A new free Star Wars game has left PS5 and PS5 Pro users divided. The game has specifically been made free with the Extra and Premium tiers of PlayStation Plus, and some subscribers on PS5 are enjoying it. To this end, one of the top posts on the PS Plus Reddit page is a post claiming the Star Wars game doesn’t deserve the hate it got, referring to the heavy criticism it suffered at launch. The popularity of the post suggests this is a common sentiment, yet many of the comments reveal otherwise.
Right now, for an unannounced amount of time, Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft’s open-world action-adventure game, Star Wars Outlaws, is free on PS5 via PS Plus Extra and PS Plus Premium as part of a larger wave of new additions, which has led to many PlayStation players checking it out for the first time. Now, Star Wars Outlaws came out back in 2024, and it was a pretty big flop, as evidenced by its commercial failure and its Metacritic score in the 70s. Yet, it’s resonating with PlayStation Plus subscribers checking it out for the first time two years later.
“Didn’t Deserve the Hate” vs “The Gameplay Sucks”
“Star Wars Outlaws didn’t deserve the hate it got,” reads the title of the aforementioned post. “Heard a lot of negative stuff about this game, but I’m glad I didn’t listen. Outlaws is great, and if you’re a Star Wars fan, you should definitely try Outlaws!”
As noted, the popularity of the post, the large number of votes up, reveals a surprising number of supporters for this statement. Yet, the comments unsurprisingly reveal lots of pushback.
“I keep hearing this a lot, ‘If you’re a Star Wars fan, you’ll love it.’ I am a Star Wars fan. And have been for almost 30 years. And I did not get much enjoyment out of it,” reads one of these comments. Another adds: “Yes, it did. The combat was terrible.”
The majority of the comments contrast the number of votes the post has, while a few others astutely point out that the game many experienced at launch is nothing like the game PlayStation Plus subscribers are now experiencing, because Massive Entertainment released many patches and improved the open-world Star Wars game over time.
“You’re playing the version of the game after they had all of the updates, and you didn’t pay for it at full price,” reads the top comment on the post. “That’s like saying Cyberpunk 2077 didn’t deserve all the hate it got at launch, even though they had a bunch of updates after that to fix several issues people had with it.”
For those curious, there were a lot of gameplay and design issues with the game that have more or less been fixed since launch. What has not been fixed are the underwhelming characters and narrative, underpinned by some lackluster writing. Here, it still comes up short compared to the great narrative Star Wars games like KOTOR or the Jedi games. That said, if open-world exploration and gameplay are more important to you, there is something here.
On top of this, there is a lot of content. While the Star Wars game can be mainlined in about 15 to 20 hours, side content brings this runtime to 35 to 40 hours. Meanwhile, completionists will need roughly 70 hours with the free PlayStation Plus game.
All of that said, and as always, feel free to leave a comment or two letting us know what you think, or join the video game conversations over on the ComicBook Forum.