[Review] Starlink: Battle for Atlas

The controls are mostly acceptable, but I do wish we could remap. Unfortunately, the controls are all set in stone, and going into the options menu simply tells you what each button does, with no other presets or ways to change their mapping. It’s really just the shield button that I wish would go from X to the left bumper, as B is to jump, A is to boost, and both the triggers unload your weapons, so frequently boosting and jumping makes hitting a third face button very uncomfortable, while my left hand is completely free and mostly just utilizing secondary fire and movement.

One of Starlink’s best attributes it the ability to constantly mod, evolve, and tweak your pilots and weapons by getting mod parts that you can equip onto both your ship and each weapon. Every weapon has its own mod slots, so switching weapons won’t keep your previously equipped mods, but will stay with them until you want to switch back. If there is a certain mod you’d like to equip to a more appropriate weapon and a more recently equipped one, you can simply select it and it’ll apply it, with a quick prompt reminding you that you previously had it on another weapon. The UI and way you go about modding, building, and crafting everything that you do is very intuitive, and never once did I feel overwhelmed despite the myriad options at your disposal. It makes for great strategic planning, especially since every weapon has an assigned element that will vary in usage depending on your situation.

Enemies you fight, like the Legion, will all have different types and either be resistant to or weak against certain weapons, so if you’re fighting a Fire Cyclops, it would be smart to use an ice elemental weapon and maybe combine that with a gravity elemental (my personal favorite) as these can create vortex’s that can be manipulated by elements, so shooting into the vortex will cause an icy gravitational pull on any nearby enemies and do massive amounts of damage.

The ability to switch, upgrade, downgrade, and mod on the fly is fantastic, and I love not being able to have to go to some garage to switch out all of your equipment, with everything being immediately accessible in the pause menu. Other games that do this where you have to be in certain places or have certain requirements to attain, equip, or change things you already own I find incredibly frustrating, so this is a huge quality-of-life design that means a lot, never feeling restricted to choices you made hours ago or if you find yourself in a terrible situation you can’t get out of because you accidentally flew in with the wrong element or equipment. Starlink makes sure you can’t abuse this, though, having a limited amount of slots for equipping certain mods and only being able to put so many types of designs on your ship. You can put wings on your wings with weapons on top of those wings and change the body of the ship and have however many sets of wings you’d like regardless if they match or not, but these effect the stats greatly, and constantly adding stuff with more than likely make your ship heavy, and moving around is not fun at a slow speed, even if your defense is through the roof.

My only real complaint is that, while the planets all felt distinct, unique, and have their own vibe and biomes, the flora and fauna was lacking, constantly coming into contact with the exact same species over and over again, with each planet only having about three different species. They were few and far between, leaving you traversing beautiful yet lifeless terra. Outside of life, however, everything about the game feels legitimate and has a purpose to being there.

Everything I’ve seen and done within Starlink: Battle for Atlas has made me feel so good and has been both a visual and gaming delight. It’s a game I find incredibly difficult to put down, and the best part is that it works for both time-constrained people and more open lives, being able to farm for resources and complete a side-quest in a few minutes or find everything a planet has to offer in hours. The vastness of Atlas gives you plenty to see and do, with tons to salvage and use to upgrade and max out your favorite pilots and equipment. I spent three hours one night going around Atlas (not visiting the planets, but just flying through asteroid belts and debris) looking for lost crates, caches, and treasures, and when I finally put my Switch down for the night, it had dawned on me that I only collected a few percent of all that was out there. My jaw had dropped, but at the same time I couldn’t wait to jump back in and see what else I could find out there, while of course fending off some Outlaws in the interim that insist “you’re doomed” and other cheesy B-movie lines while you’ve undergone your 17th genocidal run and yet another chief-in-command in the span of half hour. They must be getting confused with people getting promoted every day.

Starlink: Battle for Atlas initially had me worried due to its toys-to-life approach which, in the current gaming climate, is extremely volatile and doesn’t have that reach it once did. I was worried that it’d be dead-on-arrival despite its cool concept and sci-fi approach, but being able to play digitally with the same exact content you’d have physically is a great direction and gives it a much more viable future. Ubisoft has created, whether intentional or not, a sci-fi hit that blends all the pros of No Man’s Sky and Star Fox and marries them into the wonderful world of Starlink: Battle for Atlas that is hard to put down for fans of both properties and the genre in general. The customization is deep, the story for the pilots – Fox himself included – are fascinating and fun to go through, and the crew and planets you visit throughout your adventure all feel worthwhile. Flying through Atlas feels as massive as you’d expect a universe to be, and the collectibles are all over the place, leaving players with tons to explore, visit, and uncover. Since it might fly under the radar, I believe Starlink will be the sleeper hit of the year. Ubisoft has managed to craft a game that is not only a fantastic space exploration experience, but arguably the best Star Fox game never produced.

Starlink: Battle for Atlas review copy provided by Ubisoft for the purposes of this review.