“STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor- An Unfinished Disaster That Shouldn’t Have Existed”

Actually, there should be a more detailed game test at this point today, but I changed my mind. Because although I had already invested a few hours, I cannot be responsible for pretending that everything is going so that it can be benchmarked and judged objectively. Since the trend is once again confirmed here, that customers are deliberately offered unfinished and unthought-out games at full price, there will be no conventional test, which would also imply that it couldn’t be all that bad. But it’s already the second game after Redfall, which I bought but had to discard as a test. I won’t give such games a platform anymore, even if some might see it differently.

By the way, today’s article shows again how important it is to really buy the games yourself and not let the publishers give you the money. At the end of the day, you really make a much more emotional judgment and also more from the point of view of the cheated end user. And I’ve been fair enough to wait for patches and test multiple systems as well. None of that helped. And yes, it’s purely an editorial, so it’s my very subjective opinion and doesn’t claim to be universally valid.

While I was looking forward to finally feeling the Force in STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor, I was instead faced with a barrage of technical errors and crashes that left me feeling helpless against the dark side of the Force like never before . The title presents itself as an unfinished, almost maliciously bugged disaster that causes more trouble than fun. The bugs are legion and ensure that the game mutates into a truly intergalactic nightmare. Unreal Engine 4 or not – anyone who throws their customers something so unfinished and ugly to eat must really hate them and should actually be sent to the Death Star immediately.

By the way: What kind of PC do you actually have to have to get this “game” to run at least reasonably well? Both test systems (Ryzen 9 7950X3D and Core i9-13900K) each with 32 GB DDR5 6000 and two extremely fast NVMe SSDs as well as a GeForce RTX 4090 failed miserably. Here the game dies in front of the player after a few minutes or even seconds of gameplay. On a slightly older system of my 11-year-old son with an Intel Core i9-11900k, a Radeon RX 6750XT and 16 GB DDR4 4000 I was able to play for at least an hour until the card ran out of memory and I ran out of interest and the game took the shortcut directly to the desktop as a sort of salvation. A hint from the god of games not to continue to sin against my precious lifetime? Certainly.

Loading times, hangers and crashes – it hardly gets worse

Reminiscent of Jabba the Hutt’s sluggish reaction speed, load times drag on as if frozen in carbonite. It’s like waiting for a Star Destroyer to take off, only to find it’s still in dry dock. And what is all this for? Every game start becomes a test of patience after the previous crash. You really don’t have to give yourself anything like that anymore and certainly not at full price. Only TLOU1’s holy building shader knows why game files have to be “optimized” every time the game is started. Incidentally, I would even wait an hour if the whole game were then optimized at the same time. Unfortunately, EA is not responsible for requests.

The performance is as bad as Stormtrooper shooting skills, no matter which PC you own. The frame rate drops regularly (at least if you don’t crash once in a while), turning the game into an almost unplayable slideshow, while the sound stutters and crackles like a Wookiee trying to fix a droid. Things like FSR must you can even activate it, because without it the resolution is reduced (instead of increased) and it even crashes with an announcement on the NVIDIA graphics cards. A rogue and such…

These crashes are so common that you might think it’s a feature rather than a defect. Instead of drawing us into the Star Wars universe, the game sporadically throws you out and has the player desperately reaching for a lightsaber (unfortunately not available right now) to relieve the mounting frustration. The on-screen display is often buggy, reminding me of the lights on a broken X-wing cockpit. Or to shorten it a bit: Such a crash has something of predestination in order not to play the game and not to spoil the day even more.

And when it does, the frame-rate is as inconsistent as the weather in England and regularly smears as if trying to break the freefall record. Instead of offering a smooth gameplay experience, you’re treated to vicious stutters and stutters as if it were the real (and only) constant in the game that needs to be maintained. In addition, the UE 4 lags far behind the standards of 2023. Instead, we’re partially treated to a visual performance reminiscent of the LEGO Star Wars days – but without the charm and also flat as the old man jokes of Fips Asmussen. If anyone else knows. But you don’t have to. Yes, the mostly crisp textures could rip it out if they didn’t rip the memory down with it.

The menus and user interfaces are as cluttered and confusing as the politics of the Galactic Republic. Navigating through settings and options feels like being trapped in a Death Star maze without a nice R2-D2 to help us along. Who would ever think of operating the messy menu with an extra connected controller? Well, you can also use the space bar (select a menu item) and A or D (scroll left and right), but you have to figure that out first. Arrow keys are completely overrated and completely useless, especially from the point of view of the porters (he, she, it). If you believe the usual forums, I’m still the creative exception, who isn’t too bad for anything and bangs around until you’re called to dinner for the fourth time. Others didn’t manage it at all, but at least they were fed up. fed up with cardboard

The console bane and a cost optimized cheap port

The golden age of PC gaming seems to be suffering from the bane of unoptimized console ports. A plague that robs us players of the fun of so many promising titles. It’s like proudly showing off your brand new sports car, only to find you still have a rusty bike to ride. And the understanding of the settings? It’s like being given a manual written in a foreign language and then expected to understand it easily.

The controls are insufficiently customized, making one wonder if the developers ever owned a PC themselves. The keyboard and mouse support feels like a bad joke, so you’ll always find yourself staring longingly at that discarded controller, wondering if it’s better to pick it up again. Instead of exploiting the hardware of decent PCs and letting you immerse yourself in the fascinating world of Ultra HD graphics, you are sent to a virtual torture chamber where errors rule. clipping? Never heard.

The one hour in which I was able to play through on the extremely slow system wasn’t a revelation either. The game’s story was supposed to transport you to a new era of Jedi, but instead of hooking me on thrilling adventures for $70, it feels like you’re living through lengthy, uninspired fan fiction. Instead of making bold decisions, the game clings to well-known patterns and robs the plot of any surprise and depth. The characters are flat as the surface of Tatooine and make me barely understand the tragedy of their fate.

Add to that the lame gameplay. Unfortunately, the lightsaber combat is far from exciting, and the Force abilities are implemented so poorly that they feel more like a nuisance than a powerful tool. Enemy AI seems straight out of an older, primitive galaxy, often making combat feel monotonous and predictable. The level designs and worlds to explore as a buyer and player could hardly be more impressive. Instead of taking you through breathtaking settings, you are greeted by unlovingly designed environments that look as unimaginative and flat as if a stormtrooper had drawn them in their sleep. The repetitive design makes you look at the clock again and again, hoping that the game will finally come to an end or at least crash again. At least the latter is 100 percent reliable. Anyway.

Overall, STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor is a technical fiasco that plagues players with a seemingly endless list of bugs, crashes and performance issues. It’s as if the Emperor himself placed his dark powers on the game to make it a frustrating experience. May the next patch be with us soon. Otherwise it won’t work anymore, because the first patch makes things worse rather than helping in any way. In a nutshell, as a buyer who paid for the game with their own money, I feel completely betrayed by the publisher. Unfortunately, you have to express it so drastically, because it seems to be slowly becoming a method. I just don’t put up with such digital waste and try to get rid of this depraved crash plague. If you still buy it now, it’s really your own fault.