you're tasked with entering an area that's uh Clan Affiliated so your standing will impact if the enemy start to attack you instantly again this feels like a big issue in the early game but it's largely forgotten as the game progresses now th this is something that you know Kirk touched on um that it it it didn't it didn't quite really um you know come to fruition as the game went on it it felt more uh repetitive and non- impactful as as time went on a Nintendo Direct partner Showcase in Indie World double header is set for August 27th tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. it's going to run about 40 minutes you're 100% right about Gamescom I still have hardly any idea what happened because I had my head down during this review right and so you got to choose between the two gaming press to to your point they don't have that luxury because this is their job so they don't have the luxury of being like well all that matters is Star Wars Outlaws you know speaking of gameplay Star Wars Outlaws is a third person shooter with higher than expected higher than expected emphasis on stealth so this is a negative review I would take this as a negative review they gave it a 60% the Gunplay is serviceable serviceable akin to Naughty Dogs Uncharted series but it's never standout the main narrative sets up some excellent cinematic gunfights but the random battles out in the world aren't anything special the game stealth systemar Lely revolves around using Nicks K's utterly adorable companion to distract your enemy or interact with an alarm in order to either take the enemy down or sneak past them the stealth is never hard and towards the end of the game we began to realize quite uh quite so easy it was to Sprint past most guards but it also never massively intrusive um Blackmouth wukong's Xbox release is indefinitely delayed due to a memory leak bug um ecstasis met several Xbox insiders and developers at Gamescom who informed him about a technical issue impacting the release of Blackmouth Wukong according to the Insiders a memory League bug is causing significant crashes in performance issues on the Xbox consoles due to that the game hasn't passed the bug detection test and has been indefinitely delayed uh until they managed to optimize the game for the series X in the end yes the developers are working hard to remedy the situation and once they receive the necessary certification a release date will follow ecstasis added that Blackmouth Wukong failed their bug detection test twice which is why the game has been delayed indefinitely hopefully the fix will arrive soon so that means that when Microsoft uh tried to answer the question um about like and they tried to make it seem like there was some secret exclusivity deal that was bogus right like we all said that it was bogus they are en counting some kind of a memory leak issue with the Xbox series X ands version specifically I don't understand why that version would only be experiencing the problem though or is there a memory leak issue on PC memory leak on Xbox but not PC that's the first place my brain went Eugene I'm like what I don't understand is there are there memory leak issues on PC I don't get that that doesn't make any sense what makes the series X and S have an issue with it specifically I don't understand unless they had to make adjustments to that version specifically which is where the issue came from I don't know so there was no secret exclusivity deal it's so hard for not me to not be like yeah it's the series s because the series s has the memory bottleneck right that's the bottleneck and it sounds like that's maybe where the problem lies they had to optimize the game for the series s in optimizing for the series s they've encountered some kind of a problem I don't know what's remember when I said minimum required memory for Steam and everybody told me that my take was stupid well it seems like it maybe is playing a factor right well we went to the minimum required specs of black myth Wukong I'm like there's no secret PlayStation exclusivity deal here they they want a minimum requ ired memory on Steam is is higher than the usable memory of the series s you guys remember when I made that tweet and everybody was like this guy doesn't know what he's talking about it was like what do you mean if they're saying minimum required memory is this and the S has less than that that's going to cause an issue so much for the secret exclusivity deal K and NX are the Undisputed highlights of the game k played by humberly Gonzalez is a warm Earnest protagonist that never feels like she's doing a Han Solo impression K and nicks have to carry the entire game and considering one of them can't speak they do an excellent job much like Cal and bd1 they feel like natural additions to the Star Wars Universe the game's uh strong writing carries across its main story to its smaller Side Stories even down to random Collectibles the game mostly avoids the Trap of dangling Doug a dozen Legacy characters in front of you uh it's pitched as the first open World Star Wars game games uh but we're rather disappointed with the game's four main planets only three of the planets Tashara Tata and a third we won't spoil are fully explorable kajimi is essentially just a city that while detailed and large isn't what you'd expect from an open world area tne is the best of the bunch it's large and each of the settlements feels full of conversations uh to listen to uh and buildings to stalk through uh we acknowledge that getting uh the chance to explore a large scale tne is essentially just Star Wars porn but it's it's also the game's best area for content and writing and writing perspective uh not simply due to Nostalgia while the game isn't overstuffed with things to do in the typical Ubisoft sense the side content that is there suffers from a different issue outside of credits which are incredibly easy to come by the reward for almost every side mission or contract is tied to your standing with the various factions as mentioned previously the faction system doesn't end up being very important and the rewards for being to one faction or the other are so minor that an increased reputation with those factions is no great reward we encountered several technical issues during our playthrough on PS5 this included things like characters disappearing out of the world our speeder disappearing leaving us floating midair as we sped across the planet multiple voice lines playing at once and interactable elements not appearing and the most egregious bug we encountered Nicks became entirely unusable thus making the area's puzzle entirely broken the only fix was to load a save from 3 hours previous we also encountered our share of hard crashes though the game's generous autosave meant that it was more annoying than catastrophic yo whiskey neat uh bumps the member line for the week by renewing his VIP says love the review Roundup sounds like wait for a sale uh for me we use the favors quality mode which runs at 40 FPS and is available to those on screen supposed FF vrr this is a nice balance between the choppy quality setting and the blurry uh but steady performance mode they're saying that the performance mode is blurry but steady that's interesting I wonder what method they're using Star Wars Outlaws does many thing well but we're left disappointed that so few of its elements achieve greatness the various syndicates are set up strongly in the game's opening but they fall to the side as the game progresses leaving the