Crypt Custodian sounds like the name of a tough guy ARPG, but it’s actually a charming metroidvania starring my favourite videogame cat of 2024. It’s a real shame he had to die.
Pluto has fallen off a ledge and snuffed it. It’s an abrupt and unwelcome death but there’s a silver lining: since he’s spent his life being a nice puss to some loving owners, he shouldn’t have any problem getting into The Palace, which is where good dead pets go when they die.
Need to know
What is it? A top-down exploration adventure set in purrgatory, starring a cat. Expect to pay £15 / $20 Developer Kyle Thompson Publisher Top Hat Studios Reviewed on RTX 3060 (laptop), Ryzen 5 5600H, 16GB RAM Multiplayer? No Steam Deck Yes Link Steam
Alas, Pluto breaks some stuff during what is effectively an afterlife job interview, so capricious Palace Guardian Kendra decides he’s not allowed in after all. Instead of an eternity of idyll, Pluto is made a Palace door janitor. It’s not a great outcome, obviously. But it turns out other animals have fallen unfairly afoul of Kendra too, and it’s not long before a plot emerges to break out of the Palace’s walls and escape to… where?
Crypt Custodian is a game by Kyle Thompson, whose previous work includes Islets and Sheepo. Both are breezy action metroidvanias starring animals, and all share a distinctive art style. Creature designs borrow heavily from 1930s and 1940s cartoons, but Thompson doesn’t seem interested in rote nostalgia. Animations have a modern fluidity that makes them feel less like a period piece compared to, say, Cuphead. Like Thompson’s earlier games, Crypt Custodian is a gorgeous thing in action. The crisp unfussiness of its art is a perfect fit for its precision-oriented action.
Whereas Islets and Sheepo were sidescrollers, Crypt Custodian opts for a top-down view, bringing it closer to something like Hyper Light Drifter or Death’s Door (it shares the latter’s lightly mordant sense of humour, too). It’s considerably easier than either of those, or at least, its difficulty curve has a much smoother gradient.
Pluto wields a humble broom which functions like a sword. Combat remains uncomplicated throughout the entire game, but the difficulty lies in its bullet hell trappings. Fights are less about fancy attacks and more about balletic manoeuvring between often erratic projectiles, whether with the brisk i-frame laden dodge or careful weaving through the fray. In the vein of Hollow Knight, the controls are tuned tightly enough that, simple though they are, broom fights remained punchy and fun for more than 20 hours.
Image 1 of 4
(Image credit: Kyle Thompson)
Crypt Custodian(Image credit: Kyle Thompson)
Crypt Custodian(Image credit: Kyle Thompson)
Crypt Custodian(Image credit: Kyle Thompson)
Variety comes from the array of powers Pluto accumulates during the adventure, and there’s not just one tier of upgrade here, but three. There’s the usual metroidvania progress abilities, including a ghost double of Pluto for puzzle solving and a broom projectile (dubbed the “broomerang”) which can trigger distant switches. Eventually there’s an upgrade that lets Pluto warp to wherever he can throw his broomerang, and another that lets him burrow tunnels in the ground.
There are also less consequential upgrades tied to a point system, meaning the more upgrade points you collect throughout the world, the more upgrades you can use at once. These include simple buffs to health and attack, but also more creative options like one that makes enemies explode upon death. Also in the mix are special attacks, which can only be activated one at a time and are subject to cooldowns. I tended to stick to the brief moment of invincibility afforded by the Spirit’s Shield, but there are a range of offensive attacks like land mines and homing projectiles.
This two-tier system, unnecessarily confusing though it may seem, feels especially crucial for boss battles. While I found Crypt Custodian mostly low stress, some bosses required me to carefully optimise my “build,’ though I generally didn’t have to think much during normal moment-to-moment world traversal. Bosses fall back on the old pattern recognition, with their mechanical familiarity offset by whimsical spectacle.
Image 1 of 3
(Image credit: Kyle Thompson)
(Image credit: Kyle Thompson)
(Image credit: Kyle Thompson)
Charm is, in the end, something Crypt Custodian leans on very heavily. While the map is huge, most areas are just flat pathways strewn with obstacles, with only a color scheme and wispy indistinct skybox to distinguish them. It eventually makes the hard-fought discovery of a new area feel less exciting than it usually is in these sorts of games.
Yes, it does occasionally feel monotonous, especially when I realized that I could just run past most enemies rather than fight them.
