Starlink: Battle for Atlas

The toys are unnecessary, but Starlink: Battle for Atlas is still an enjoyable space adventure.

Starlink is a fun, albeit repetitive, game of space combat and exploration--but the digital version of the game is the way to go if you're on a budget.

Ubisoft's late-stage toys-to-life entry is pretty, derivative and slightly lacking in charm.

At its core, Starlink: Battle for Atlas is a fantastic space exploration game, with solid flights, fights and enemies, but can be a complicated toys-to-life proposition to recommend, and understand.

An engaging entry point into space combat and exploration, with just enough sophistication to be attractive to some veteran pilots

Starlink: Battle for Atlas is a good game that's robbed of greatness by a lack of ambition and terrible toys-to-life implementation. Everything it gets right – the clever mix-and-match shipbuilding, the combat, the controls, the imaginative alien worlds, the decent space opera storyline – can't escape the vortex of tedium that comes with pedestrian mission design, planets that are mechanically the same, and the crushing knowledge that people who buy just the Starter Pack are getting an unquestionably inferior experience.

I just wish there was more to do.

Starlink: Battle for Atlas can't decide whether to take its toys-to-life concept seriously, or drop it completely. It has a good, if somewhat repetitive, open world experience to offer, but it's held back by mistakes that aren't entirely its own fault.

With its exclusive use of some substantial Star Fox content, you're getting the best version of Starlink: Battle for Atlas on Nintendo Switch. And with a more accessible and ultimately enjoyable version of No Man's Sky's gameplay mechanics and Mass Effect's original vision, you're getting one of the best dogfighting/space exploration games you can buy outside of Elite: Dangerous. Its gameplay loop does run out of steam after a while thanks to the required grind, but with a surprisingly ungreedy approach to content access and toys-to-life integration, Starlink really could be the spark that reignites the genre's renaissance.

The graphics are great, flying feels smooth and effortless, and combat and exploration are are delightful, both on-planet and off. The underwhelming mission variety and tremendous amount of customization options may put some players off, but the ones who stick with with the title will be treated to a polished space-based shooter with enough content to keep them busy for the foreseeable future.