You know what they say about ports: Unless it originates from the Douro Valley region of Portugal, it’s just a sparkling re-release. That’s certainly true with the recent spate of Nintendo Switch 2 ports, as evidenced by the system’s most recent po– sorry, re-release, Star Wars Outlaws, which is indeed sparkling.
If you slept on Star Wars Outlaws — as many people apparently did, according to Ubisoft sales postmortems — you slept on one of the best Star Wars games in years. Developed by Ubisoft Massive and released in August 2024 for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X, Outlaws is an open-world Star Wars game that casts you as a smuggler in an overlooked corner of the galaxy. There’s a heavy emphasis on stealth (the mechanics for which were famously busted but smoothed over in a post-release patch) but the shooting is just as solid as any big-budget third-person shooter. It’s a little bit Uncharted, a little bit Assassin’s Creed, a little bit Jedi: Fallen Order, and entirely kickass. Outlaws, in other words, is as close to the realization of that fabled Star Wars 1313 dream as we’ll likely see.
Star Wars Outlaws made its way to Switch 2 on Sept. 4, giving more people a chance to play a game that deserves a second shot. Well, in theory. If the original Nintendo Switch picked up one reputational tick across its eight-year run, it’s that its re-releases were awful. (Recall high-profile disasters like The Outer Worlds and Mortal Kombat 1, which looked as if you ran each frame through a Snapchat-quality N64 filter.) The Switch 2 has more technical horsepower than its predecessor, yes, but would developers be able to utilize it effectively? Would games initially designed for other consoles still look as good as their original versions?
Short answer: Yes. Over the past week, I’ve been messing around with Star Wars Outlaws on Switch 2 — entirely in handheld mode — and can say that playing it feels like a small miracle.
Bright lights flash through the clubs and casinos of Catonica. Dust swirls around the rocky crags of Tatooine as if you’re following in the footsteps of Jedi. Protagonist Kay looks as realistic in handheld as she did a year ago, as does her trusty traveling companion, Nix, the cat-centipede-thing (though I’ll admit to seeing some lip sync issues). Playing Star Wars Outlaws from the comfort of bed, with visuals on par with those of a 4K TV, all displayed on a tiny little screen in my hand, is a legitimate treat. It feels like Nintendo finally made good on a promise it teased back in the Wii U days: You can play console games without remaining tethered to a TV.
But I’m no expert. I can’t adequately assess graphical performance on a technical level, and can only really describe in layman’s terms what it’s like to play this thing, so don’t take it from me. Take it from the actual experts at Digital Foundry, who called the Star Wars Outlaws Switch 2 port a “revelation” and an “extraordinary port.”
By and large, this tracks with how re-releases have performed on Switch 2 throughout its first three months of life: They’re actually pretty good! Cyberpunk 2077, despite its legacy as one of the most busted game launches ever, debuted on Switch 2 with surprisingly few visual compromises. But it wasn’t just the visuals that helped: The Switch 2 version also featured gyroscopic controls. (The inclusion of the well-regarded Phantom Liberty DLC didn’t hurt, either.) Similar is Street Fighter 6, a port with totally fine visuals that also included some Switch 2-exclusive modes. Ports of Yakuza 0 and Split Fiction launched alongside Switch 2 as well, with visual compromises that didn’t hamper the core experience, the way some ports famously did on the original Switch.
All in all, not bad! Though there are still some unknown variables. Early reports have described Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition, the Switch 2 re-release of FromSoftware’s 2022 magnum opus, as a frame-rate disaster; it does not currently have a release date. Borderlands 4, out Sept. 12 for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X, isn’t coming to Switch 2 until Oct. 3. As reported by The Gamer, some unaffiliated parties claim the discrepancy in release dates is because the game runs like crap on Switch 2, though developer Gearbox has not shown any public footage yet of that version of Borderlands 4.
Then there’s the make-or-break one: Black Ops 7, the next entry in a series known for its visual splendor. Though unconfirmed as of this writing, it’s rumored to come out on Switch 2 — making it the first Call of Duty on a Nintendo console in over a decade — based on comments made by Xbox head Phil Spencer in 2022. If it indeed comes to the console, will it be as glossy as its PlayStation and Xbox counterparts? Or will it be the next Mortal Kombat 1?
We’re just three months into the Switch 2 ecosystem, and while its series of re-releases shows some promise to date, there’s always room for sour grapes. If Switch 2 ports start turning into acrid facsimiles of the real thing, aiming to coast to success on the better-known names of their counterparts, well hey, you can always go back to where the port originated from.