On the other hand, I loved Crypt Custodian’s modesty, which is a weird thing to love about a videogame. Let me explain: for a long time I kept expecting Crypt Custodian to surprise me with some incredible new power, or crazy hidden depth. This never materialised. I eventually understood that, aside from being a mechanically impeccable videogame, this is also a cool thing a single person made with the help of their brother (Eric Thompson contributes the Boards of Canada-esque soundtrack). Though it fails to intrigue on the same level, it shares the intimacy of fellow sole-developed indie Animal Well. It has a particular vision that would only have been smudged had other hands been involved.
During a year that has felt near-apocalyptic for the industry, it’s productive to be reminded that a videogame can just be a weird thing one person made as much for fun as for profit.
As if to confirm this blinding glimpse of the blatantly obvious, the latest rumours around next-gen MacBooks suggest even Apple now recognises that 8 GB is utterly pants.
According to pathological Apple rumour pedaler Mark Gurman (via Tom’s Hardware), Apple will finally make the jump to 16 GB for the base models of its upcoming and revised MacBook lineup using new Apple M4 silicon.
You can, of course, have 16 GB on the base MacBook Air with either the M2 or M3 chip. But it will cost you a hefty, you might say ludicrous, $200 for the upgrade over the standard 8 GB.
Just to put that into context, an 8 GB stick of perfectly good DDR4 can be had for less than $20, while an 8 GB stick of DDR5 is perhaps $25. So, yeah, $200 is laughable.
The problem is that Apple silicon is highly integrated. The memory is actually built into the Apple Silicon APU package. That has numerous performance and efficiency benefits. But it also makes memory upgrades impossible. What you go for when pulling the purchase trigger is what you’re stuck with permanently.
One possible confounding factor in all this involves the M4 chips that are already out there in the wild. Somewhat oddly, the M4 actually debuted earlier this year in an updated iPad Pro model.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
In that implementation, the base model iPad Pro with M4 offers 8 GB of low-power DDR5 memory. However, teardowns of the device have revealed the M4 package actually has a pair of 6 GB chips and thus some of the memory is disabled.
The argument for doing this involves 4 GB chips not having sufficient internal dies to fully populate the M4 chip’s memory channels and therefore not being optimal for bandwidth. The 6 GB memory chips solve that.
But the existence of 12 GB hardware in the iPad Pro does beg the question of whether 12 GB for the base MacBook models would make more sense. Then Apple could keep the upgrade charge for 16 GB. And Apple loves nothing more than charging for upgrades.
Whatever, if Apple does go for 16 GB on the base MacBooks, the next unknown is price. If Apple launches a new base MacBook Air with 16 GB, but it costs $200 more than the existing 8 GB MacBook Air M3, then Apple won’t so much have upgraded the base model as ditched it entirely.
Anyway, if Apple does make the jump to 16 GB, it’ll be fun to observe the verbal gymnastics involved in bigging up the improvement at the same time as not contradicting earlier marketing spin that claimed, “actually, 8 GB on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16 GB on other systems.”
That latter comment is what Apple’s VP of worldwide product marketing Bob Borcher claimed last year. It wasn’t true then and so MacBooks with more memory will definitely be a good thing. We just doubt they’ll come without some kind of price premium. It’s the Apple way.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/1724857302_After-claiming-8-GB-on-a-Mac-is-like-16.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2024-08-28 15:39:122024-08-28 15:39:12After claiming 8 GB on a Mac is like 16 GB on PC, Apple’s rumoured to be finally making the jump to 16 GB
Whatever your puzzle-solving level, you’ll find the Wordle help you need right here. If you’d like to give every guess you make some extra polish, try our general tips. If you crave some guidance for the August 28 (1166) puzzle, take a look at Wednesday’s clue. Or if you just need today’s Wordle answer on a plate, click straight to it. Your game, your way.
It’s obvious now I’m staring at the answer, but when it came to rearranging my yellow letters today I really had no idea what to do with them. So instead of trying to spot a word amongst the jumble, I used the clues I’d been given to logically lock them in place, and then went hunting for the only letter that could fill in the gap left behind.
Today’s Wordle hint
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)
Wordle today: A hint for Wednesday, August 28
A person described in this way would be flexible, supple, and graceful. This is the movement of gymnasts and dancers.
Is there a double letter in Wordle today?
No, there is no double letter in today’s puzzle.
Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day
Playing Wordle well is like achieving a small victory every day—who doesn’t like a well-earned winning streak in a game you enjoy? If you’re new to the daily word game, or just want a refresher, I’m going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success:
You want a balanced mix of unique consonants and vowels in your opening word.
A solid second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
The answer could contain letters more than once.
There’s no time pressure beyond making sure it’s done by the end of the day. If you’re struggling to find the answer or a tactical word for your next guess, there’s no harm in coming back to it later on.
Today’s Wordle answer
(Image credit: Future)
What is today’s Wordle answer?
