Star Wars Outlaws is really good

So I rolled credits on Star Wars Outlaws today and I have come away from it feeling far more strongly than I ever expected. I think, like a lot of people, I’d sort of written off this game at launch. I’ve grown fatigued with open-world games in general, and in particular with Ubisoft’s style of checklist-and-icon driven exploration, and it hadn’t done very well with critics either. One unbreakable rule I have with games is “if Sam Greer recommends you something you have to at least try it”, and this hasn’t steered me wrong yet. Star Wars Outlaws is great. It’s from Ubisoft Massive - the Division folks - and they seem to have really found a nice balance between giving you a big space to explore and not have the game drag on forever. Compared to your Ass Creeds and so on Outlaws is svelte - I wrapped it up in about 30 hours, and that’s with a decent chunk of the side stuff. There’s a main story going on - which is really quite good, more on that in a sec - and simultaneously you’re…