Despite an entire galaxy at EA’s disposal, we’re still waiting for a decent Star Wars spin-off story

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.

The missions are absorbingly staged, but trade on familiar templates such as escorting transports

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 hurtle past metres from a wing-tip. The best of the 15 singleplayer missions are closer to theme-park rides than battles, exercises in controlled spectacle that typically feature at least one ship so large it’ll take you moments to fly around it. The hugeness outside doubles the cosiness within, each cockpit a cocoon of scuffed metal, light-up buttons and vector displays that can be tricked out with dashboard toys: Ewok statues for Republic pilots, droid heads for Imperials.

Peering around the cockpit mid-battle isn’t just irresistible, it’s tactically advantageous. Squadrons is one of the few optional-VR multiplayer experiences where VR users have the edge, because your perspective isn’t locked to the direction of travel. There’s free-look for those without headsets, but it has to be toggled on manually, and you can’t steer your ship while using it.