Let's talk about Star Wars Squadrons tonight.
Star Wars Squardons is the return to in-cockpit Star Wars Starfighter combat that we haven't had in several years. Story mode puts you in the role of both an Imperial pilot and a Rebel/Republic pilot. Your individual squadrons run missions in a creative "against the other" faction storyline that brings in guest stars from other Star Wars media. Squadrons has a PVE/PVP mode where you can join with other players or friends and meet the enemy in dogfighting or in an assault to take out the other's capital ship.
The story for Squadrons is just about ten hours. Its a good story and it follows the usual Star Wars tropes but the shortness was a little disappointing. Another con to the story is how it is set up. You start in your hanger, talk to your squadmates, go to briefing, fight, rinse repeat. Its the Wing Commander pattern from the 90s and I think 20 years on we're past that level of simplicity.
Squadrons really shines in its graphics, especially its VR support. It is an amazing VR flight game as much as it is flat screen. The ships are rendered beautifully and the combat is instinctual and intuitive. Environments are fantastic; stellar phenomenon, planetary bodies, all sorts of challenges and hazards abound and it is rare that it makes your video card hate you. That's important to a PC player.
The sound and audio of Star Wars Squadrons are what you'd expect from a AAA game. Fantastic voice acting including two special guests that I won't spoil here.
The controls are a hot mess. I'm not even going to pad it. It has HOTAS support but expect to have to reset or bind everything. Some bindings make sense but others are a nightmare. The configuration refers to joystick buttons which in my case, my HOTAS has actual names for those buttons, not numbers. It led to a lot of guess work and I know I don't have everything down pat even months later. Targeting sub systems of the capital ships is a freaking nightmare.
Online/PVP mode is challenging in a good way. It all depends on your skill level as a pilot and practice is quite recommended. Hell, its required. It is a game best shared with friends!
Summing Up:
Story: 3/5. Great story but poorly executed in an early 90s format.
Graphics: 5/5: If you can, you have to play in VR. You FEEL like a starfighter pilot. Its amazing.
Sound: 5/5: I rarely have bad things to say about video game sound. But you know I love voice acting and when it involves some really cool characters from Star Wars and its the right voices: HUGE PLUS.
Controls: 2/5: Waaaaay too disjointed. The first hour of your game play is going to be binding, experimenting, and rebinding controls. What's absolutely disappointing in the controls is that some of the functions don't even have a default binding on ANY controller to begin with. Just...wow.