Area, the ultimate frontier. These are the voyages of a scruffy ginger fellow and his little mechanical mate. PCGamesN lately received the chance to journey to LA to play a piece of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – the sequel to the cinematic, if in locations underwhelming, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Our hands-on session happened round an hour into the primary story, and started, as many issues do, with Cal Kestis in a spot of trouble.
Cal destroyed the Holocron detailing the whereabouts of younger Pressure sensitives on the finish of Fallen Order, and very similar to them, he’s on his personal. His total mission is a thriller, however we all know that it’ll be simply him and BD-1 (nonetheless cute as ever) aboard the Mantis when the Star Wars Jedi: Survivor launch date rolls by. After a scrape with the Empire, his ship wants repairs, and he is aware of that erstwhile companion Greez Dritus may have the required elements.
That is the place Jedi: Survivor begins to get fascinating. Cal and BD-1 are pressured to land on a planet known as Koboh and hunt down their outdated pilot who’s arrange store there. Touchdown a methods away from Greez’s cantina, I set off with my droid and started exploring the nearly open world of Koboh.
The primary notable distinction between this and Fallen Order was the house I used to be afforded when exploring the atmosphere. The Metroidvania parts are nonetheless there, however as a substitute of branching slim paths, there are areas through which I used to be allowed to enterprise with nothing however a imprecise course of my goal. The map from Fallen Order stays the identical, however now you need to use BD-1 as binoculars to scan and plot routes, dropping markers within the hopes of discovering Koboh’s many secrets and techniques.
Cal has just a few extra traversal methods up his sleeve this time round, too, with a Mario-style wall leap obtainable from the off, and, most enjoyable of all, the power to seize a climbable floor with out enter from the participant. He feels a tad extra dynamic in Jedi: Survivor and the exploration is satisfying due to it.
The slim, puzzle-laden paths are nonetheless there, however they really feel extra worthwhile when – to quote Koboh’s panorama for example – paired with a big settlement, or a big part of grassland. The incidental fight additionally feels totally different with Jedi: Survivor. Squads of stormtroopers patrol the panorama in a reputable manner, and the openness of their environment lets you decide fights in your phrases relatively than them merely being obstacles in your manner. As such, fight is a enjoyable distraction from the exploration in addition to feeling each pure and empowering.
Whereas there may be additionally the standard array of fauna attacking Cal at any second, the skirmishes on Koboh appeared to be barely extra skewed to the humanoid selection. I used to be happy to see this, as wailing on a misshapen blob of flesh isn’t ever as satisfying as force-pulling somebody and listening to them name me names as I stick them with the sharp finish. The barks from the assorted enemies, significantly the clone wars droids, had been various and surprisingly humorous – I’m unsure concerning the mileage of the chatter, however it didn’t grate throughout my time with the sport.
Fight has seen fairly the enlargement from the primary recreation. In Fallen Order, you had solely two fight stances – single and double-bladed, with dual-wield assaults as a subset of both. Jedi: Survivor provides twin wield as a totally fledged stance, and lets you unlock 4 others – single, double-bladed, crossguard, and the blaster – for a complete of 5. Every of those has its personal ability tree, and from my expertise, every feels distinctive and earns its place within the lineup.
The fight itself feels prefer it’s evolving with the openness of the atmosphere; you will have extra inventive freedom to decide on your personal path and likewise to decide on which model of destruction you need to unleash. The brand new stances – twin wield, crossguard, and blaster – every fill a singular position and supply compelling causes to study them, aside from the truth that all of them look rad. The twin-wield stance is hyper-aggressive, whereas the crossguard is the slowest by far however hits the toughest, requiring a way more methodical strategy to fight.
Talking to Jason de Heras, design director of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, I requested about how the crew tried to handle juggling the extra inventive freedom inside fight with out making the sport too complicated:
“That’s always the design – the big macro design problem – when making stuff like this. Well, the first thing is that there are five stances, but we made the decision early on that you could only carry two stances at once. That’s one way we can get the player to invest in two [stances] at most, and they could figure out which works for them, and which one doesn’t work for their playstyle.”
Utilizing the d-pad, you possibly can change between your two stances at will. This creates some fascinating combos, and forces you to consider your explicit construct earlier than getting into fight: do you go together with the crossguard and the double-bladed so you possibly can take care of any quantity of enemy, or do you pair the dual-wield with the blaster, whittling your enemies down from afar earlier than ending the job with a flurry of strikes?
In fact, the fight is just as complicated as you make it. You will get away with mashing the assault button with the occasional block, however you’re rewarded with some actual spectacle in case you handle to grasp a number of the extra superior strikes. One explicit method stood out from an illustration on the finish of our demo when Cal approached a bunch of Stormtroopers, lifted all of them within the air with the Pressure, and charged his blaster to focus on every one. He then proceeded to dispatch them multi functional barrage, earlier than twirling his blaster and holstering it in true gunslinger style. Not very Jedi, however cool nonetheless.
The additions to fight and elevated scope of exploration are welcome additions and do really feel like a pure development from Fallen Order, however in the end, like just about the rest that comes from Disney’s Star Wars, it isn’t doing a lot to push the boundaries of what we’ve seen earlier than. I do know for a lot of, together with me, that’ll in all probability be sufficient to get them by means of the story, and hopefully, discover Cal’s place within the wider world of Star Wars.
It isn’t lengthy now earlier than you may get your fingers on Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, so take the time now to examine the system necessities to ensure you’re ready for each Star Wars Jedi: Survivor enemy and boss battle coming your manner. If you happen to completely can not wait to proceed Cal’s story, try our listing of the perfect Star Wars video games on PC and even the perfect house video games to get your intergalactic repair earlier than the discharge date.
