One of the bigger releases this fall in a rather barren year is Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws, a single-player game in the series that ditches the linearity and, er, Jedi of Jedi Fallen Order. Instead, you play a solo-style rogue slashing his way through open world maps, and now reviews for the game have started pouring in, too.

They’re pretty good, at least so far. Not mind-blowing, but probably good enough for many Star Wars fans.

At the time of writing, Star Wars Outlaws has a Metacritic score of 78 on PS5, where it has the most reviews (32). On Xbox, it has 73 (7 reviews) and 74 on PC (9 reviews, though one of them is a big outlier at 3/10).

On the good old “everything is between 6 and 10” video game scale, the mid to high 70s is solid. However, the “really great” metric by general industry standards is usually 85+, whether you like it or not. And 90+ puts you in the running for the GOTY title. Those are loose rules, and games in the 70s are certainly very popular. Those are good numbers, and about what most of Ubisoft’s more recent Assassin’s Creed games have achieved, if not better than some.

What do the critics say? A selection of reviews:

• Dextero (8/10) – “Star Wars: Outlaws shines with its spectacular open-world design that takes you across several gigantic planets brought to life with great attention to detail, but a poor and rather textbook narrative detracts from the overall package from the “once great” category.
• Washington Post (7.5/10) – “A powerful reminder of why the Ubisoft formula became so influential, so reliable, so popular.”
• IGN (7/10) – “Star Wars Outlaws is a fun intergalactic heist adventure with great exploration, but it’s marred by basic stealth, repetitive combat, and a few too many launch bugs.”
• VGC (6/10) – “Star Wars Outlaws is a lurid Uncharted-style adventure that doesn’t quite live up to its potential. Kay and Nix lead a great cast through a fast-paced, hard-hitting story, but the game’s reputation system and the Syndicate story in general feel underdeveloped.”

So solid, but not a surprise critical success. It’s a Star Wars game, not a disaster, so it will sell. But in terms of these reviews and the pros and cons, it feels like another Ubisoft release. I’m curious to see what fans think of it, at least those who aren’t going to war with the game because of a woman’s hairstyle they don’t like.

I haven’t played a review copy, so I’ll be starting Early Access this week. I’m excited to see what it has to offer.

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