This new PSP-exclusive version of the Battlefront series
attempts to chip away at any interface decisions that might affect
your ability to jump right in and kill a random amalgam of original
trilogy Star Wars characters. If you've played the BF
games before, you'll know the main gist: multiplayer third-person
fighting (and a single-player that emulates the online experience).

The title comes from the single-player game, in which you'll be able
to play as part of Han Solo's "Renegade Squadron." (Unlike what you
might expect, Han Solo's secret platoon does more than drink and
gamble.)

Character customization allows you to not only mix-and-match a
character from a bin of parts—our demo fighter was a
purple-tinged Mon Cal—but to cook up your own "class" of fighter
by balancing run speeds, weapons choice, and overall health, not
unlike a simple RPG. Make a slow character full of health to tank, and
if that isn't working out as planned, then just go back to your team's
base and tweak your settings until it works.

Graphically it was what it was—I'm sure it'll look sharper on
the PSP screen instead of a PSP screen blown up on an HDTV. I think
the realistic models could have been better served by a dash more
cartoon, but that's not the way Battlefront does it.

The graphics look much better when you play one of the space battle
modes, where a new "auto-pilot" lock-on function tries to make
dogfights more manageable than previous games in the series. Once
you've locked onto an enemy ship, you'll automatically follow it until
it's destroyed, although you'll still have to manage your speed. (Sort
of the inverse of the speed matching in the old X-Wing and
TIE Fighter games.) If you added custom color to your
third-party character, those colors would appear as custom highlights
on your spaceships.

New maps, new ships (including a TIE Defender and a B-Wing),
auto-docking, hero-class characters in space (complete with special
moves), and the ability to pop into a landing bay to steal other ships
make the space battle section much more interesting to me than the
traditional ground battle.

For the record, I didn't play this hands-on, but watched as one of the
developers ran a live demo on a PSP. On the whole Battlefront:
Renegade Squadron looks like a serviceable portable addition to
the series, but doesn't do much to appeal to those who find the
Star Wars saga one of the most thread-bare mythos around.

Renegade Squadron will be out October 9th of this year.
Multiplayer will support 16 players in infrastructure mode, 8 in
ad-hoc. –Joel Johnson

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