reputation system feeling largely underutilized T is a standout what the game doesn't do much with this other planets that we would have liked you can play through Star Wars Outlaws and have an enjoyable time as we did but you'll be left yearning for a sequel that takes all its best bits of which there are plenty and delivers it to the fullest for now it's a good step into the wider Galaxy but won't trouble lists won't trouble lists of the Star Wars Adventures ever I I don't feel like this I don't feel like I read a 60% review I feel like I read a 7 70% review they weren't that scathing like even look at their pros and cons right here Pros exploring tne is a joy great writing across the main narrative and side content pre-rendered cut scenes are stunners even if there aren't many K and nicks are excellent protagonists and then the cons reputation system is underbake side content is repetitive and doesn't offer great rewards consistent technical issues on the PS5 I am actually grateful they mention this because a lot of the times I feel like technical issues don't get mentioned in reviews because the the the reviewers just generally think that you know oh a day one patch is going to fix all this stuff right so but I this doesn't this this doesn't look like a list of pros and cons and the review didn't read like a 60% this this reads like a seven I don't I'm not telling them they did they they did they gave it the wrong score I was just waiting for them to get more scathing yo good morning feed I see you in the chat like I do I I was waiting for them to be more scathing I was like where where's the where's the harsh criticism they never really ever got that harsh I feel like a six out of 10 is a pretty bad score but again this is why I think them doing Stars they might feel like a three out of five is fair you know given this and they don't think of this as a 60% they think of oh it's three out of five stars but the fact that this gets interpreted on Metacritic as a 60% I don't feel like I read a revieww of a 60% I felt like I read a review of a you know a pretty solid seven maybe it what maybe you're right Mr B maybe it was a seven out of 10 and they lowered their score because of the tech issues that's fair but then the question would be should you then you know say hey if patched I'd bump my score I think that would be helpful like listen right now I got to give this thing you know three stars which is a 60% I'll give it three and a half I'll bump it to a if they patch this stuff I think that's I think that'd be a fair way to do it I actually would rather people do this though if I'm honest I would rather them say there's technical issues and then they lower the score I think that's better than like what happened with Jedi Survivor where nobody said anything and we all thought the game was going to be amazing and then the game comes out and it has a bunch of technical issues so I'm not being critical of the review I just didn't feel like I read a very I didn't feel like I I read a very critical or negative review and yet it has a negative score I would much prefer though somebody somebody take off points and mention technical issues because I feel like they get glossed over a lot of the times they say the side content is a negative While others say it's some of the better Parts well no they said some of the side content was good they just said that it got repetitive so I don't think they were necessarily saying was bad they were just saying yeah it's good but you know keep in mine uh you know it's it it gets a little bit repetitive there'll be no mention of the Nintendo switch successor during either of the presentations guessing this won't be on the game of the year stage no no I told people it didn't have a shot based off all that I had seen I I said it would be low 80s and it's high 70s so I mean I was well within the hemisphere of where this one landed which funny enough said that I said that black myth Wukong would land really high you know would land high 80s and be a game of the year Contender and the general public thinks that and the review Outlets don't which is interesting um Okami tweets and says Star Wars allos needs a few patches to deal with the bugginess kind of hard to do stealth when stuff like this happens let's take a peek at this tweet here see what's going on you guys have got to see this one I'll let you see it hang on one second that's pretty good got a uh nice nice clip on Twitter here from Okami about why uh why they might need to get some bug fixes in place I love the Han Solo outfit Kaboom come over here uh she's making the best of it oh that a good head shot you know I know the bug was comical and it created chaos but I actually thought the combat looked okay there like she made the best of oh this guy's glitched out she made the best of it you know I actually thought the combat wasn't too bad given given the situation yeah the graphics look rough Dave the graphics look rough that was something that Kirk said he said listen he played on PS5 he was like no this is not um this does not look like a like a PS5 game yeah uh we know where it takes place to everything's rendered in great detail Intel can be gathered unfortunately so they have a bunch of Praise right and then they say unfortunately when you leave the cities to begin the game playay proper the feeling quickly Fades away all right here we go I don't want to sound like a dismissive mid90s fifth generation video game critic who would whine about older genres such as Platformers for doing the standard video game things or what not but this is a Ubisoft action adventure game so pretty much all the standard generic things you would expect from a U game at the point are in Star Wars Outlaws the open world exploration Parts where you stumble across various landmarks the parts where you scope out enemy bases to sneak through and Mark foes the part where the game splits into three sections with their own plots the climbing sections where you have to a dash of Uncharted I'm not going to insult your intelligence by re-explaining the formula so let's just say that it's mostly competent save the occasional stiff controls and try to focus on whatever new or notable additions there are one of the big twists in Star Wars Outlaws is the use of factions okay so they're going to describe factions we know how it works it's not the most unique concept but one that could add a decent amount of Challenge and trying to balance K's reputation for all four factions it could but it doesn't because this part of Star Wars outlas is undermined by the uh by its options and how to approach it there are certain jobs from Brokers like delivering items or planting listing devices that that if done correctly only result in a positive reputation boost along with other things like delivering certain data cards you can find to a Clan's Merchants so I just pick those options when needed and as a result I finish the game with K and good or excellent standings with all four factions without breaking a sweat her reputation only dipping whenever the plot demanded it um now you could take this a handful of ways right you could take this a handful of ways you figured out how the mechanics worked engag with the mechanic and then saw success right and and and that's a good thing right it sounds like the the the feedback is it's not it's not difficult it's like as long as you like even remotely pay attention to it you're going to keep your faction reputation up so it sounds like the feedback is not