Review: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

I am a firm believer that a Star Wars game doesn’t have to feature a single light saber or space wizard to be good, I mean, just look at the Tie Fighter and X-Wing games. However, if you are going to put Jedi in your game, make sure you do it right. Once again, Respawn has crafted a game that gives you that power fantasy of spinning laser swords and mind powers with effortless ease, and while it might have some issues, Jedi Survivor is quite simply an excellent game. 

Picking up some five years after the events of Fallen Order, now Jedi Knight Cal Kestis is engaging in acts of rebellion against the empire with a new crew of the Mantis. What’s brilliant about this opening mission is that it isn't an abilit-tease, the main powers you had at the end of Fallen Order are with you from the off in Survivor. It makes a refreshing change to the standard formula of such games and allows you to pick up with Cal as though you were never away. 

Sadly, that mission goes more than a little bit south and Cal is sent limping into space aboard the Mantis, where the game’s campaign properly kicks off. Arriving on Koboh, he and the ever adorable BD-1 find friends old and new, using this open world area as a base of operations to continue the story and explore the surroundings. This idea walks the line between discrete levels and open world environments and works surprisingly well, giving you the right amount of both. 

Regardless of if it's Koboh or another planet, the areas you run around in are expansive, with plenty of nooks and crannies to hide collectables in and in some cases they have the requisite bit of hard platforming to get to them. The downside to this is that, for the most part, those collectibles are pointless, as apart from one specific type they are otherwise cosmetic items for Cal, BD-1, his light saber or his blaster and barely add anything to the game other than the satisfaction of ticking off that item from the map. 

There are gameplay relevant upgrades, like more healing stims for BD-1, skill points and the two new combat stances. At the start of the game you have the ones from the first game, so the single, dual and double bladed stances, but as you get into the campaign you gain two new ones: Blaster and Cross guard. Crossguard is a two handed, heavy attack focused stance that deals heavy damage to enemies, while Blaster makes your sword attacks look more like traditional fencing while giving you the ability to shoot fools with a gun. 

Honestly, I barely used the Cross Guard stance, busting it out only when I absolutely had to. The best combo I found, as you can have two equipped at once, was double blade and Blaster, as they gave the best of both worlds. Cal is so agile that having a stance that basically stopped you moving around a lot just seemed pointless, though it is very much a personal thing and your playstyle might suit other combinations. The finishing moves for the Blaster stance are just awesome though, so I highly recommend using that for at least a bit. 

If you have played Fallen Order, then you know pretty much what to expect from Survivor, and that means that if the first game didn’t capture you, it is unlikely that the sequel is suddenly have it click into place - it is very much more of the same in terms of minute to minute gameplay, though that gameplay is just more refined and tighter here, and considering how good the first one played this is a welcome change. The feeling of tearing through mobs of storm troopers a swirling ballet of destruction has rarely been matched, simply bringing a smile to your face. 

One of the better aspects of the game are the new force tears. These are mystical challenge rooms that make you fight certain enemies with certain stances or complete platforming sequences that really showcase Cal’s acrobatic abilities. The tears are a really cool new aspect and definitely live up to the challenge room moniker, with some of the platform ones especially being findish in their demands of you. The rewards for completing them might not be stellar, but playing them is all the reward you need. 

The game pulls from all of the various Star Wars era’s, presenting you with Storm troopers, clone war’s era battle droids and super battle droids to face and even pulling in the new High Republic mythology. For those who don’t know, the High Republic is set some two hundred years before the events of The Skywalker Saga, so it’s cool to see things from that time depicted on screen for the first time. The games main big bad also comes from the High Republic, and while fairly standard as Star Wars bad guys go, it's certainly a new spin on things, even though not much is made of just how old he actually is. 

The story goes places, to say the least. Without spoilers, there is one massive twist that I just didn’t see coming at all and I was genuinely shocked when it happened. It sets up the final third of the game really well, and while there is a slightly unnecessary and very difficult boss fight during that sequence it certainly showed that game stories can still surprise you even after all these years of trope after trope. 

All that said, the game does have issues. I did experience a bit of frame rate dip at certain points and while it wasn’t anything game breaking, it was disappointing especially when playing in performance mode. Checkpointing can be frustrating, taking you back a good ten minutes of progress to the last save point, which in one sense is completely understandable, but it can be frustrating to re-battle smaller enemies over and over again just to get back to the boss battle you died at. 

The two major problems I have with Survivor though are thus: The hidden loading screen behind a door with a flashing light, and Cal’s face. Let’s tackle those in order. There is only one of those hidden loads, one Koboh, at the cantina. It happens when you go into the Cantina and it is loading the inside and when you are leaving to hit the open world. The non-cynical part of me says that this is completely understandable and Koboh is an open world on one side of the door so it would take a minute to get everything setup but the rest of me just feels like its a step back. 

It goes back to the time of the original Mass Effect when you would be deceived by the pretty animated loading screen that is the elevator on the citadel. That game came out in 2007. Are we honestly saying that with all the supposed power of the modern systems we still need to do this in 2023? It’s ridiculous, we should be past that at this point, especially with all the cash chucked at a project such as this. 