Looking for a win? The answer to the August 28 (1166) Wordle is LITHE.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Previous Wordle answers
The last 10 Wordle answers
Knowing previous Wordle solutions can be helpful in eliminating current possibilities. It’s unlikely a word will be repeated and you can find inspiration for guesses or starting words that may be eluding you.
Here are some recent Wordle answers:
August 27: CROWN
August 26: STAKE
August 25: SKATE
August 24: FILET
August 23: LEECH
August 22: BRUTE
August 21: MULCH
August 20: DELAY
August 19: METER
August 18: LANKY
Learn more about Wordle
(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)
Wordle gives you six rows of five boxes each day, and it’s your job to work out which five-letter word is hiding by eliminating or confirming the letters it contains.
Starting with a strong word like LEASH—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters—is a good place to start. Once you hit Enter, the boxes will show you which letters you’ve got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn’t in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you’ve got the right letter in the right spot.
Your second go should compliment the starting word, using another “good” guess to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer. After that, it’s just a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there’s an E). Don’t forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).
If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you’d like to find out which words have already been used, you can scroll to the relevant section above.
Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn’t long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.
I knew next to nothing about Deadlock when I got playtest access a couple weeks back. I hadn’t looked at any illicit YouTube gameplay footage. I hadn’t perused the then-unsanctioned subreddit. Operating with only the vague awareness that Valve was making a third person MOBA shooter, I fired up the closed alpha without knowing what I’d be looking at. Scifi, maybe? Valve does a lot of scifi stuff, right?
Instead, as the main menu loaded, I was met with a spooky strings-and-piano track straight out of a Tim Burton joint as the camera sank between city buildings to settle on a smoky city street littered with candles and spectral pigeons. A burly, bespectacled half-demon detective leaned against the entryway to a sort of occult corner store, its exterior adorned with hanging bells, crow feathers, and a banner advertising its sale of “BEER, TALISMANS, GROCERIES.” At the end of the block, a distant troop of candle-headed puppets marched in lockstep across the intersection.
“Welcome to the Cursed Apple,” Deadlock’s tutorial exclaimed. I could not have been more thrilled.
If there’s a term for the aesthetic of Deadlock’s accursed alt-New York, I don’t know it. Occultpunk, maybe? Neo Wiccanoir? Its current hero roster includes a fedora-wearing, interplanar pyromaniac, a living gargoyle, a femme fatale with a haunted arm, and a Columbia professor who got turned into a star in a bottle by a spacetime hole. In-game, you battle alongside battalions of candle golems across city streets lit by art nouveau streetlamps so you can battle the opposing team’s towering eldritch idols.
There are ritual circles on the rooftops. There are phantoms peering out from open elevators. The Cursed Apple is a city where everyone is dabbling in forces that nobody should be. It’s a little bit steampunk, a little bit pulp horror, and a lot Fallen London; the wardrobes might be from the 1930s, but the black magic bodega still has an ATM sticker on the front door. Whatever you call it, Deadlock’s vibe is refreshingly weird.
Image 1 of 3
(Image credit: Valve)
(Image credit: Valve)
(Image credit: Valve)
There’s a lot of Dota 2 DNA in the character design language of Deadlock’s heroes, but it’s a cast that feels more cohesive, even in its early development state. Where Dota 2’s roster was built around a scattershot of remixed Warcraft 3 heroes, Deadlock’s disparate character concepts—from the pompadoured monster hunter to the walking junkpile—feel like Valve reveling in a setting that it can sketch out from scratch, something the studio hasn’t done since Team Fortress 2. It’s an early glimpse at a metropolis-sized melting pot of cultures, creatures, arcana, and the occasional guy made of goo.
And not only that: It’s funny. Deadlock’s map is far from finished, but it’s already scattered with delightful bits of worldbuilding absurdity. Parked tankers and trucks carry branding for “Fogwell’s Bioluminescence” or “Five Eyes Meats (from concentrate),” while ads for a firm of reanimation specialists are offering free estimates and same-day service on “fluid restoration” and “mortal preservation.” It’s an echo of the kind of Valve humor that I loved in TF2’s class shorts and item descriptions, filtered through a world where you can buy occult goods at the same place you get your produce.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
I’m not a MOBA guy. Having to make ability and item build decisions mid-game makes me feel afraid. But Deadlock’s aesthetic is already so compelling that I’m willing to stomach my incompetence if it means getting to watch Valve fill its latest sandbox.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/1724785230_Deadlocks-occult-New-York-setting-already-has-such-excellent-vibes.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2024-08-27 19:51:452024-08-27 19:51:45Deadlock’s occult New York setting already has such excellent vibes that I might become a MOBA guy just to see where Valve takes it
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/ASSASSINS-CREED-VALHALLA-84-BASIM-FALA-SOBRE-SI.jpg7201280DecayeD20https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngDecayeD202024-08-27 15:00:032024-08-27 15:00:03ASSASSIN’S CREED VALHALLA #84 | BASIM FALA SOBRE SI
Back when AMD previewed the Zen 5 architecture, it promised an IPC gain averaging 16% over equivalent Zen 4 parts. While the new chips handily beat out the older ones in heavily threaded benchmarks, the gains were smaller in games. That led to some criticisms, with many gamers believing the new chips didn’t offer enough to tempt them to upgrade.
