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Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron Review

Gwynne Dixon

12/10/2007

Two years after the Battlefront 2 wars started, the series returns on the PSP with a host of new features and online play...

I love the Star Wars: Battlefront series. In fact, my most treasured gaming memory comes from a capture the flag battle on the Mustafar map. I got the chance to play as Anakin Skywalker (a touch anachronistic on Mustafar, I grant you) and managed to scythe down wave after wave of droids with ease, mixing up my force powers with lightsabre gymnastics agile enough for the Tatooine Olympics, before returning the flag for a score. It's undoubtedly the closest I'll ever come to the experience of actually being a Jedi.

The biggest problem with the PSP version of Battlefront 2, though, was undoubtedly the lack of an infrastructure mode for online play, with only a four player ad hoc mode on offer. This made the game seem a bit impotent, given that the focus of the Battlefront series has always been online play. While Pandemic (Mercenaries, Destroy All Humans!) developed the Battlefront 2 games for the home consoles and PC, Savage Entertainment did the PSP version. Now, Lucas Arts has decided to take another bite of the Battlefront apple on the PSP, but this time they've passed on the responsibilities to Rebellion.

Control, Control. You Must Learn Control.

One of the things that has always hampered PSP shooters is the lack of a second nipple, while console shooters tend to be a lot more successful by utilising one analogue stick for movement and another for looking, and PC games using the mouse and keyboard. Due to the limitations of the PSP, developers will often put movement on the analogue stick and look controls on the face buttons (or vice versa), as was the case with Battlefront 2. This often makes the controls feel sluggish, which tends to restrict your movement somewhat.

The good news with Renegade Squadron is that Rebellion has overhauled the controls completely. While the nipple is responsible for movement, there isn't actually a free look control in sight and your targeting reticule stays firmly in the middle of the screen. Well, that's not quite true - if you press triangle you can put on a scope which allows you to free look with the nipple (although you can't move in this view, of course).

Instead, what Rebellion has done is use the right shoulder button for strafing and locking onto targets. Once you've got an enemy in your targeting reticule, all you need do is press the right shoulder button to lock on. Then you can fire at them until you're blue in the face (very literally if you're a Rodian) and your lock will follow your target across the screen.

It's certainly an improvement on the previous targeting system, but it does still feel a touch sluggish. More problematic is the fact that once you've locked onto somebody, it simply becomes a case of holding the fire button and moving around a bit to try and avoid a few blaster rifle shots. Our editor here at TVG refers to this as "The mating dance" that often occurs in more simplistic shooters and it's not exactly hugely stimulating.

The Force Surrounds Us... And Binds Us.

For the first time on the PSP, a Battlefront game will offer online play via infrastructure mode. Up to 16 players can go head to head in an expansive range of maps available from both Galactic Civil War and Clone Wars eras. Game modes on offer include the traditional conquest, capture the flag and a heroes capture the flag (where hero characters such as Vader and Obi-wan have to carry the flag to score). N.B. ad hoc mode now supports eight players rather than the previous four.

The maps on offer are generally scaled down versions of those we saw on the home consoles and PC for Battlefront 2. Don't expect a great deal of detail and maps (Hoth and Endor, for example, certainly don't remind you of the films), but they function well and bare enough resemblance to the console and PC versions to absorb you into the gameplay. You'll find the usual range of vehicles dotted around the maps as well. AT-ATs, AT-STs and speeder bikes all make an appearance, as well as tie fighters and X-wings in the space levels (to name but a few).

Also, the online play is definitely solid. There's very little lag even with 16 players at one time (another thumbs up for the PSP's astounding Wi-Fi capabilities) and all of the other faculties are in good working order (spawning, reliable lobbies etc.) In fact, as one of the only games of its type on the PSP, it does a stonkingly grand job all round. Rebelllion has also designed the maps and combat in a way that tends towards short battles that are perfect for brief handheld gaming sessions, which is a nice bonus.

In a change from the usual Battlefront setup, your armoury is no longer decided by which type of soldier you choose (e.g. infantry, snipers and heavy infantry). Instead, you can customise the appearance of your character from their helmet to their colour scheme, and then you have 100 credits to choose from a myriad of weapon and abilities. For example, a chaingun will cost you 40 credits, whereas a blaster rifle is 25. Similarly, you can spend more credits in order to strengthen various abilities such as speed and capture rate. Some of the weapons are pretty cool actually, such as our personal favourite the guided rocket, which allows you to control the trajectory of a missile in flight.

While most of the duties that Rebellion have picked up on with Renegade Squadron have simply brought the PSP series more inline with the previous console and PC Battlefronts, this new character customisation feature is thoroughly original for the series and it's well balanced for the most part as well.

The Circle Is Now Complete

As far as the single player game is concerned, Rebellion has kept the usual Risk-esque Conquest mode, which is as fun as it ever was (i.e. a fairly stimulating stop-gap if your connection goes down for a few minutes). They've also added the Campaign mode, which follows the path of the Renegade Squadron's Col Serra. Han Solo's Renegade Squadron is basically a bunch of outcasts and outlaws who're all united under the banner of giving the Empire a good pummelling. This mode basically functions as a nice little tutorial to the game, but also brings a bit of narrative colour to the base capturing gameplay. Overall, similarly to the consoles and PC, these single player modes help to add a little depth to the game and definitely bring more to the PSP experience.