that like the player can't have impact the feedback is it's so easy that it doesn't feel impactful it doesn't help that the broker jobs tend to quickly become repetitive I remember doing two separate deliveries for the Pikes and Crimson Dawn that end up being the same job the same map uh the same pickup Point marked by an empty container the same path the same drop off point all despite coming from bitter enemies and once I was good with all of them there was no incentive to risk Hay's reputation the game tries to tempt you with the ability to double cross a faction after completing their broker job by offering more credits and a reputation boost with another faction at the cost of a reputation drop but it never came across as being worth it honestly you have to actively try to get your reputation with the clan to anything below poor let alone the lowest rank that sends out the death squads yeah so again it seems like they needed to increase the potency of this you know hey if you double cross we're going to give you this amazing weapon you know and you're you would consider it you would consider it you'd be like all right well sure I'll I'll double cross those guys for that awesome weapon bad reputation I know I'm harping on this feature quite a bit but considering that Star Wars Outlaws has a story in a setting that revolves around these underworld syndicates and that this gameplay feature was one of the more notably advertised ones it just seems baffling that it is ultimately amounts to nothing as long as you play your cards right oh it amounts nothing as long as you play your cards right it even seems like some later missions were even banking on players having negative reputations having you travel into various faction territories and expecting players to have to sneak around the non-restricted sections but nope do everything right and you can just Waltz through on your way to an objective marker it's quite the letdown needless to say see the other thing I'm curious about though so as they describing this will this will this potentially land on the average player differently like if you play through the game more linearly or you don't pay as much attention to this stuff you might have negative reputation at this point in the game but like hyper attentive review Outlet players or YouTubers that are like combing over every nook and cranny none of this is getting by you you they're not they're not sneaking one past the goalie here so I wonder if like the average gamer who doesn't pay attention to this is going to get late game and be like oh shoot this faction hates me and now that I'm I'm going to have to sneak in here and what Zub bear is saying the bulk of the audience must not like consequences for their actions that too like you know maybe maybe they don't want people to feel like oh there there's these harsh consequences it could go either way I just wonder if if you don't pay attention to it and you just kind of play through the game ha Hazard Le and kind of ignore it are you going to end up having a more um juxtaposed experience at the end where like one faction loves you and another faction hates you Kirk says the just waling through part is really cool though like if they like you you can just walk right in and sabotage their server or whatever and that feels really gratifying you're like they don't even know they love me yeah I mean I I I think that's kind of what I was coming at it from Kirk I was kind of coming at it from the angle of yeah like if they if you've if you've done your due diligence and you've taken care of all these things being able to have that impact your game play is a good thing it sounds like their issue is that it's just too easy maybe maybe it just needed to be a little bit more challenging or something or maybe they should have made double crossing one of the one of the factions more appealing so that you did have to put yourself into that position to where oh these guys aren't going to like me now but I got a great weapon as a result or something what a weekend got a loano stream and I sold about $750 worth of stuff on eBay yo nice dude uh guys take a quick second and smash the like button we've held a really really good amount of people here today close to 700 almost the entire time so thank you it's very very encouraging uh to do these review roundups these these uh this Star Wars Outlaws review reaction as it were and right now we're reading a very low score uh I believe this was a 50 um I can explain what's wrong on the show yeah if you guys want more detail we'll talk with Kirk uh in about 30 minutes on our on our second show of the day um which I should schedule that now he uh reviewed the game played it for 40 hours he gave the game an eight and there was a section that I kind of skipped over in his uh in his review which I actually think was uh really lucky happen stances he says it's a significant cause for one of his praises to the game feeling like a lived in Star Wars Universe uh but also uh he seems to view the faction situation a little bit differently so we are uh we're going to be talking to him shortly uh hang on and I've just got a schedule the stream I've been wanting to schedule these a little bit earlier so YouTube has an opportunity to grab them and categorize them sometimes we scheduled them like literally 5 minutes before we go live and I don't think that's a good idea I don't think it lets YouTube uh properly categorize it in the search results cuz it's like this video like literally just got got scheduled I know uploads are treated a little bit differently like literally you know upload the video but uploads tend to sit there for uh sometimes a little while anyway um we're going to schedule that one for 12:15 that way people get that 30 30 minute noty and the title of that one is going to be fun over substance that's that was Kirk's verdict is that it is fun but there is a lack of substance and we'll be going to that in about 30 uh 30 minutes and let me make sure we set up the redirect okay uh okay moving on this is hardcore gamer and theirs is a pretty negative review they gave this game basically like a five out of 10 a a 50% there's plenty of gameplay you can watch now yeah can we see another eight uh that doesn't serve our purpose just yet I don't know if we'll have time for that Kirk um moving on I wanted to give opportunity for the very low scores to to be R so that way people get a full uh a full breadth um best wishes to Dan what did Dan say better than my weekend I had a heart attack Tuesday and just got out yesterday gy Christmas I hope you're okay Dan oh they had to put in four stance holy mackerel man I hope that's all that comes of it I mean there's usually other things that follow but Jeepers glad you're still with us um there are space uh there's space travel and space combat which what the say the Black Flag ship battles these aren't you can diverse the orbit of each planet to gather cargo and fight enemies and maybe it's just my own relative inexperience with 3D spaceship combat but it was not fun at all largely due to awkward controls combat where you can barely see enemies and disorienting gameplay luckily after some initial tutorial with the gameplay in the First Act outside using hyperspace to head between the planets and the maps space travel never became essential again in order to ress the game yet Kirk largely echoed that the awkward controls and it just not being that great uh at least until they literally the final part of the game which suddenly