Now Playing: Star Wars: Squadrons (VR)

Star Wars: Squadrons may not be a VR exclusive title but, with 45 hours clocked at the time of this review, it’s become the VR game I’ve put the most amount of time into. And although I have tried playing a few missions out of VR, I can’t say I enjoy the game half as much when I do. Playing in and out of VR are two very different experiences. Once you’ve played Squadrons in VR, you really can’t go back.

The feeling of being in the cockpit, the increased situational awareness and the sense of scale all combine to build an incredibly immersive VR experience. But, as I’m sure I’ve said before, there’s a big difference between VR exclusive and VR supported of which Squadrons falls into the latter category. 

It doesn’t support VR motion controllers but this isn’t a surprise given the lack of assignable keys / buttons. I guess you could argue that the cockpit should be VR friendly and allow you to flip switches and press buttons within the VR space but for that to work, Squadrons would have to be built from the ground up for VR.

I played Squadrons with a 360 pad and, although not as immersive as a proper flight stick might be, it did the job, at least for me. And I do think VR gave me an advantage over other, non-VR users – it’s so much easier to judge distance when manoeuvring around or between obstacles, and it’s so much easier to track targets when you can just . . . turn your head. 

But the fact that Squadrons is only supported in VR and not exclusive does lead to some unfortunate drawbacks. The first is visual fidelity. Whilst the game looks sharp and the textures look high resolution out of VR, in VR is another matter. This is most noticeable when looking at the background star fields which in VR look like a low resolution jpeg stretched across your vision.

It’s not too noticeable when you’re engaged in the action and tracking targets but when you do notice it . . . ugh. The characters and ships also lack the sharpness and detail when seen in VR. It feels like Squadrons needed a VR specific visual overhaul, not only to improve the overall quality, but to replace various textures which might look good outside of VR, but look rather low quality in VR.

The VR performance also isn’t perfect, and although I haven’t had too many issues, I’ve seen many other people who haven’t been so lucky. Obviously, the strength of your hardware will play a factor, but it doesn’t seem like the game is properly optimised across the variety of available VR headsets. Supported, not exclusive, remember?

Thankfully, despite the VR specific issues, Squadrons is still a blast to play. There’s a pretty decent single player campaign of 14 missions split between the Empire and the New Republic. It’s certainly not going to win any awards, but it does what it needs to in order to keep you invested and engaged. The two squads you fly with on both sides of the conflict have their own personalities and quirks, but you can’t really interact with them in or out of missions. 

The missions are fairly varied in terms of objectives, but there’s a lack of variety when it comes to ship types. I’m not just talking about the 4 ship types on each side available to you as a player, but the larger capital ships. We see a mon calamari cruiser, for example, during one of the prologue chapters, but it never appears again throughout the entire campaign.

Overall, the campaign serves not only as a decent tutorial system for all of the various ship types across both factions, but it also provides a pretty fun and replayable (thanks to various difficulty settings and mission medal rewards) single player experience.

Beyond the campaign are two modes – Dogfight and Fleet Battle. Dogfight is a pretty simple 5v5 multiplayer team death match mode with a score limit of 30. It’s a short, punchy mode that’s great for a quick fix. Fleet Battles, on the other hand, is the real meat of the multiplayer – a 5v5 objective focused mode in which two teams attempt to destroy the opposing team’s capital ship.

The mode can also be played solo or in co-op with and against bots, which is a welcome inclusion given that the MP may be dead in a year or so if Squadrons doesn’t receive the content updates it needs or deserves. Fleet Battles are at their best when your team works together, supporting each other and playing to the objectives which I’m pleased to say happens far more frequently than not.

The main problem with Fleet Battles right now is one of balance. Players have already discovered some, shall we say ‘optimal’ ship builds and tactics that can make these battles be incredibly one sided, particularly if you’re playing as the Empire. This has led to an annoying situation whereby players on the New Republic side are quitting before the match begins resulting in matches not being ranked due to the team imbalance. And ranking, as a whole, seems to be somewhat broken, even when you do finally play in a match with balanced teams. 

There’s some cosmetic customisation available in Squadrons but it’s really nothing to get very excited about. I can’t say I care too much given how little you actually see of your pilot or the exterior of ships in combat, but it still feels like they’ve given players the bare minimum to work with and called it a day.

I don’t know if we’ll see more content for Squadrons but I hope we do. I don’t see why the game can only be a ‘one and done’ or a ‘live service’ title as if there’s no middle ground in which it can thrive. I’d happily pay for a campaign or multiplayer expansion if it offered a few new ships, modes and maps. But even if Squadrons, as the content currently exists, is all we’ll ever get, given the reduced price, I’d still say it’s good value. And even when the multiplayer base inevitably runs dry, I can still see myself returning to it to replay the campaign or engage in Fleet Battles against the AI.

7/10