AMD acknowledged these concerns in a blog post, saying it’s internal testing was “run in admin mode, which produced results that reflect branch prediction code optimizations not present in the version of Windows reviewers used to test Ryzen 9000 Series”. The blog goes on to say the Windows 11 24H2 update will improve Zen 5 gaming performance when it’s released later this year.
According to testing by Hardware Unboxed, Windows 11 24H2 update can deliver double digit performance improvements across many titles.
Branch prediction is one of the significantly improved areas of the Zen 5 architecture. Better branch prediction leads to fewer wasted clock cycles, which in turn means better performance and power efficiency. But improved branch prediction means little without the appropriate software awareness, and the OS plays a key role. It begs the question, why didn’t these optimizations come sooner?
Hardware Unboxed noted that Zen 4 chips also achieved gains under 24H2, which makes us wonder why AMD and Microsoft weren’t able to deliver these optimizations months—if not years in advance. With these optimizations, Zen 5’s percentage gains over Zen 4 might not have changed all that much, but they would have looked better versus the Intel competition.
Even without the 24H2 optimizations, it’s not like Zen 5 is a slouch. Our reviews of the Ryzen 5 9600X, Ryzen 7 9700X, Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X highlight their power efficiency, cooler running and solid all-round performance. It just seems as though they could have been that bit better.
It goes without saying that when Windows 11 24H2 is released to the public later this year, you should install it in order to get the best out of your chip. I guess that means our man Nick is going to have to cut back on sleep—again—to see just how this update affects the PC Gamer benchmark results.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
The Windows 24H2 update is available for Windows Insiders, and it will be out in the wild before X3D chips arrive, which bodes well for gamers. They’ll go head-to-head with Intel’s upcoming Arrow Lake family. We don’t know just how each family will perform in games, but it’ll be an exciting battle.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/1724749173_If-youre-gaming-with-a-Zen-5-system-youll-bag.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2024-08-27 09:11:042024-08-27 09:11:04If you’re gaming with a Zen 5 system, you’ll bag some major performance gains from the upcoming Windows 11 24H2 update
Using Windows feels like a constant negotiation with a hostile and unstable terrorist whom I paid for the privilege, so I was ready to get up in arms about it formally “deprecating” the Control Panel in favor of the newer Settings menu. But then, as reported by Ars Technica, Microsoft softened its words, if not the meaning behind them, and more to the point, I don’t think the big M is really doing anything wrong—this time.
A Windows support page was recently updated with the language “The Control Panel is in the process of being deprecated in favor of the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience.” After widespread discussion and reporting on the move, including PC World’s editorial, “Windows will have to pry Control Panel from my cold dead hands” (much respect), Microsoft amended the language to read “many of the settings in Control Panel are in the process of being migrated to the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience.”
Sounds a bit gentler, but that still pretty much means the same thing, right? “Control Panel, you’re off the team, Settings is getting called up from the Minor Leagues.” The age of Control Panel is over, now is the hour of wolves. And I’m sure the phrase “modern and streamlined experience” feels bitterly condescending to the Control Panel likers out there. I know that in my experience, Windows’ overall “modern and streamlined experience” feels like I’m being jerked around, slapped in the face, pushed down in the mud, and made to say “thank you” for it.
But I honestly can’t remember the last time I used the Control Panel. I usually do get to my relevant destination via the Settings (ugh) “app,” and failing that I’ll make things work with the OS’ search function, even though it’s always trying to open up Bing in an Edge browser window for some godforsaken reason—has anyone ever “Binged” a result in Windows’ OS search intentionally, even once?
If we’re being honest, the Control Panel has been in the process of being deprecated for Settings’ streamlined and modern whatever for some time now, and I don’t hate it—I could never find shit in the Control Panel! There was never a rhyme or reason to its layout—alphabetical, thematic, what have you—you just had to squint and go down the columns until you found what you were looking for, or otherwise submit to a dumbed down categorical view that still felt randomized somehow. I owe the Control Panel nothing. It can die for all I care.