turns into a dog fight with multiple ships yes after never being required for at least a good 70% of the game suddenly Star Wars Outlaws requires you to have mastered it at the very end at this point it felt like the game was basically insisting that I quit this hours long final quest so that I could grind more in order to get materials needed to upgrade the ship and handle more space fairing missions so um he heed their inadvertent advice here right this is sort of inadvertent advice they're basically saying spend time upgrading your ship or you're going to regret it at the end um which is again that's an interesting design Choice from the devs there's also the use of Nyx K's pet who can be used to distract enemies or attack them or steal items for them they can also trigger switches NYX is cute as a button in their relationship to highlight their use in the gameplay as fun but nothing revolutionary uh the game also has a lot lockpicking taking the form of a brief rhythm game uh and slicing hacking computers that involves a bit of Mastermind but they feel like desperately trying to put any spin on the now standard parts of huge action games finally there's the experts feature we know how that works okay definitely not trying here again though the problem is undermining in this case being the expert system is undermining the game playay and something like the Far Cry series experience uh and other rewards are typically your incentive when it comes to taking care of the enemies as stealthy and efficiently as possible gaining bonuses for not having enemies trigger alarms and such but without any real rewards for a stealth approach and the actual rewards only requiring a handful of actions like distractions you begin to wonder why not just head into every Mission with guns of Blazing the only Star Wars Outlaws deals the only way Star Wars Outlaws deals with this question is to either have Broker missions only offer one chance at them unless of course you quit and load previous safe or have missions explicitly say that you can't trick any alarms unless you instantly fail and even then you can still take the guns a blazing approach as long as you prevent enemies from using the alarms and after beating the game I came to the realization that the constant use of sections where you can't trigger alarms was the only thing that made Star Wars Outlaws even remotely challenging the main campaign is basically a cakewalk with the third person shooting never evolving an enemy difficulty never going Beyond a few tougher enemies later on never once did I need to use any of the advanced skills offered by the experts or for that matter use K's adrenaline skill basically a reskinned dead eyee from Red Dead I didn't even use the grenades I had picked up even once no matter how many were lying by to pick up it is interesting that they basically didn't even they just use their gun the whole time and ultimately that sums up the biggest most critical flaw with stars Star Wars Outlaws there's an astonishing amount of stuff in this game that is immensely and utterly useless the game has countless side quests broker missions Treasures to find but all of them stopped being appealing because they just keep offering the same rewards credits and materials that can be used for upgrades because of course there's a crafting mechanic of some kind uh and you can use your upgraded Blaster so that you can earn more materials for other upgrades to earn more materials for other upgrades and you get the idea it might be fine if all these extra missions had any Variety in their objectives or level designs or at least some flavor or well-written stories for them but there isn't and yet all of it constantly is thrown at you basically everything surrounding the story missions of Star Wars Outlaws is a distraction even more than usual when it comes to the open world games it's all filler side content that's nothing more than mere content just to give the illusion of a massive gigantic game and yet honestly if this was where if this was just a leaner game that lasted 10 to 12 hours it would have been substantially better because it wouldn't be bogged down with unnecessary open world junk there's actually a whole GTA style wanted system uh in play if you tick off the Empire too much by snooping around Imperial basis and I triggered it maybe once and even then the Death Trooper summoned never caught up to me because I was miles away from the area by then and it just faded away just another pointless addition like I said it sounded like my concern based off previews and stuff that we were seeing and hearing that it was going to be a mile wide and an inch deep and that's kind of what this person is describing here um I don't have a dislike for open world games but the gameplay in their worlds uh has to be executed properly Far Cry 5 is an example of the best Ubisoft open World gameplay in spite of having its worst story because it encourages players to naturally explore the world and discover all the various Secrets within it Star Wars Outlaws meanwhile is the type of game that wants to force players to engage with its open worlds which also aren't particularly creative outside of good landscape shots there's barely anything to see in them nothing outside the token objectives scattered throughout in contrast to the constant activity in the cities anyway um let's keep here uh yeah let's read these last two paragraphs are we at the end yeah we're basically at the end it's all just um hang on yes okay it's all just generic stuff with nothing interesting to find as if Ubisoft is holding back anything that would make all these features meaningful from the post-launch content but does the what just happened oh I clicked on a word oh [Music] I okay there we go but does the story at least Salvage things not especially depending on how long you spend with side activities on the initial Planet uh if you take about 4 to 6 hours of the main plot to actually get going there things get promising as we get to interact with more characters another of the game few strengths be it the previously mentioned adorable Knicks or the battle droid nd5 and the premise of oceans of Leven style Heist is great something rather unique in the Star Wars Universe unfortunately without going into spoilers the premise gradually goes out the window once the third act kicks in and a story that was supposed to be all about a CD underworld of the universe degrades into a standard batch of Star Wars cliches that feels like it's trying to play it safe and cater hard to the fans the idea of a Star Wars game focusing entirely On The World of Outlaws and its cier parts of the universe is a great one but it deserved a different kind of game than Star Wars Outlaws instead of being suited for something like Shadows of Doubt disco elisium or La no uh even a straight linear action game would be better instead we get a boring open world monstrosity with uninspired gameplay way too many useless features and a constant Deluge of uninteresting side content K and Company deserve way better uh and so do the players Sav your credits and wait for something like a solo kessle saot game instead they gave it a 2 and a half out of five they gave it a failing grade a 50% um pretty pretty scathing now again I I feel like we're reading reviews that are being critical and I feel like they're being fair and I feel like they're being honest and they're saying what they experienced but I don't know if what I just red is a is an egregious and failing score