Developed by Motive Studios and published by EA, Star Wars Squadrons will put the players in the role of a pilot from all the trademark ships from the Rebel and Imperial era in a first person perspective and is available on Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC.

Squadrons takes place within the timeline of the movies. The prologue seems to take place during the Battle of Yavin, so A New Hope, then fast forwards five years to the events after Return of the Jedi. The campaign for Squadrons has a good story plot that fits in great with the timeline, the missions can teach players how to manage their star ship from in-flight repair, power management and drift turning.

The controls for Squadrons are not that great. PC offers VR support which would be the better option. The ships feel very slow and sluggish to control for a flight/dogfight sim game. It felt like the overall flight experience should’ve been better.

Visually Squadrons missed out on getting praise here. Also each ship does have a unique cockpit which was the only highlight for the first person perspective. The details within the cockpit were toned down and explosions looked lackluster. The one thing I will give them is they really nailed the vast emptiness that space has to offer, as there was not a lot to see while playing.

Star Wars: Squadrons audio side of the game was maybe the best part of the whole thing. Clear radio coms with the A.I teammates giving heads up about missile locks, or requesting help made it immersive, but was not able to make me ignore the excitement that was not being delivered as a whole.

Multiplayer is a big part for Squadrons and it is already dying off as it takes a while to find a match. There is the option to fight A.I with either a team of friends of a team of AI and this was my most played time. As mentioned, finding matches against players was taking a long time. For a game that has cross-play and is new this shouldn’t be an issue. Could be down to regional matchmaking. Not sure. I only got to play in a full lobby twice and one match was delayed for 15 mins due to someone leaving before it started.

The game modes on offer for multiplayer are dogfights, which is just Team Deathmatch, and Fleet Battles. This is the trademark game mode for Squadrons, as it is pretty much what you do in the campaign. It is a mode that definitely needs work for the multiplayer aspect.

Fleet Battles offer a great concept. It just felt boring. If I was to compare Star Wars space battles from other games in the franchise, the original Battlefront 2 had it nailed down and would’ve been happier to see that formula improved on instead of going in depth and making it more complicated.

With there looking like no future DLC or extra modes being added in, Squadrons is what it looks like from the outside. A one and done play. The campaign is the highpoint for the game. I do hope EA decide to give extra modes, put in co-op so players can do the campaign together.

Star Wars: Squadrons has potential to be a great game. Maybe it didn’t get the time it needed to be worked on. I had honestly forgotten it was being made until the day before it was released. EA needed to let the players know the progress so we had a better idea of how it was going to be at launch. It needs more attention in my opinion.

Written by: Shane Walsh