I just never want to let a grievance I don’t actually buy into get in the way of all the real things I can’t stand about Windows, like it’s crappy HDR support, how every other Windows update tries to subscribe me to OneDrive and Office 365, how “update and shut down” actually restarts your PC, how if you have a second monitor plugged in, but turned off, Windows still presents an invisible, phantom desktop you can lose your cursor in, how Windows always resets my second monitor’s wallpaper on restart, how the search tool doesn’t work and sends you to Bing, or how the OS has this awful second ecosystem of “apps” for some reason, as if “programs” were just too nerdy and unsexy. And Instead of fixing all of this they’re trotting out new AI surveillance tools then saying “sorry, sorry” when everybody gets mad
Yeah, I have some grievances. Festivus came early this year. I should really become a Linux Guy, like all men of a certain age.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/1724713109_Microsoft-softens-language-about-killing-off-the-Control-Panel-but.jpg6761200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2024-08-26 23:53:472024-08-26 23:53:47Microsoft softens language about killing off the Control Panel, but it’s still clearly gonna kill off the Control Panel
Ubisoft has the reputation of a trend-chasing collection of studios that make the same types of open world games over and over, but not enough people talk about the cool, unexpected, or just plain weird little touches its games have that no other massive publisher would ever greenlight.
NEED TO KNOW
What is it? An open world Star Wars game from Ubisoft where blasters rule and lightsabers drool. Release date August 30, 2024 Expect to pay $70/£60 Developer Ubisoft Massive Publisher Ubisoft Reviewed on RTX 2080 Super, Intel Core i9 9900KS, 32GB RAM Multiplayer No Steam Deck N/A Link Ubisoft Connect
I’m talking about the good stuff, like Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s robust codex of ancient Baghdad museum pieces, Rainbow Six Siege’s overkill destruction engine, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s ambitious exploration mode that turns every waypoint into contextual directions so you develop a real sense of mastery over the planet’s geography. I’m talking about designing an entire Watch Dogs sequel around the concept of plucking any citizen off the street—randos with simulated interests, relationships, and schedules down to the hour—and turning them into the protagonist.
Star Wars Outlaws is both sides of Ubisoft: it’s conventional and safe in ways that really get on my nerves, but it’s also ambitious enough to be more than just a third-person shooter in a sandbox. Outlaws is a game where nearly every story mission involves crawling through a vent that leads to a ladder that leads to a hallway. It’s also a game with a reactive reputation system that matters, ludicrously detailed cities I didn’t want to leave, and maybe my favorite open world side activity ever.
Street urchin
One of those good ideas is Kay Vess, Outlaws’ wide-eyed protagonist with a background that reads like every D&D party’s rogue: She grew up on the streets of Canto Bight (the casino planet from The Last Jedi), running jobs and taking scores from a young age. Kay is smart and arrogant in a Solo sort of way, but she’s also less impulsive and slower to solve every problem with a blaster. She’s instantly likable, and scores extra points with me for having nothing to do with lightsabers or the force. There’s a distinct lack of self-importance to Outlaws that I appreciate. This game doesn’t cover any important backstory or even attempt to juice up Kay’s importance in the canon—she’s an unimportant speck in a galactic war she couldn’t be less interested in (Outlaws takes place between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi).
(Image credit: Ubisoft)
Outlaws’ best moments tend to happen between quests when I’m walking through a city looking to make some Credits or spend everything I just earned. I love how easy it is to fall into the scoundrel roleplay in Outlaws—picking up odd jobs, shopping for obscure blaster parts, playing arcade machines in a cantina, betting on races, cashing out in Sabacc.
Man, I can’t stop thinking about Sabacc, easily Outlaws’ strongest minigame. It’s basically simplified poker where every player tries to make the smallest possible pair, but with variables that add surprising depth. Special cards, like one that copies whatever card is next to it, can save Kay from a bad draw at the last second. Players can also play special medals that trigger instant effects, like forcing all players to throw another chip in the pot or preventing them from drawing more cards. You actually have to collect these medals in the world by tracking them down at vendors or stealing them from vaults. Kay can even employ her pet Nix to glance at other players’ cards through a timing minigame.
A lot of effort for a minigame, right? That’s something I picked up early about Outlaws: it takes its side stuff seriously, so much that I was often more invested in my Sabacc deck (it’s Gwent all over again) and pile of incomplete sidequests than Kay Vess’ main story. Well, that and food.
It felt kind of silly at first to “control” something so basic as biting down on some corn, but the whole sequence was so warm and inviting.