like a 50% a five you know a five out of 10 a two and a half out of five that's a really bad score and I just I don't feel like that's what we just read I feel like we just read wait for a sale it's a little boring it's not that good and then when you get to the score it's like oh my gosh holy smokes that's a very bad score again I I I'm I'm okay with game being criticized and games getting bad scores but we're about to read the lowest score yet which is Euro gamer and they gave it a two out of five stars um which that's just very low I feel like this should be reserved for games like redfall that were just a complete and utter disaster not even prepared for launch not even feature complete you know barely serviceable I think these types of scores should be reserved for games like that I've not read anything yet today about Star Wars Outlaws that that justifies a 40y or 50% I feel like that's a score this deserved having having not played it how could you say that like I haven't played it either I'm simply saying when I read these reviews these reviews aren't that scathing they're critical they have complaints but a 40 or 50% that is a very that's that's an that's woof that's like a that to me is a disaster of a game maybe my perspective is differently but when I see a game with the 40 or 50% I'm like that game's an utter disaster like as an experiment as an experiment what was um what was it called yeah Gollum as an example Gollum on Steam has a 40% do you see what I'm saying like this is the kind of game that gets a 40% Gollum I I've not read anything today that justifies a 40% do do you see the problem with our scoring systems and how things are tabulated you're like well it's only two and a half out of five stars but yes but that gets interpreted and put into Data into data fields and into websites and interprets it as a 50% or Euro Gamers two out of five stars it gets it gets interpret it gets interpretated I did it again it gets in in uh interpreted into 40% like it's a terrible score what does King Kong have wasn't it just called Kong what was it called it wasn't was it called Kong Survivor instinct no I don't know what this is this isn't even out yet the heck oh this is like a sid scroller 10o scales are better I think everything should be scored out of a 100 because that's how the websites Metacritic and open critic are going to interpret your score your score gets interpreted it's like if you're going to interpret a a 2 and a half as a 50 and a two out of five as a 40 well did would the people that wrote those reviews be okay with that they're like oh yeah it's a 40% it was called Skull Island Kong Skull Island I couldn't remember the name of it did they remove it from the steam store oh it's Skull Island rise of Kong it has a 33% it's even worse than Gollum largely I think Gollum was a bad game but I think it ran I think rise of Kong like barely ran it had all kinds of glitches and stuff so you can score a game however you want I don't care I'm not out here sing for Star Wars Outlaws because I kept telling people I thought it was going to be a more middling score it was going to be like low 80s at lands high 70s I'm like yep that's pretty much what I expected I was I'm anticipating being disappointed by it but I think our scoring system is just so incredibly flawed if you can make pretty accurate and I would say reasonable criticisms of a game and then give it a score equal to Gollum it's like huh like 40s and 50s should be again reserved for just utter disaster not something where you're like yeah it was repetitive and boring like that doesn't seem like the score lines up at all um Euro gamer says the problem with Star Wars Outlaws however is that let me let me see if I can slide this over there we go is that it aderes too closely to a development approach akin to hoarding but that it does the opposite stripping away the years of accumulated video game clutter admirably Outlaws does this quite aggressively kessle saach aside but in doing so it reveals an integral issue Ubisoft open worlds are not only fun because of their formula they are their formula to strip it away isn't like peeling off some old wall paper to reveal the original brick work it's lifting up the carpet to find a whacking great hole in the ground now this is a really interesting take so they're essentially saying that the is there any way you could share the YouTube video that way I could actually see things you might be pointing out to talk about I'm always off with live no I don't have a way of doing that Kirk um not without causing a bunch of lag um this is a real interesting take um and the reason this is an interesting take is a lot of people were worried this was going to be just another open world Ubisoft game with all of the bloat and these guy this article uh who wrote this one Chris Chris is saying which I think this is this is a fair piece of feedback he's like listen if you continue if you strip away a lot of that what what makes a Ubisoft open world a Ubisoft open world you're not left with much that's that's essentially what he's saying is comparing Gollum to Outlaws even fair Gollum is more linear versus open world unless I'm wrong about Gollum you're hat again you're not interacting with what I said I I didn't say that they're similar games they should be compared I said that game was viewed as an utter disaster Gollum was viewed as a piss poor game and the user score is a 40% and if you're going to make what I consider to be very fair criticisms everything I've read today felt very fair that oh it's boring or it's repetitive or they really didn't they really didn't go the distance with the reputation system and you give it a score equal to a game like Gollum I'm like wait what I I'm not I didn't read anything that you would interpret and say oh Outlaws is an utter disaster it's crap it's bad so the score feels dislodged from the criticisms it's like pretty fair pretty good criticisms but they aren't describing an utter failure they're not describing a disaster of a game so a six a five or a four is very low that those are those to me should be reserved for games that are awful that are like skip this don't buy this game it's bad like I think those scores should be reserved for that you can score a game whatever you want but I find it hard to trust an outlet in the future or to trust a reviewer in the future when they make what I feel are fair but somewhat middleof the road criticisms and then they're like yeah it's a four it's a 40% it's like what it's a 50% a failing grade you know this may be my armor core 6 bias but this game may have been better if it was mission structured with branching paths based on decisions KK says Gollum struggles to even be functional Outlaws uh is like bearable levels of frustrating and uncanny yeah this is just my opinion I've said this very very many times that once you're going to give a game of six or below it needs to be an utter it needs to be a bad game because you're giving it a failing grade once you get to 55% and down like we we could get into the whole great argument again but again giving something a score that is just so bad like when you go to the user score on Steam and you see a 40% a 50% or a 60% you say to yourself This is a bad game this is bad and so I've not read anything today that would make me feel like Star Wars Outlaws is bad it sounds like it is a more middleof the road average game it's got some good it's got some not good like it's it's kind of a it's kind of as as Kirk says it's