As I had foreseen, I ended up finishing off Star Wars: Squadrons last night, just in time for Hitmen to hit Game Pass. Been refreshing the app every 15 minutes for the last hour, wanting to start the download so it’ll be installed and ready for when the mood hits.
Squadrons was good, not great, and I’m glad to have played it. As I said, it’s quite reminiscent of the X-Wing and Tie Fighter PC games. Ditto the Wing Commander franchise. All games which I loved.
On the “pros” list we’ve got:
- They really nailed the Star Wars vibe. The story, graphics, sound FX, music… it all felt authentically Star Wars.
- Speaking of the sound, I played this in my home theatre and the surround sound is very active. I can’t possibly oversell the awesomeness of hearing Tie Fighters roar past you, while you fire your pew-pew-pew lasers. Ditto the awesomeness of the iconic Star Wars music coming at you at appropriate moments.
- The missions were perfect in length, about 15-20 minutes each, allowing for nice bitesized chunks of gameplay.
- I enjoyed the storyline and the performances were quite good. It was fun seeing and playing both sides, getting to experience the ramifications of your previous actions.
And some cons:
- I really dislike the default controls. Luckily they are completely customizable, so I ended up remapping most of them. If you’ve got a good enough PC, this is probably best played there with a proper flight stick.
- Several missions are buggy. Basically you’re not given the next objective, and end up flying around aimlessly not knowing what to do. Usually this was fixed by reloading the last checkpoint. Once I had to exit the game, force quit it, and start it up again. Very annoying.
I’m also still making my way through Metroid: Zero Mission, and I’ve got some more thoughts on it, but maybe I’ll post those later.