STAR WARS: SQUADRONS

Dogfights worthy of the franchise finally return

- Wes Fenlon

NEED TO KNOW

RELEASE October 2, 2020

DEVELOPER EA Motive

PUBLISHER In-house

LINK bit.ly/307aZhi

After playing Star Wars: Squadrons, I’m mad that it’s taken 21 years for EA and Lucasfilm to remember that flying a damn X-Wing is cool as hell. But here we are – with new proof that getting in a cockpit and blasting through a space dogfight is still one of the best ways to experience Star Wars.

It only took a few minutes to assure me that EA hadn’t screwed anything up here. This is genuinely the 2020 reimagining of X-Wing vs TIE Fighter I hoped it would be. While flying might be a bit more forgiving than it was in those games 20-plus years ago (I ricocheted off walls a few times without taking too much damage), this is still more sim than Rogue Squadron. It’s first-person only. You have to manage your power system between shields, guns, and engines to suit the moment; you can also rebalance your shields from front to back, which will help more skilled players survive dogfights. Aiming your standard laser cannons doesn’t give you a leading target reticle that tells you exactly where to shoot, so you’ll have to get a feel for that yourself, eying the speed and distance to your target.

Even turning takes finesse. Like a racecar, at half-speed your fighter can make tighter turns, key for avoiding missiles or other players on your tail. Just dodging a missile felt like an exciting accomplishment, and I felt like a bit of a badass when I managed to rebalance my front shields to the rear when I started getting shot, then corkscrewed away from the enemy on my tail. It takes some coordination to do all of those at once, let alone follow it up with a kill.