fun but it lacks substance so this is interesting though we're we're reading the lowest score which is what Euro gamer uh gave a 40% and their interesting take that we have not yet seen today is that stripping down the open world was a mistake a lot of people were hoping that the open world will be stripped down because Ubisoft open worlds are commonly accused of just being bloated like I said says Sven uh perfectly fine Star Wars action game nothing groundbreaking right and a 40% or a 50% doesn't really describe that in my mind it's a great shame because there are some nice ideas here Star Wars Outlaws is effectively a kind of Gateway open world game pitched more broadly at the young adult crowd as stepping uh as a stepping stone away from Lego Star Wars respawn Jedi Series this is good Star Wars is a family franchise uh we don't need everything to be extra mature and it leads to kind of breeziness and levity but also a more manageable and in theory Focus take on open world structure uh that is at first quite welcome go away uh after bursting oh golly whoever there's the website structure here at Euro gamer is always so hard to navigate when I'm just highlighting the text it like wants the slide left and right um L doesn't like using the bottom half of numbers no I think you should use the bottom half of numbers for really really bad games I disagree that a six has to be a disaster a six is just mid or very average you you you don't you don't live in accordance to that that's something that you don't truly believe if you truly believed it then you would be out here willingly buying games with 60% in the store when's the last time you went to steam or any storefront and said oh this game has a 60% that's mid that's very average I'm willing to buy that no no one lives in accordance to that anytime you go to buy any product or movie or video game and you see a 60% or lower come on you're not saying that's mid or average you're saying oh gosh that game must be pretty bad no no one ever live every time we have this debate I guarantee you that you don't live in accordance to what you're claiming you don't there's no way that you see that in the storefront you're like yeah dude that's pretty average game 60% that's probably worth buying no you would say that it's bad product scores that get that low are not viewed as average or mid they're viewed as bad I would not buy a six a six is for major Star Wars fans only I'm not sure what you mean um after bursting free of the pre-credits funnel you're given uh one of four miniature open worlds to explore uh but it's service will first Hub area with all the necessary vendors blah blah blah blah blah blah this is large open World tral Systems okay uh major sections are hidden and locked off until you need to visit them as part of the main story at which point suddenly a lock door will unlocked or a speed or restricted area will unspeeded or restrict itself suddenly you're off to a brand new path to the great creaking ruins of a crash Star Wars Cruiser uh but like much of Star Wars Outlaws these are places that look fantastic as static images or pre beats that seem to promise fast open areas of opportunity but can fall uh painfully flat in practice it means Outlaws most interesting spaces are always fenced away behind one-off missions featuring entirely linear on the rails exploration and platforming sequences the more exploration or player choice will you'll encounter as an option to sneak to the left of a large cluster of guards waste High crates and explosive barrels or perhaps instead go to the right expiration and choice are two integral uh pillars of star Wars Outlaws pitch and unfortunately also two of its biggest failures let's stick to exploration first platforming in Star Wars Outlaws is everywhere and it's dire not satisfied with some of the most egregious yellow paint in a modern video game Outlaws couples it with yellow tubes on the floor that lead you to your next location yellow arrows painted on white placards often pointing towards large bits of yellow paint and overt continuous button prompts assigned to every ledge gravel point and handlebar the result is something several leaps beyond the faintly patronizing but at least understandable yellow Ledges that spark debate to something utterly inexcusably infantilizing regardless of the audience Ubisoft massive is shooting for here so too much yellow paint um I thought somebody too in one of their reviews said that sometimes great thought there wasn't enough cuz like they said like grates you couldn't tell you could grab sometimes all that said there's an option to turn this off which I discovered late into the game but platforming is a let down beyond the more basic issue is the clumsiness of the controls frequently I find myself below a clim able ledge hammering X while waiting to be in just the right spot for the icon to appear and the action to trigger uh I've talked about this recently with like opening chests where you have to stand in the exact right spots to get the chest open uh you should really really start to use uh like proximity so if I'm standing next to the chest instead of in front of the chest and I push the button why not just make my character kind of slide into position and kick the chest open right create proximity triggers um it also Sparks the old problem Outlaws not being in uh innately readable enough to work without such over prompts many unscalable Ledges are half the height of ones I'll be leaping to in platforming sections for instance platforming suffers as well from the sheer repetitiveness of the obstacles you'll face it's incredible how many giant rhythmically activating wall fans there happen to be around here and couples unfavorably with more repetition elsewhere there are just two puzzle types in Outlaws for instance a rhythm based lock picking one uh where you have to pull the trigger PS okay we've already learned about this um the same goes for Outlaw's environmental P puzzle solving which involves K's animal Compadre Nicks uh worst of a bad Bunch on the exploration font front Star Wars Outlaws horrible Wicked downright cursed speeder Star Wars games have always had trouble with Speeders a function of their original D design itself really as flimsy overtly crashable and ludicrously fast but this is something else not only is it a nightmare to drive revealing the blunt edges of Outlaws very limited physics by slamming into near invisible bumps and micro Ledges and coming to comically blunt immediate standstills it also has the unfortunate effect of emptying out the landscape by implementing something so fast massive a maker of open world games in the division excuse me but crucially open world space entirely on a single city has been forced to spread its open areas as thinly as possible meaning they're both entirely impractical to ever navigate on foot and entirely unenjoyable to drive around on your bike there's a smattering of Road open world activities here some civilians are being attacked by some Syndicate or another Nick smells a pair of special leggings buried Beyond its rudimentary platforming section there's a guy with a gun um a key place where it manifests his stealth which has been stripped back to its simplest stealth is a surprisingly major part of un of uh Outlaws that's understandable this is a scoundrel game after all the issue is stealth is painfully basic and somehow at once both far too easy but also too easy to fail at the hands of awkward systems and controls so that lines up