These are the X-Wings you are looking for. Star Wars: Squadrons - first impressions

I left the X-Wing's smoking cockpit with a feeling of well done duty and with one thought in my head: "but it was good!". However, I will not give a hand to say that other players will share my optimism about Star Wars: Squadrons.

Five pilots and four types of fighters on each side of the conflict on tight maps full of surprises - that's Star Wars: Squadrons in a nutshell. The upcoming video game from the Star Wars universe will allow players to take part in space duels, and I do not deny that I have high hopes for it from the first announcement. We waited, a trifle… 23 years.

The creators of Star Wars: Squadrons do not hide the fact that they were inspired by X-Wing vs TIE Fighter from 1997.

Fortunately, EA Motive did not follow the slightest line of resistance and did not wrap up the fighter mode of Star Wars: Battlefront 2 developed by Criterion in a new paper, which many players were afraid of. Instead of taking a prefab, the company designed its Star Wars: Squadrons space shooter completely from scratch, taking the old Lucas Arts series as an example.

After four hours on Star Wars: Squadrons servers, during which I had the opportunity to control all eight ships, I already know that the right decision was made. It was with great pleasure that I jumped into the cabin of the classic X-Wing and not only, in the company of four pilots, to face five opponents in a PvP duel in one of the two modes.

Star Wars: Squadrons - Dogfight mode

The main game mode in Star Wars: Squadrons is Dogfight, which literally means airplane combat. The task of the players on both sides is to shoot down as many enemy machines as possible, and which team first scores the required number of points, the one wins. Players can respawn, and the time to return to the map is about a few seconds.

At first, I was concerned that the duels would continue until one team was completely eliminated, and players who dropped out in the earlier stages would only be able to look at the rest of the team. Fortunately, it did not happen, so although I lost a few nice ships, I did not have time to get bored.

Online duels with other players are extremely intense and a bit chaotic.

Almost immediately after the respawn, I fell back into the middle of the action. One stroke of the left trigger was enough to mark the enemy ship in the on-board computer, and then follow it methodically, using lasers, proton torpedoes, ion cannons, etc., to eliminate them at least for a moment from the game, catch a breath and score points

Many times, I myself fell victim to the weapons of another competitor who sat on my tail - because just like ships can have, for example, lures for torpedoes, their use is not always successful. Nevertheless, after a quarter of an hour I felt confident - but then I did not know that Dogfight is just such a sandbox compared to the latter, proper mode.

Star Wars: Squadrons - Fleet Battle mode

The main attraction in Star Wars: Squadrons is the latter of the modes called Fleet Battle. In this type of clashes, apart from the players, there are two battleships facing each other - one is on the side of the New Republic, and the other is loyal to the Empire. It is up to the players to decide which side of the conflict will triumph and ... at what cost they will pay for the victory.

The duel takes place in phases that change depending on which team has better morale. Before attacking the Mon Calamari or Imperial Destroyer, you need to destroy smaller units, and then cut the target's subsystems, such as shields or propulsion. Interestingly, in addition to players, bots fly here.

However, there is no question of crowds on the map.

Just as the fighter combat mode in Battlefront 2 resembles Battlefield's nomen omen , because both games were made by the same studio - and it's about the scale, because on one side of the conflict in DICE there are 20 to 32 people - Star Wars: Squadrons is closer to those more intimate shootings. The game from EA Motive is more like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare or Rainbox Six: Siege.

Is it a good decision? And yes and no, because in 5v5 player duels it is impossible to achieve the same degree of complexity of battles as in the case of productions in which there are several dozen people on one server at once. Even with bots, we don't feel like Wedge during the attack on the Second Death Star, because so much is not happening on the screen - but maybe it's better?

After all, Star Wars: Squadrons is an easy to learn, hard to master game .

I learned the basics of control a few minutes after glancing at the layout of the buttons on the controller, and while playing the mouse and keyboard, my fingers were flying to the right places. But was it enough? And in life - it is not easy to put theoretical knowledge into practice when there is a living person on the other side, determined to get rid of us.

Nevertheless, after a few fights played, when I got bored of checking the limitations of the engine (yes, it is enough to touch the asteroid to make the ship crumble to pieces and yes, you can collide with another player), I started to catch what it was really about. I know, however, that there is still a long way to go. Before I can control the fighter a lot of water will condense on Tatooine.

Controls in Star Wars: Squadrons

My concerns were whether the control of the fighter could be as intuitive as shooting in regular FPS, and unfortunately these were confirmed. In addition, I only played mice for a while and decided that it didn't make much sense. I picked up the controller and… started learning. In Star Wars: Squadrons, we're finally in three-dimensional space all the time.

