My friend and I both have this ordered so should be here today, but the review confused me a bit.  Am I able to join into games with him?  Is that what it meant when it was talking about how the squads work now?  Thank you very much.

Yes, you can create a party of up to 8 people and then join a game with them. However you currently cannot create a private game to play with your friend, though Guerrilla has stated that there will be a patch shortly that allows you to make custom games among other things.

Yup, you will be fine.

My squad that I practice with gets all grouped up in the menus, then we jump into a game together to practice.

It's been working well, but I am not sure what we will do when we want to get more than 8 people into the same game...