The game can only be played in first-person view, and Motive has designed each cockpit with a loving attention to detail - so much so that the game actually allows players to disable the in-game HUD and rely only on their cockpit instruments, if they have the skill and the desire. Squadron does fully commit to selling players on the dream of flying your own X-Wing or TIE fighter. Enemy on your tail? Quickly double up your rear shields by diverting power there. Need to quickly escape a bad situation? Dump power into your engine, but it’ll come at the expense of your shields and weapons. (Three of the TIE fighters lack shields entirely, but allow players to rapidly shift energy between weapons and engines in a surprisingly flexible system that makes up for it.) Players are generally equipped with shields, engines, and weapons, and must constantly juggle their power between those systems. The basic gameplay loop is more or less the same regardless of which ship you fly, built up around Squadrons’ systems mechanic. (There are also regrettably a few escort missions, but Squadrons is at least generous with its checkpoints.) One mission, for example, has players stealthily approach a battlecruiser, while the next flips the script and has them defend an outpost or hunt down an enemy. Given that it does feel a little like an extended tutorial, there are some clear limits, like the number of stages available for gameplay, but Squadrons does make the most of its toolbox even when things repeat.
Also, my New Republic squadron mates were just plain nicer.
But it runs into a familiar issue in Star Wars, which is that the Empire is, uh, the bad guys. The game does its best to try and sympathize players with both sides, giving you the chance to chat with your squadron-mates between battles and get their perspectives on things. The actual single-player mode puts players in the cockpits of dueling Rebel and Imperial squadrons, swapping back and forth between the two viewpoints surrounding the construction of the Starhawk, a New Republic battleship that could change the nature of the war.
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Earlier missions will assign you specific loadouts or roles to play - presumably to help players get a feel for how each craft works - while later levels give more free choice of craft (and the ability to switch between crafts mid-battle).
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(Players who are more familiar with flight simulator games will likely fare better, though.)Įach faction has four ships available: an all-purpose fighter, a speedy interceptor, a powerful bomber, and a support craft. And even after hours in the single-player mode, I still felt like I was just only starting to get used to Squadrons’ flight. In many ways, Squadrons’ single player campaign feels like an extended, multi-hour tutorial to help train a player’s piloting skills before throwing them to the wolves of online multiplayer. Players who are used to arcade style games ( like Battlefront II’s space missions) are in for a bit of an adjustment.įlying an X-Wing is harder than I had thought And while it’s not quite as complex as a more demanding simulation game (like the popular Microsoft Flight Simulator), there’s definitely a learning curve. Squadrons, as my colleague Nick Statt noted in his own hands-on preview earlier this year, is a flight sim game. (This review is focused on the single player campaign we’ll have more on the multiplayer half of the game next week.) Image: EA Luke and Vader had the force, though, to augment their flying abilities.
It turns out that flying an X-Wing is harder than I had thought.įor as long as Star Wars has existed, fans have dreamed of jumping into the cockpit of the iconic starfighters of the franchise and following in the footsteps of Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader to dogfight it out among the stars and Death Stars.
Or at least, that was the plan, until I clip the side of the cruiser, spin around, and explode. I glance out the window of my X-Wing, and call out to two of my wingmates in Vanguard Squadron to pick the TIEs off my back, restock on missiles, and then perfectly drift around a chunk of debris to continue bombarding an enemy cruiser.