with what everybody has said about Stealth there's a lot of it it's easy but it also um is easy to fail thank you for the two spot danheim uh Ranger with a $10 Super Chat says um 9 too many problems bagging te yeah I mean I tend to agree that once you land in the 60s it's playable but bad yes I agree with you the minute you're in in the 60s I'm like I I can't think that game is very good you know and then once you're below that it's like there's other problems there's other bad things in it for sure um we got to get on the line with Kirk here let's let's let's get to their let's get to their their conclusion um they really really went the distance here I mean I can definitely tell this person did not like Star Wars Outlaws even before I see the score I mean we've seen the score Star Wars Outlaws by comparison feels like it's black it's blagging it much as K can when regularly caught out by some Far okay the result is a series of quite painful comparisons it lacks the branching open stealth of an Arkham game the systemic options of a Dishonored or the incisive relentlessly satisfying speed of picking off enemies and Assassin's Creed it lacks linear polish and Charisma of Uncharted lacks the animation flow uh to its yellow ledge platforming next to Horizon uh or the sheer Joy of taking platforming and making it into an actual game itself as in Star Wars Jedi and somewhat nightmarishly for ioft massive which couldn't have known about this when committing it at the time Outlaws opts to tell a story high story in a world after Andor which has already done so with such sensitivity humanity and precision that K and Company's Cameo ridden nonevent is unfortunately left reeling light years behind I mean that's fair too that like Andor you know kind of did the Star Wars high story exceptionally well um I you I can tell they didn't like it they at least I mean I'll give Euro gamer credit they at least went the distance in criticizing the game to justify their low score the other the the the 60% and the 50% that I read I didn't feel like their criticisms were harsh enough to Warrant such a low score Euro gamer did not like that game so it's like okay yeah I guess go ahead and give it your 40 you think it's bad I mean you think it's real bad so at least they went the distance um in their in their review that's that's what I felt I felt they as as as much of it I read it's like okay this this seems like you you put the time in to be very very critical of this game um okay let me get Kirk on the line here I need to mute Chrome it was personal yeah and I I can take that more seriously yeah I can take that more seriously it's like oh yeah you really didn't like this so at least then their score feels Justified I mean if you really didn't like a game dude dude blast it you know give it a bad score oh hang on a second adjust everything what is am I like too far over what's the deal here doesn't look right it feels it feels like you're zoomed in too yeah just give me a second before you start cropping yeah yeah I'm going to wait why can't I see Lively day good turnout yeah I think calling it reviews reactions is uh on the thumbnail I think it's getting us a little bit better like people like oh you did I did that with Wukong and so I did it again today I think that just makes people more interested it doesn't sound so corporate like a review Roundup sound Roundup up sounds kind of corporate I agree like it sounds like you're just going to read them out at people like let's do a Roundup this guy said this this guy said that I love kind of funny but they kind of they kind of do that a little bit but then they have their own reviewer to kind of balance it out am I am I good now in the I'm using the test thing yeah it looks right okay look like I might need to like turn this angle this down a little bit I can't see chat yet but what's going on guys um by the way guys like I'm I'm not here to I'm not here to fight man like please just you're you're still not showing up on my uh I think we had this problem before and it fixed itself uh no my camera's not plugged in that's the problem oh okay gotcha um yeah guys I'm not I'm not here to fight like I'm not here to show for Ubisoft either I'm in the program um they gave me this game for free I'm very very very very happy about that and grateful to for that but this the score that I gave it is the score that I believe in and if you guys don't agree with it that's totally okay like I'm here to be your friend and be helpful and tell you what you need to know about the game at no point am I going to say no you're wrong like it is good or like whatever like if you guys if it doesn't sound like it's for you you that's probably an accurate assessment you know like I'm just here to be your friend give you insights as somebody who is who's played the game for a week now um and you guys can make your own inform decisions so like just just treat it like that like I'm I'm here to give as much information as I can about having experienced the game for the time that I have it also seems like you played more than the reviews we read it seemed like the a lot of the reviews that we read I mean I guess so cuz everybody was at Gamescom and I'm like you know guy in his apartment I mean that's the thing right is like that's something that I realized I'm actually uh I don't know if I'm bummed or happy that uh I guess I'm happy cuz the majority of people like get that impression but that Tristan Ogie played the PS5 version like I was like starting to wonder as we got closer to embargo I was like did they just give PC codes to everybody and like because I'm a Creator they're expecting me to stream the game but like I actually did a review for like a press Outlet am I going to be like the only press review that actually covers the PS5 like I didn't know so that's interesting that IGN actually did end up requesting a PS5 copy which is probably astute on their part like good on them for being like no the majority of people are probably going to play this on PS5 like let's see what this is like on that console I liked how you started there too I want to I'm going to lead with that when we start the show it's like you were immediately like if you're getting this for PS5 and PS5 Graphics disclaimer yeah I did it as like a like a disclaimer um what was I going to say oh yeah if you could actually read that part that you skipped over after the me you can can read the the queen Blood thing I think that'll resonate with people Queens blood was really popular earlier in the year that's why I include it you can skip that part but that's kind of like my core thesis is to like why is this game good um and so like people were saying like this doesn't sound like a eight I do want to talk about that for like just for the pre-show guys like I gave first descendant in eight um I felt like uh was was another one I gave a to I can't I can't remember now everything's all jumbled in my head sorry I'm just generally tired I've done three reviews in in 10 days that's like a lot for me U which is why I don't want to like fight about what the score is like I gave first ascendant and eight like the the open critic for that is like 56 or something like I think that Skull and Bones is like pushing an eight like you know maybe you guys should like give it the Kirk tax and like de you know demote it by one whenever I get like I thought that Ronin and bishers were a nine like I I really enjoyed those games like maybe for you like Kirk's reviews are one number higher than