Each of Outlaws’ four major cities has a unique street food spot where Kay and Nix can take a break from all the vent crawling and skull cracking to sit down and have a meal. I expected the interaction to be as quick as buying anything else in Outlaws—that I’d press X on a picture of an alien steak and Kay would get +2 damage for an hour or something. Instead, I was treated to a three-minute interactive cutscene starting with the droid chef cooking and presenting the dish: Che Mosska, described as “slow-grilled sweet mosska on the cob, freshly picked from the steppes of Toshara. Served with mashed deikko root and jera peppers.” It looked delicious, but it wasn’t nearly over yet. I watched Kay and Nix eat every part of the meal, chiming in with quick-time events for bites and scoops.
It felt kind of silly at first to “control” something so basic as biting down on some corn, but the whole sequence was so warm and inviting. Watching the way Nix sniffed each element of the dish before scarfing it down, and how Kay intentionally backed off to let her little pal eat as much as she wanted, told me everything I needed to know about their relationship: They’re inseparable. They love trying new things together. They’d do anything for each other.
I’ve never seen anything quite like it in an open world game—the closest I can think of is spooning soup into Arthur’s mouth in Red Dead Redemption—but it still wasn’t done. Nix collapsed backwards with a full belly and satisfied grin as the Che Mosska became a new gear slot, a “Nix Treat,” unlocking her ability to kick away grenades in a firefight. I was already happy to have dropped 200 Credits on the adorable slice of life, but like so many elements of Outlaws, worldbuilding feeds directly into progression.
(Image credit: Ubisoft)
Rogue ones
I wish I had as good of a time with the story as I did goofing around in cities. Outlaws’ main thread follows Kay assembling a crew for a heist, the spoils of which would allow her to clear the bounty on her head and finally live free of the Empire. It’s a fun Soderbergh-style setup, but it flattens out early on and never really picks up. A majority of the main quests are spent looking for potential crew members, not actually interacting with them, so once they finally join the Trailblazer, they become silent NPCs with only occasional ship chatter. The only consistent voice in your ear is ND-5, a prequel-era droid assigned to Kay by the heist’s architect to help.
ND-5 and Kay’s relationship was the most disappointing, as most of their interactions are brief radio calls where Kay asks the more experienced ND-5 for scoundrel advice. Occasionally they touch onto the topic of ND-5’s autonomy as a droid—Outlaws picks up this thread later down the line as a major story beat, but by that point I wasn’t buying it. Ubi just doesn’t give any part of its ensemble enough time in the spotlight for me to care about them. Maybe Ubi should’ve let me split a meal with my crew, too.
Playing Outlaws sometimes felt like two different games. When I was working through sidequests, it’s like I was playing a scoundrel simulator where Kay is a cool, mysterious thief-for-hire taking jobs from anyone with enough Credits to pay. Once I got around to the main quests, Outlaws switched to Star Wars Uncharted mode: Climbing up rocks, shimmying ledges, jumping across gaps that are supposed to be suspenseful, but aren’t. It’s really weak stuff, and Ubi makes you do a ton of it as part of big setpiece missions with beautiful backdrops of crashed Imperial ships and droid factories.
It’s not a sin unique to Outlaws, but these platforming sequences play like Ubi was terrified that I might not know exactly where to go at every moment. Climbing routes are linear and obvious, with very little puzzle variety to break things up. Apparently every planet in the Star Wars galaxy is littered with powerful fans that can only be turned off by shooting a little pylon.
There’s yellow paint splattered everywhere you’re supposed to go, which would usually kill even the slightest sense of pathfinding through these one-note climbing puzzles, but Ubi included a clutch option I’ve never seen before—turning on “Exploreer Mode” erases most of the yellow paint from climbable surfaces and tones down the contrast on the bits of yellow that remain. Without the paint, I occasionally had to walk around a room a bit, scanning the walls for feasible handholds. I can respect that’s annoying to some, but I consider it good, immersive game design. Searching is a skill, just like it is when I’m looking out for alternate paths in Deus Ex or foraging for a specific flower in Breath of the Wild. If games are going to keep using this same ugly yellow paint to signal me where to go, I’m a big fan of getting the option to turn it off.
(Image credit: Ubisoft)
Scoundrel school
When Outlaws isn’t doing a Naughty Dog impression, it’s a pretty good stealth game. I’m still surprised by just how sneaky the game is, and not just because it has a crouch button and tall grass. Most open world games these days have stealth, but they’re not stealth games. Outlaws is an exception: Kay Vess is portrayed first and foremost as a thief, not a gunslinger, and most of her moveset revolves around dropping as few bodies as possible. She knocks guards from behind like you’d expect, but she can also signal Nix to pull a guard’s attention, sabotage alarms, or trigger explosive distractions.
