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Star Wars Squadrons


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Looks like EA may have turned a corner with the Star Wars franchise. I know Battlefronts 1 & 2 got a lot of flak (I did enjoy both games) but Fallen Order made them some serious cash and was well received. Now ... well ...

 

In 1993, I finally jumped ship from the ST to the PC. I put together a 486DX-33 just to play one game, X-Wing. It was the weekend of that year's All Micro Show in Stafford, which was the only time I attended it.

 

27 years later and it looks like a Star Wars game is again going to cost me some serious money. It seems that I have a good enough system to run Squadrons in VR. My bank account is going to be a very unhappy place by the end of year.
 

I don't often look forward to games these days. I am looking forward to this one.
 

 

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Very reminiscent of the X-Wing/Tie Fighter/X-Wing v. Tie Fighter/X-Wing Alliance series.  I was in a beta for Star Wars: Attack Squadrons years ago, which was in many ways a follow up to that series, and I really enjoyed it, but they didn't go forward with the game.  Ironically, it was XvT and then Alliance which soured me on on-line multiplayer.  I felt like it was the antithesis of Star Wars, full of clans that resembled digital biker gangs, which you could never join.  Everyone just sat in the lobby babbling or bickering, nobody played the game.  When they did, the clans just ganged up on everyone else.  At least Alliance had a cool story mode to make the game worth it, whereas XvT had nothing.  Given where modern gaming has gone, I'll presume Squadrons will be 80/20 multiplayer, which would give me little reason to bother with it.

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That teaser trailer is phenomenal but leaves a bit too many questions on how that'll end up being handled.  Visually, the audio, stunning.  I really would love to know how this one handles though when it comes to missions, objectives, craft capabilities, and how they'll balance a fight with unshielded TIEs vs the rebel craft.  TIE and even the rougher XWING from back in the earlier mid 90s still have and do stand the test of time for pure quality and also adherence to the amazing story as much as it was with the franchise back in that part of the 90s.  I'd love to hope this ends up being a pretty version of those ones.  XvT was dog shit and I found Alliance eventually despite the story to end up kind of infuriating in how they handled some of the stages to the point I walked from it.  I do have those games from GoG though still, been contemplating another shot at it as I have a very excellent joystick I picked up a few years back locally.

 

I fear my 5 1/2 (then nearly 6 years) old PC may not be up to snuff for standard play.  I've got a mid-tier i7 cpu, 980M 8GB RAM GeForce chip (equals the 970 on desktop though with more ram) and 16GB of system memory as well.  I've not hit any roadblocks yet, even stuff like CoD WW2 run solidly so I guess it'll come down to how far they care to push things.

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It was interesting to see Wedge in the trailer. I wonder who they will get for his voice actor. It was nice to have Denis Lawson in Rogue Squadron II, but that guy they replaced him with in III was... yeah. Would be nice to get Lawson back again.

 

I expect this will be closer to Rogue Squadron than X-Wing (still sad that the best version of that game, the Mac special edition version, has never been rereleased), especially since it's on consoles. I never played X-Wing vs TIE Fighter since there was no Mac version, but X-Wing and TIE Fighter are still some of my favourite games ever. I need to go find a nice joystick so I can play them again. Too bad I can't play the Mac version, though. I remember looking through catalogues and seeing all of the Windows games that never got Mac releases and being really jealous, but when you're like 6 or 7 years old, there isn't really much you can do about it.

 

One of my friends burned me a copy of X-Wing Alliance after I switched to Windows around 2003~2004, and although everything related to the family missions and flying the freighters was boring (Falcon was okay, but I would rather have flown anything else at Endor except the GR-75. B-wing would have been awesome), the gameplay was nice. I liked how the combat simulator let you put a tractor beam on your ship, and I'd intentionally equip the tractor beam just to dump the power into the engines so I could charge lasers and shields without losing any speed.

 

Anyway, for this game, I basically expect an online Rogue Squadron type of thing with an unsatisfying 1.5~2 hour single player that prioritizes looking nice over being fun or replayable, just like Battlefront II (2017). The devs are welcome to prove me wrong and I hope they do. Speaking of Battlefront II (2017), the starfighter assault mode in that game is HORRIBLE (it's literally just a spawn camping game mode) and I hope that this doesn't turn out like that. I have been thinking about building a new PC anyway, and this could convince me to do it, but only if it's done right.

Edited by Steven Pendleton
I forgot there are 2 Battlefront IIs
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I should probably clarify something, which is that I have no problem with Rogue Squadron. 1 and 2, anyway. 3's single player is trash, but 2 is my favourite Gamecube game, 3 has almost all of 2 as co-op, and Rogue Squadron 3D is maybe even better since it's similar but way longer. Never played the N64 version of that, though, so I'm not sure how the majority of the people that have played it experienced it.

Edited by Steven Pendleton
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18 hours ago, Tickled_Pink said:

Looks like EA may have turned a corner with the Star Wars franchise. I know Battlefronts 1 & 2 got a lot of flak (I did enjoy both games) but Fallen Order made them some serious cash and was well received. Now ... well ...

 

In 1993, I finally jumped ship from the ST to the PC. I put together a 486DX-33 just to play one game, X-Wing. It was the weekend of that year's All Micro Show in Stafford, which was the only time I attended it.

 

27 years later and it looks like a Star Wars game is again going to cost me some serious money. It seems that I have a good enough system to run Squadrons in VR. My bank account is going to be a very unhappy place by the end of year.
 

I don't often look forward to games these days. I am looking forward to this one.
 