The right knob on the pad allows us to look around, and the left - to rotate around its axis (because remember that in outer space the concept of top and bottom does not apply) and accelerate and slow down (which is crucial, because you always have to brake before changing the direction of flight) . The controls of the games in which we play the role of walkers, it was impossible to transfer one to one.

Even so, I crashed relatively rarely.

If I was already dying, it was probably not because I had miscalculated the distance and flew into a rock, part of a space station, or a ship with full force. I was usually killed by other players when I slowed down too much and forgot to move the throttle forward again - and I became a very easy target for them especially when I redirected all my power to the lasers.

Energy management is one of the key gameplay elements in Star Wars: Squadrons, which was taken directly from X-Wing vs TIE Fighter. On the pad, you can choose one of four settings: balanced energy consumption, maximum lasers, maximum engine and - in ships that have them - maximum shields. Each setting loads a different bonus.

What energy settings should I choose in Star Wars: Squadrons?

Here it all depends on the conditions and the goal we want to achieve - by attacking the destroyer, we can set additional laser power to deal more damage or additional shield power to withstand the turbolasers cannonade longer. When escaping from the battlefield and in duels with other players, we can focus on speed to make more turns and easier to get on their tail.

Mastering the buttons and remembering to toggle between these settings is crucial to the success of your mission. In addition, it would be good to learn how to use the radar, which allows you to track both enemies and enemies, and the team menu that allows you to mark enemies and targets for other team members. In a vacuum, these elements seem simple.

Remembering everyone when we are under fire is another matter.

Fortunately, the game features a singleplayer mode, and although I had the opportunity to play only two missions from the prologue, i.e. one for each side of the conflict, you can already see that this is a tutorial. I hope that this clichéd story will develop in the further course of the game and will be closer to the one from Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order than to the campaign from Star Wars: Battlefront 2.

I also received confirmation during the conversation with the developers that the multiplayer maps can be played alone or in co-op mode against bots - and fortunately, these declarations are made now. Developers emphasize that there are no significant updates after the premiere, and the only thing that will appear is easy service and rebalancing of the game.

EA Motive emphasizes that Star Wars: Squadrons is a complete game, not a service game.

All game content will go to the computer's or console's memory for the premiere. You can only unlock add-ons during the game and there will be no micropayments here. Unlocking all improvements to fighters and skins will require a lot of perseverance from the player, as well as ... many, many hours flown. Unfortunately, this approach to distributing the game has its drawbacks.

This means that we do not have much to count on either new game modes, or new ships, or new cosmetic items. Fortunately, already in the test version, there were many additions on the menu - from races of pilots, through outfits and Ewok pendants for the cockpit, to the Darth Vader hologram placed in the cockpit. I was also assured that there would be even more of them.

Star Wars: Squadrons is unfortunately not a game without flaws

After four hours with Star Wars: Squadrons, I was more than happy, but I realize that I have niche needs. I have been dreaming about such a game for 23 years and I would like to spend some time on the servers, but I don't know if I can convince my friends to do the same. I am afraid that the controls and management will be too unintuitive for Sunday players.

Paradoxically, in the case of those less demanding players, the fighting mode straight from Star Wars Battlefront 2 could work better, but evidently EA Motive wanted to do something that the developers would be pleased with. Will they make it, or will Star Wars: Squadron not gather enough players to survive? I don't know, but you can see it's a fan production for fans.

However, it pains me that Star Wars doesn't get as much love from Electronic Arts as they should.

It's been years since the publisher took over the rights to the Star Wars brand, and in fact we only got four productions. Two of them are in the Battlefront expansion, where the second part of this series became the hero of the lootbox scandal, and two - the already released Jedi Fallen Order and the upcoming Star Wars: Squadrons - are enjoyable productions, but not of the highest quality.

In this context, I respect EA Motive all the more for the fact that they plan to add VR support to their game, but unfortunately this is related to the fact that Star Wars: Squadrons, even running on a powerful PC without VR goggles, looks ... very average. You can see it on the screenshots above, which I made during the game.

Nevertheless, the premieres cannot wait, and in addition, Star Wars: Squadrons is to support full cross-play and full cross-progression, which will allow you to compete with friends regardless of the platform. I really hope that thanks to this I will be able to find a team of five in the real world, with which I will be able to blow up Imperial soldiers and crush the rebel scum ...

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These are the X-Wings you are looking for. Star Wars: Squadrons - first impressions