A Port From A Galaxy Far Far Away
Star Wars, a series that actually needs no introduction. Im fairly certain my mum knows what a ‘Lightsaber’ is and the name ‘Darth Vader’. In the ever expanding universe of the space epic ‘Star Wars Outlaws’ was birthed last year. An open world adventure using the ‘Ubisoft’ game formula with possibly the most well known paint job in popular culture. With the announcement of the ‘Switch 2’ a port of this game was also shown off. My eyebrows raised, a demanding console game on ‘Nintendo’ hardware. With suspicions in mind from the get go, lets see if the Italian plumber’s new toy is up to the task.
In Outlaws you play as Kay. A roguish down on her luck lady looking for her big break. Sounds like another character from this universe if you ask me. Joining the less accomplished lady ‘Han Solo’ is of course an animal sidekick. Nix a Merqaal, think somewhere between a cat and a salamander. Nix is extremely cute and likeable and oozes character despite only communicating in chirps and other similar noises. Our goal is to take our protagonists through the criminal underbelly and come out on top.
I wont go too much deeper into the story or gameplay as my peer Ryan reviewed this game on its initial release. Which can be found here on GameHype. As you will see from the scoring I mostly agree with what Ryan originally wrote. The only real change in gameplay is the forced stealth sections, which have mostly been scrapped in favour of giving the player a choice of sneaky or blasty. I myself favoured blasty. I believe this was updated in the previous releases and is not solely exclusive to the switch port. Now on to my experience with this colossal game on Switch.
Starting the game up for the first time I was met with a log in screen to Ubisoft Connect. No big deal I will just skip it as I don’t really care about the service. Oh wait you can’t skip it. The game refuses to start without logging in or registering. Many gamers may not see this being a deal breaker. You do have to remember this can be played handheld and may not have internet connection. If you downloaded this to start on a road trip or something similar then sorry you’re not playing. My empathy went into light speed and was angered by this intensely. However, every continent sized grey cloud has a silver lining and this silver lining came in the form of cloud saving. Giving you the ability to turn the switch version into a handheld companion piece using your saves from other consoles. I quite like that inclusion from multiple platform players, despite the heavy handed obstructive way of setting it up.
Now Ubisoft has all of my data I can actually play the game. Lets tackle the reason why we are all reading this, visuals and performance. To say I was blown away was an understatement. The Jedi themselves must have used the force to optimise Star Wars Outlaws. It looks and plays better than anyone could of possibly predicted. A mostly stable 30 frames per second with very infrequent dips mostly unnoticeable in handheld possibly due to the Switch 2’s VRR screen. Playing in 720p and upscaling to 1080p while handheld the game looks brilliant. Its genuinely got me excited for what the future of this console could give us. For the docked players you can expect upscaling up to 1440p. On the big screen the intense anti-aliasing is more noticeable, blurring geometric edges and hair on characters. While not as visually glorious as other console releases it can’t be understated how impressive this port is.
I did have a session of hybrid gaming. Hotswapping between docked and handheld every 20 minutes or so. Hot being the key word here. Pulling the switch out of docked to carry on my adventure elsewhere was a spicy experience. Fans at full force its safe to say my hands were toasty. I wouldn’t really recommend this, if anything I would just stick to handheld which was how I enjoyed the majority of my experience.
Further tech wizardry can be applauded when it comes to the install size of Outlaws. Bearing in mind its a beefy game that was around 70GB potentially even more with its updates and downloadable content. Somehow they managed to get the whole game and its DLC into a compact 21GB. I was amazed that I didn’t have to do any data management when I installed the game. With data optimisation like this we should be calling out for developers to do more of this. Future switch ports or even handheld pc gamers using consoles like the Steamdeck would really benefit from this.
Another immersive detail I enjoyed with Outlaws was its full utilisation of the JoyCons HD rumble. Haptics pulsing in sync with music in grotty clubs on a stealth mission. The feel of Kay’s blaster dispensing plasma over my enemies. The revving of my speeder bike. It is such a small addition that really brings you into this world on this system.
Now the elephant in the room would I recommend this as a way of playing Star Wars Outlaws. Yeah, kind of. Now I say that because I am blown away by this port but its worth noting it isn’t the optimal way of playing the game. If you want to experience Kay’s story in all of its nerd layered glory, going for Playstation or PC might be what your looking for. If the Switch 2 is the only way you can experience this game it is more than good enough and certainly an enjoyable experience. I was the most impressed by its handheld performance so can no doubt recommend it solely for that if you just wanted to take Kay and Nix on the go.
TL;DR: It’s A Good Port!