The spaces Kay sneaks through are classic Ubi compounds: multi-level, mostly outdoor arenas with guards hanging out just far enough away from each other that I never felt like a confrontation was forced. Which is good, because Kay only has one ranged knockout option. Her blaster has a single-shot stun mode that will knock out any basic guard, but it has a long cooldown. When I think about the last decade of open world games (many made by Ubisoft) that instantly undercut the drama of sneaking by giving me a silenced pistol that turns off any human obstacle, Ubi’s restraint here is all the more impressive. Outlaws pushes me to play it more like Thief than Dishonored.
Nix functions more-or-less like your phone in a Watch Dogs game, extending your reach across rooms so Kay can stay hidden. With the dedicated Nix button, she can press buttons, hold down levers, or fetch a dropped Stormtrooper blaster in the heat of a fight. It’s a really neat and flexible system, though it’s not as fleshed out as I hoped it’d be after earlier preview sessions. It turns out all the interactable bits of environment I encountered early in Outlaws—explosive barrels and smoke canisters—is pretty much all you ever see. That’s a bummer, because both essentially do the same thing in stealth (cause a ruckus). With the exception of some useful Nix modifiers, like an upgrade that lets her distract multiple guards at once, Outlaws’ stealth doesn’t evolve all that much after the first couple hours. I loved sneaking, but by hour 20 I could feel a rut forming under my feet as I distracted guards and sucker punched Stormtroopers the same exact way in every mission. Outlaws would benefit from borrowing just a bit more from Ubi’s rich legacy of stealth games.
It got so tiresome that I eventually started picking fights for fun, and I learned I don’t dislike Outlaws’ shooting as much as I did in an earlier preview. Once I turned off the aggressive aim assist, I had a decent time lining up headshots and swapping between the three main blaster modes: basic plasma, Ion for droids and shields, and Power for a charge-up shot that drops almost anything in one hit. Some caveats: I had to crank the difficulty up to really feel the heat, and there are some later-game upgrades and gear that can turn Kay into a tank (more health, damage reduction, damage buffs). I mostly avoided those, and instead pursued gear that made Kay’s footsteps quieter.
(Image credit: Ubisoft)
Go out and get it
“Pursue” is an important verb in Outlaws. Ubi has devised one of the more unique upgrade systems I’ve seen in an open-world game, ditching a leveling system for essentially a galactic scavenger hunt. As part of the main story and optional sidequests, Kay meets “experts” that unlock new abilities in every discipline of outlaw-hood: a mechanic that offers Speeder upgrades, an ex-syndicate gunslinger with blaster tips, a gambler, a mercenary, a slicer that blows the hacking minigame wide open. The fun part is that none of these abilities are free—they all have a checklist of simple challenges locked behind them (straightforward stuff like “headshot bad guys” or vague stuff like “make Nix happy”) as well as a special crafting material. Sometimes that material can be purchased from a merchant deep in syndicate territory, but often you’ll have to lift it from a gang stronghold, imperial base, or elaborate cave puzzle.
PERFORMANCE
(Image credit: Ubisoft)
The pre-release build of Star Wars Outlaws was a bit of a rollercoaster on my machine. I aimed for 60fps at 1080p with my mid-tier specs (RTX 2080 Super, i9-9900KS, 32GB RAM, 8GB VRAM) and DLSS set to Quality, but Outlaws struggled to keep even a steady 30fps for the majority of the week I played it. Smaller indoor spaces were OK, but unsurprisingly, large outdoor areas like Toshara’s open world were the worst. Then one night after resetting my PC, something changed: Outlaws could easily keep up with the set 60fps target wherever I went, and all the stuttering I’d experienced previously was gone. Everything’s been smooth sailing ever since.
Ubisoft Massive hand-made loads of compounds and one-off spelunking zones (mostly on the planet new to Outlaws, Toshara, and Tatooine) specifically for these expert quests, with very little geographical overlap with its loads of regular jobs and sidequests. Not every new ability is a winner (several of them are just max health upgrades), but each of the nine experts had one or two fun new toys I immediately wanted to play with, like smoke bombs, a backflip maneuver for my ship, or magnetic dice for cheating at Sebacc.
Experts feed in nicely to the “scoundrel fantasy” that Ubi has been selling Outlaws on since the beginning. It wasn’t just talk: Kay’s progression is cleverly linked to the network of underworld contacts she cultivates as a freshly hatched criminal, sidestepping some of the disbelief that we usually have to suspend with videogame power-ups. Why can Kay suddenly hack better? Not because she’s level five, but because she met a master slicer who showed her some moves. Is Kay an accomplished speeder mechanic? No, but she knows a guy who knows a guy.