Finally Cal’s face. Now, do not get me wrong, this isn’t a dig at Cameron Monaghan, he is a fine looking guy and honestly I can’t wait for him to play Cal in either a Star Wars movie or TV show (seriously, make that happen Disney!), but because some of the collectible cosmetics are his hair and his beard, for some reason Cal’s face permanently looks out of focus and pixelated. This is true even cut scenes and it can really pull you out of the action to think, “What is going on here exactly?”.

I know that having changeable hair and beards isn’t an easy thing to do in games, especially at this level, but it just looks weird. Every other character's face looks fine, but Cal’s stands out a mile for no reason at all. Does it stop the game being one of the best character action games of recent years? Does it mean it’s not the bed Jedi action game ever made? Not all all, but it looks weird and I played on PS5. 

Despite all of this, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a fantastic action game and makes you feel like a powerful jedi. It’s excellent story twists and turns and setups a, at least for me, much anticipated sequel that I hope can fix the few issues present here to make it truly the best Star Wars game ever made, and if it can beat Tie Fighter in that, I for one will be extremely happy. 

Review: Titanfall 2

When the original Titanfall was released, it was, to be fair, a stripped down game. With no single player and a smaller budget than the team at Respawn Entertainment were used to, having come from Call of Duty creators Infinity Ward, they never the less created arguably 2014’s best multiplayer shooter.

Fast forward two years and Respawn return with Titanfall 2. The budget been increased, single player is in and the multiplayer has been refined to near perfection. In short, they did it again, and even more surprisingly the single player is awesome.

That mode focuses on rifleman Jack Cooper, who after a disastrous drop onto a planet is paired with Titan BT-7274, a vanguard class titan. The tutorial before this show’s BT’s former pilot taking Jack through training exercises so he can take his pilot's exam, showing you how to jump, wall run and shoot, it setting up the story in a way that invokes the opening of the original Halo. Once BT becomes Jack’s titan, the story really takes off.

BT is probably one of the best new characters in recent memory. The AI that makes up his personality gives advice to Cooper, along with world building exposition and the odd funny comment, born of a machine's inherent inability to understand sarcasm. It makes him believable, a character you can root for. The team of Cooper and BT take you through the story with a relationship that just feels right.

This adds to the universe Respawn started in the original game, which had very little world building. In contrast, even the levels in the sequel flesh things out, let alone all the actual exposition that is done with cutscenes etc. The only problem with the story is the fact that the bad guys are painted as ‘the bad guys’.

What I mean by this is that no time is devoted to why the IMC are actually battling the Militia forces in a galaxy spanning conflict, you are just given a gun, a titan and pointed in their general direction. Normally, this wouldn’t be much of an issue, but the rest of the campaign sets up such an interesting universe that it does it a disservice to have to go to a wiki to figure out quite what is going on in the greater war.

This extends to the ‘bosses’ of the campaign, a series of mercenaries known as the Apex Predator’s. There is no reason given for their employment, and are actually a bit of an overused trope as they say things like “I haven’t been paid to kill you”, pretty standard dialog when combined with all the comments that most other games use for their mercs.

On the plus side, a couple of these bosses are pretty cool. I especially like Viper, who pilots a airborne titan and spouts almost IP infringing dialog ripped straight out of Top Gun, and I appreciate the goofiness it brings to an already slightly goofy tale. This does feel a little random and out of place, but the boss fights don’t overstay their welcome, so it's a small niggle.

Every so often, BT gains a new loadout, taken from the Titan presets in the multiplayer mode. It is a great addition because it stops the sections where you stay in the cockpit becoming boring, giving you new toys to play with. Not all of them are perfect, but that is very much a player preference thing, and with that said, there was something about each that was kinda cool, such as the Ronin loadouts electrified sword that can be used to deflect bullets.

There are some great levels in the campaign, with Effect and Cause being one of the most cleverly designed shooter levels in recent memory. It is cohesive and fun, and doesn’t take the gimmick of it too far. I am trying not to spoil things, as it really is part of what makes the campaign so good. One of the final missions is a blast as well, again not overstaying its welcome with its gimmick.

Overall the campaign is a brilliant, a real surprise to an already great package, assuming that they didn’t mess with the gameplay in the first one. They in fact did, but the changes made streamline aspects of the core feel, and this makes Titanfall 2 one of the best multiplayer shooters in years.

All the usual unlocks, merits and modes are there, but changing your character gives you a primary ‘Tactical’ ability. So if you want to use the STIM pack, that is a different character model than the one with the grapple hook, with every weapon available for all models.

As you unlock more, secondary abilities can be swapped, giving you personal cloaks among other things. The original game suffered from what felt like a very small amount of unlockables, but Titanfall 2 strikes a good balance. Is it as many as in say Call of Duty? No, but it doesn’t need to be, there is enough to unlock without feeling like you got everything super quick.

The nebulous ‘feel’ of the game is pitch perfect, I have rarely played matches where no matter how bad I did, it felt great to play. I wasn’t killed almost upon spawn, battles escalate nicely, I never felt hopelessly outclassed and felt like with some deft exploitation of the environments I could get the drop on opponents. I managed to get a three skill streak in more than a few matches with this and it felt great.

Titanfall 2 is a great package. It has a surprisingly great single player campaign, with some memorable characters, outstanding levels and badass moments. The multiplayer is the perfect way to battle real players, escalating to pitched battles with Titan vs Titan and pilot vs pilot action. If you want a lasting shooter experience, you can do no better.