 

I, too, was pretty pumped from watching this trailer.  Makes one wonder where some of this was at in the latest trilogy of movies, but I digress.  Definitely I am looking forward to seeing what all the game is about, because, after all, this is EA we are talking about here.  Still, I do have positive hopes for this.

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I'm still waiting to see more info.  The price is right and apparently no microtransactions, which is nice. VR mode is cool.  Flight stick accessibility is great. 

 

A short, learn-the-ropes single player mode before moving to 5v5 multiplayer isn't really my cup of tea, though. So, this just might me want to go back to the old LA games...

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20 hours ago, Tanooki said:

That teaser trailer is phenomenal but leaves a bit too many questions on how that'll end up being handled.  Visually, the audio, stunning.  I really would love to know how this one handles though when it comes to missions, objectives, craft capabilities, and how they'll balance a fight with unshielded TIEs vs the rebel craft.  TIE and even the rougher XWING from back in the earlier mid 90s still have and do stand the test of time for pure quality and also adherence to the amazing story as much as it was with the franchise back in that part of the 90s.  I'd love to hope this ends up being a pretty version of those ones.  XvT was dog shit and I found Alliance eventually despite the story to end up kind of infuriating in how they handled some of the stages to the point I walked from it.  I do have those games from GoG though still, been contemplating another shot at it as I have a very excellent joystick I picked up a few years back locally.

 

I fear my 5 1/2 (then nearly 6 years) old PC may not be up to snuff for standard play.  I've got a mid-tier i7 cpu, 980M 8GB RAM GeForce chip (equals the 970 on desktop though with more ram) and 16GB of system memory as well.  I've not hit any roadblocks yet, even stuff like CoD WW2 run solidly so I guess it'll come down to how far they care to push things.

Recommended memory requirements for this game is 16Gb, although it will work with 8Gb. Minimum GPU is a GTX 660, so you have no problems. As long as you have a 6th gen i7 or better, you should be okay.

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6 hours ago, Hwlngmad said:

I, too, was pretty pumped from watching this trailer.  Makes one wonder where some of this was at in the latest trilogy of movies, but I digress.  Definitely I am looking forward to seeing what all the game is about, because, after all, this is EA we are talking about here.  Still, I do have positive hopes for this.

Sounds to me from the dialogue that it's set some time after the Battle of Endor while the Empire is still reeling from the destruction of the Death Star and its remnants are vowing revenge. It makes mention of the New Republic which was created after Endor.

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1 hour ago, Tickled_Pink said:

Recommended memory requirements for this game is 16Gb, although it will work with 8Gb. Minimum GPU is a GTX 660, so you have no problems. As long as you have a 6th gen i7 or better, you should be okay.

I never paid attention to generations, but I think it's a 4th or 5th generation chip, i7-4710MQ processor, runs 2.5ghz in basic mode, but if you're running any kind of intense program like games it runs up to turbo mode 3ghz every time.  https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i7-4710MQ-Notebook-Processor.115117.0.html

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It seems the devs are trying to prove me wrong! We'll see, though.

 

Turns out the recommended specs are already on the website. Recommended is 7700, GTX 1060, and 16GB of RAM. I have a 7700, a GTX 1080, and 16 GB of RAM, so I should be more than fine for this game. I'm surprised it says 30GB of disk space. That's tiny for a modern PC game.

 

While I am saddened by the lack of the B-wing and TIE Defender, I can live without them, especially since the TIE Defender would be broken, assuming it keeps its old 144 MGLT speed. It's nice to see that they have decided to do this

 

1956546910_.thumb.png.ce6641cadfc2924ec0453fbf586f5236.png

 

with the Y-wing cockpit instead of this

 

ycockpit.jpg

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6 hours ago, Tanooki said:

I never paid attention to generations, but I think it's a 4th or 5th generation chip, i7-4710MQ processor, runs 2.5ghz in basic mode, but if you're running any kind of intense program like games it runs up to turbo mode 3ghz every time.  https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i7-4710MQ-Notebook-Processor.115117.0.html

Ah. That puts it just below minimum spec. It's not that far below so you might get away with it.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
On 7/5/2020 at 9:04 PM, Loafer said:

The price is my biggest worry, to me it screams “limited single player campaign” but As a VR fan, buying it anyway lol

As if in response to your concerns, here's an article about the game's price that I didn't read:

 

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/star-wars-squadrons-price-a-risk-but-may-get-peopl/1100-6480015/

 

Edit: I just read it, and they don't talk about the price for more than a few sentences.. Yay, clickbait~

Edited by Steven Pendleton
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Well, I took the plunge and pre-ordered it for my Xbox One, being a HUGE Star Wars fan and love the idea of combat in an X-wing (but I prefer the heavy hitter, the Y-wing). Should be fun to play in any event. Funny, I wasn't a big fan of digital downloads, having wanted a physical copy of the games...but now I prefer the digital over the physical. Times change. lol

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Deffo getting this on PS4 purely so I can play it in VR, the single VR mission in SWBF was amazing and gave me the same feelings as the first time I climbed into the sit down arcade cabinet of Star Wars as a kid.

 

Digital is $10 more than the physical price so i'll get physical, seeing as i have to get off my butt to put the headset on anyway, may as well change the disc while i'm there.

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  • 1 month later...

Here's a review-ish looking thing I found for the single player. Have not read it yet, though.

 

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/star-wars-squadrons-early-review-impressions-single-player-campaign/1100-6482800/

 

...and I just realized that this game releases in literally 1 hour and 29 minutes and I don't have a HOTAS. NO WAY am I playing this with a controller.

Edited by Steven Pendleton
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