Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, the new action adventure game from EA and Respawn (Titanfall, Apex Legends), is an action packed epic filled to the brim with fun new and existing characters that feel right at home in the greater star wars universe. Unfortunately, the game is plagued with almost too many visual bugs to count making the overall experience somewhat mixed.
Survivor picks up 5 years after the events of Fallen Order and we find Cal Kestis as a full on guerilla opposition agent working to undermine the empire. The previous crew of the Mantis has broken up and scattered across the galaxy, leaving Cal feel alone and lost in his struggle against the empire. The story is a very solid Star Wars tale with great characters, interesting twists, and an engaging story arc. Every character in the game feel unique and fleshed out with their own issues, backstories, and agendas.
The game play is similar to Fallen Order, with some new lightsaber stances and force powers mixed in. Overall, I found the combat to be a little too mashy and not as intricate as I would of preferred. I almost exclusively used the blaster stance, which features a lightsaber in one hand and blaster in the other, as it was very useful in picking off enemies at a distance. The platforming is frequent and works very smoothly. My main main issue with the platforming is that there is just too much of it, by the 800th wall run it just felt like a tack on to extend certain gameplay stretches.
My main issue with the actual gameplay is the greater exploration and side activities in the game. There are hundreds of nooks and crannies to explore, rare bosses to find, etc. The game has a real rewards issue for these side activities, they mostly just reward you with new cosmetics for Cal and BD-1. It just isn't very fun or logical for Cal to find a new sideburns haircut, for example, in a treasure chest on a long abandoned and unexplored area of a planet. The game tries to sprinkle in actual rewards like skill points and force meter upgrades but it feels like these happen maybe 5% of the time.
On to the graphical issues, which are so frequent I considered abandoning the game multiple times (I played on a PS5). Performance mode (60fps) features as much screen tearing as I have ever seen in a large Triple A game, you couldn't do a full 180 or 360 turn with Cal without popping and tearing. I tried to push through on this mode because of how muddied the game looks in the 30fps quality mode, but eventually finished the back half on this quality mode. The game looks pretty drab in this mode, the lightsaber colors don't pop, the action doesn't look as fluid, and my game crashed at least 3 times in this mode.
In totality, Survivor is still one of the better Star Wars game out there, and hopefully EA and the Respawn team are able to fix its performance issues in future updates.
Survivor picks up 5 years after the events of Fallen Order and we find Cal Kestis as a full on guerilla opposition agent working to undermine the empire. The previous crew of the Mantis has broken up and scattered across the galaxy, leaving Cal feel alone and lost in his struggle against the empire. The story is a very solid Star Wars tale with great characters, interesting twists, and an engaging story arc. Every character in the game feel unique and fleshed out with their own issues, backstories, and agendas.
The game play is similar to Fallen Order, with some new lightsaber stances and force powers mixed in. Overall, I found the combat to be a little too mashy and not as intricate as I would of preferred. I almost exclusively used the blaster stance, which features a lightsaber in one hand and blaster in the other, as it was very useful in picking off enemies at a distance. The platforming is frequent and works very smoothly. My main main issue with the platforming is that there is just too much of it, by the 800th wall run it just felt like a tack on to extend certain gameplay stretches.
My main issue with the actual gameplay is the greater exploration and side activities in the game. There are hundreds of nooks and crannies to explore, rare bosses to find, etc. The game has a real rewards issue for these side activities, they mostly just reward you with new cosmetics for Cal and BD-1. It just isn't very fun or logical for Cal to find a new sideburns haircut, for example, in a treasure chest on a long abandoned and unexplored area of a planet. The game tries to sprinkle in actual rewards like skill points and force meter upgrades but it feels like these happen maybe 5% of the time.
On to the graphical issues, which are so frequent I considered abandoning the game multiple times (I played on a PS5). Performance mode (60fps) features as much screen tearing as I have ever seen in a large Triple A game, you couldn't do a full 180 or 360 turn with Cal without popping and tearing. I tried to push through on this mode because of how muddied the game looks in the 30fps quality mode, but eventually finished the back half on this quality mode. The game looks pretty drab in this mode, the lightsaber colors don't pop, the action doesn't look as fluid, and my game crashed at least 3 times in this mode.
In totality, Survivor is still one of the better Star Wars game out there, and hopefully EA and the Respawn team are able to fix its performance issues in future updates.