2.5/5 ★ – Madsines's review of Star Wars: Outlaws.

Outlaws sees Ubisoft attempting a new take on its tried and tested open world formula. But just like last year's 'Frontiers of Pandora' by the same studio, this isn't an evolution, it's a regression. The world Massive have built here is stunning. Environments are incredibly detailed and immersive, and everything feels so authentically Star Wars. Unfortunately, that's about where my praise for this game ends. Massive's decided to longer include waypoints or map markers in many of the game's quests, opting instead to give you a 'search area' on the map where your objective will be found somewhere within. This fucking sucks. Rather than just follow a simple waypoint, instead you end up fumbling around trying to find the objective for minutes at a time. It hurts the pacing, adds frustration and unnecessary padding to the game, and it never feels rewarding. Many times throughout my play through I simply had no idea what the game wanted me to do to progress. This wouldn't be as much of an issue if the gameplay was fun, but it rarely is. The stealth sections feel like they would've been dated ten years ago, filled with insta-fail sections that'll often send you back 10 minutes or more due to the game's abysmal checkpoint system. The stealth systems are also shallow as a puddle. Your only real options are to sneak around waist high boxes, sneaking up on enemies to knock them out with the same clunky looking punch animation every time. Moreover, there's usually only one path where you can progress in these sections, leading to moments where you think you've discovered a nifty route around the enemies only to lead you to a dead end. And when the action does kick off, it doesn't get much better. Shooting feels okay, but it gets very repetitive as every firefight plays out in pretty much the same way. Kay, the game's protagonist never really feels great to control either. It desperately wants to be Uncharted, or Respawn's far superior Jedi Fallen Order/Surivor, but never comes close to either. It feels like a cruel joke when in the last two hours of the game, the story finally picks up and the game hits you with a few linear final missions which are actually fairly enjoyable. But it wasn't meant to be. I used to dream of playing a good Star Wars open world game as a kid, and after playing this - I guess I'll have to keep dreaming a little longer.