The same goes for basic upgrades. The rarest materials needed to supe up Kay’s blaster, ship, and speeder can be stolen from highly-guarded areas, or you save up credits and just buy them from a shady vendor in gang territory. That is, of course, if that gang likes Kay enough to let her through the gates.
(Image credit: Ubisoft)
It’s who you know
Running in parallel with Kay’s expanding roster of experts is her dynamic standing with Outlaws’ four syndicate factions: the Pykes, Ashiga, Hutts, and Crimson Dawn. Every city is occupied by at least two factions, with the turf wars between them setting the stage for Kay’s sidequests that constantly ask her to choose sides.
It turns out a motorcycle that can just hover over most obstacles is pretty boring.
And I do mean constantly: lots of sidequests and every basic job (steal this, hack that sort of stuff) end with a last-minute opportunity to stab your employer in the back and sell the score to the other side. These choices never have any real story impact, so don’t go in expecting David Cage levels of narrative bending. Instead, jobs are a means to make some cash and balance the reputational scales. Early on, it was easy to keep one side happy and the other one not too unhappy, but at one point in the middle of the story, three out of four factions hated my guts. It was mostly my fault: I’d slowed down on doing jobs so I could focus on the story, which just so happened to feature loads of missions that tanked my rep.
Ubi does a decent job of weaving the consequences of your syndicate standings into quests. Getting in good with the Hutts gave me carte blanche on its chunk of Mos Eisley, which I exploited to easily steal loot from under Jabba’s nose for the other gangs. Kay really does have no allegiances to anyone but to her crew, which makes her more of a scoundrel than we ever saw Han Solo become.
The simulation has a light enough touch that having bad reps never disrupted my progress, but letting too many factions hate me at once did make it a pain to navigate the open world at times. With no minimap or other visual reminder, I often accidentally rode into hostile Pyke or Crimson Dawn territory and got shot at immediately—annoying.
(Image credit: Ubisoft)
Flying nowhere
Outlaws has proven a confusing game to follow from start to end, because it’s fun, but the two things I was most excited to do before playing it—riding the speeder through the open world and piloting my own ship—ended up being the most forgettable parts of the journey. Ubi still hasn’t figured out how to fill the empty spaces between points of interest.
Kay’s squirrely speeder is tricky to control at first, and you can tell a room full of designers had to think hard about how a motorcycle with no tires or friction would actually move. Getting the hang of its wide turns and wild acceleration was neat, but there’s just not much else to it—weirdly, vehicle combat is limited to Kay’s mark-and-execute move, no normal aiming allowed like in a Rockstar game. That killed any desire I had to make a scene and try to fight the law, so I mostly just held down the throttle and gunned it straight for waypoints. Acknowledging that my hunger for friction in videogame traversal is a bit extreme (I turn Death Stranding to its hardest difficulty and refuse to use the assistive exosuits), it turns out a motorcycle that can just hover over most obstacles is pretty boring.
At least the speeder has a clear purpose. Kay’s ship, the Trailblazer, gets the shortest end of the stick. Yes, the cool take-off transitions between ground and space are cool, but there’s little reason to enter orbit if you’re not headed to a different planet. There aren’t many places to go in space. Toshara has the most with piles of scrap, a space station, and asteroids cluttering the area, but I’ve maybe spent 20 minutes total doing stuff there. Only one or two main quests heavily involve space combat or docking in a space station. It’s mainly uneventful side jobs that call Kay to space—picking up lost cargo, killing a few pirates. It’s a significant chunk of Outlaws that goes underused, but having played Starfield, at least I know it could be worse.
Outlaws is everything good and bad about big-budget open world excess. There’s so much going on between its main quests, sidequests, gear quests, rumors, treasure hunts, and contracts, and yet fundamental fun videogame stuff like getting from place to place falls flat. One hour I’m totally engrossed eavesdropping on Stormtroopers plotting to fix the Fathier races, and the next I’m moaning at yet another boring climbing section.
I wish it took bigger risks with combat and doubled down on stealth opportunities, but dammit, roleplaying a scoundrel is some of the best fun I’ve had with anything Star Wars. Behind every forgettable story beat is a little bit of that Ubisoft magic.
We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.
Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.
Essential Website Cookies
These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.
Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.
We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.
We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.
Google Analytics Cookies
These cookies collect information that is used either in aggregate form to help us understand how our website is being used or how effective our marketing campaigns are, or to help us customize our website and application for you in order to enhance your experience.
If you do not want that we track your visit to our site you can disable tracking in your browser here:
Other external services
We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.
Google Webfont Settings:
Google Map Settings:
Google reCaptcha Settings:
Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:
Other cookies
The following cookies are also needed - You can choose if you want to allow them:
Privacy Policy
You can read about our cookies and privacy settings in detail on our Privacy Policy Page.