like what you would give it but like I'm consistent like I I gave Suicide Squad a six uh I gave Pacific drive a seven like they all kind of line up with each other like that's just kind of like my internal system that I do um I got a lot of flag for you know 8.5 for Concord don't really want to get into that today but um yeah like it all it all kind of sinks up so I mean it's just to try to articulate what my assessment of these games is and then if people don't agree with that like that's totally fine like I think this is probably a Black Friday buy for most people like this would be an excellent Black Friday buy for any Star Wars fan okay we're all set I'm going to take a quick break and then we're going to get into this all right I'm just going to read chat is Kirk laging his sound was fine I didn't I wasn't looking at his camera though all right I'll be right back I'm like very far to the left or right or whatever yeah that's better right I did give Concord an 8.5 giant Kirk pH you're living up to your name with the 8 of 10 don't buy thing the don't buy thing was just about Concord cuz it needs to be free it needs to be free people I mean it's just like it's not it wouldn't be fair for me to recommend that people buy that oh you know what that needs to be there n Pat gaming I'm too tired to fight I really am three three reviews in 10 days kick my butt um and I put a lot into that written review if you guys haven't checked that out it'll tell you pretty much everything everything you need to know about the game I think it's like it's kind of long um but I think there's a lot of substance there like I didn't just drone on and on like unlike when I talk when I write like I can collect exactly what I want to say a lot better you know it's not just coming out of my mouth like I have time to think about okay what words do I want to use what do I want to say and so like there's a lot of uh substance there I think in in my review yeah okay the you know the Concord stuff I really liked Concord I I really liked it uh it really resonated with me in terms of like what the actual gameplay felt like like I I liked it as much as I like you know Halo or I like it a little bit better in OverWatch like the shooting is more like cod likee like more of a like traditional shooter with those like Heroes as a as a major part of it I like that but I gave first descendant an eight and like a lot of people like IGN gave that a five so like I think I'm just like generally higher like I just like video games I like video games it takes a lot to make me be like this game is bad um and and you know I did that for Suicide Squad I mean that was a six like that game really grinded me down to the point to where I was like you know what this can't be any higher than a six it really can't um and that that takes a lot for a game G to do that um I think I really kind of use like a like a 5 to 10 scale I don't really go below five I did for Madden because I was a little bit like inspired I guess by Simon card's uh Nintendo switch FIFA review where he basically like you he used a two out of 10 to basically say hey like this isn't cool that you guys are just like repackaging the same exact game and re-releasing it for full price and so that's basically what I did with the Man review I pulled a four out I would never use a four unless like the game was just like egregious but I did it for that I appreciate that Donnie Donnie's like I'm the only one that can take the piss out of Kirk not you guys you're not allowed I agree Donnie they're they're not allowed just just you uh you guys should check out uh uh Donnie's podcast over at pure dead gaming the outlet I wrote the review for he he had a great podcast that l was a part of if you guys missed it but that's uh pure Dead PlayStation on Spotify and other podcast platforms so check that out Lona was on that episode that most recent episode The Creature said I thought you did quite well on your written review Kirk which the quiet part that you're not saying out loud is that you didn't think I did well on the video review and the video review is just like a companion piece guys uh go check that out at some point on my channel I should be linked in the description but it's just me talking like it's just 12 minutes of me being like this is the game this is how I felt these are all my thoughts on it if you don't want to sit down and read like a bunch of words it's just a stream of just information and insight and my impressions of the game um so that's what that's there for but it's not quite the same as like my other reviews that are in that like IGN style did I get punched to the mouth no I did not okay all right guys make sure before we leave this stream to smash the like button and then do the same when we get over to the next stream there's still a ton of you here and that's awesome there's like over 500 people so a lot of you are going to come with us and let's have a really strong start right when 4 to 500 people start out in a stream we want to see that like count jump up that helps out immensely when we get over to the new stream be sure to smash that thumbs up especially y'all that lurk and listen uh sometimes it can be easy to forget to do that cuz it is a second stream uh jarth with 14 months says loving the content loan a reforge game is easily worth the membership keep up the excellent work yo thanks for renewing that member plus more and more people diving into member plus and unlocking those Milestones if you missed it I did an IRL stream over the weekend in my backyard and that was for you member plus and above folks that have been supporting the channel by upgrading you got to you got to smoke some Meats next time like like the Zuck you had like that energy going on you're like yeah smoke right now they want me to do a reverse your state that's what they want me to do nice right can we make sure I'm not too loud I'll probably be like around around here and I think I think we'd rather me be a little bit on the quieter side than because with my mic once it gets up there it gets kind of I put a compressor on you weeks ago so you can't get you can't get too [Laughter] loud all right guys there's a link in chat let's head over um all right and then I'll redirect you as well I'm going to start the new stream oh wait hang on I don't have it open give me one you guys come over it's GNA be fun I'll I'll answer some questions too probably at the end here we go thanks so much for checking out this video and in this video we are going to sit down and discuss the Star Wars Outlaws review that Kirk did for Pure dead gaming his name should be clickable in the link below if you in the description below of this video if you want to check out his review or if you want to go read the written one uh we will provide a link to that as well if you're watching this later make sure and hit the like button make sure and hit subscribe I did a whole review Roundup before this if you want to kind of see what a 9 out of 10 8 out of 10 7 654 that's the gamut of score and we read through a pretty significant portion of Kirk's review in that rundown and coincidentally and probably accidentally I left out a part that he wants to talk about in this segment now about why he feels like it's such a good and lived in world now I'm going to end that rundown uh stream and bring you guys over with redirect thank you so much for all the support lately whenever we did this we did this with black myth Wukong and people tended to like it so Kirk I just want