Star Wars: Squadrons
Developer/publisher EA (Motive)
Format PC, PS4 (tested), Xbox One
Release Out now
Why are arcade space sims such a great fit for VR? Partly, it’s that VR is less exhausting from cockpit view: you have stationary visual reference points to quell the protests of your inner ear, and you can pretend your headset is a flight helmet. But there’s more to it than quality-of-life, as Star Wars: Squadrons reveals. One of VR’s elementary thrills is the sudden realisation of size. The world looms over and stretches beneath you, charging every environment with suspense. That’s rarely been more apparent to us than when playing this sturdy successor to LucasArts’ old X-wing simulators whose playspaces are very sensibly littered with objects of crushing scale.
Nosing our TIE fighter through a debris field, we lean around our steering column to watch a Star Destroyer slide beneath our pilot’s feet. Hugging an asteroid to avoid a missile, we peep over our X-wing chassis to see the surface
