Sweet

I recently bought the new white PSP that came with the Star Wars Battle Front Renegade Squadron, and I love the hell out of it. This review is for the game only. The game has all the action I could want for the times where a TV is not around, like when traveling on planes or or on trains. It has a very good sense of action and the story is very pleasing too.

Renegade Squadron is a third person shooter game that takes place in the Star Wars Universe. The story goes that after the Empire has been defeated, a Jedi is trying to collect data on heroes of the war, an decides that the Renegade Squadron is most deserving of being put in the spotlight. She contacts Col Serra, the squadron's leader. He spills the story, and as he tells the story, you play out the action sequences as a soldier. There will be a few clip scenes where you see things happen, like the bounty hunter Boba Fet hunting other people or the squadron hanging out, but when there are guns, you are on the scene taking charge. The story is one where the Renegade Squadron is a rag tag team of thieves and pirates that all hate the Empire. They band together and become the wildest squad in the Rebel Alliance. They're sort of the ones that get the rebels out of trouble. In most scenes, you are protecting the rebels as they escape from planets, like Hoth. Then in one scene you make an attempt to distract the empire so that there may be a better chance of destroying the second Death Star, but the decoy fails. You then must escape that planet and go save the rebels so that they can destroy the shield generator. The way the story goes, the Renegade Squadron are the ones who did the grunt of work in the war. The story is a bit lacking in that sense. I did feel like I needed more from a game but for a PSP game, this has a lot more story than others have had before.

The action sequences are awesome. You play a soldier in the squadron taking orders from the main character, Col Serra. He guides you in what to do through the game and gives you instructions on how to run, jump, fly, etc. When you are on the ground you can command vehicles like AT-Ats or chicken walkers as I have heard them called. There are a lot of vehicles that are and are not in the movies. For battles that take place in space, you can fly any of the rebel ships, like the X, Y, A or B wing ships, including the transport ship. You start out as a person in the space ship hangar, and you must walk up to a ship to get in, at which point you can go out into space and blast Empire ships. On the ground, the strategy is to control as many control posts as possible, which are places where players respawn after they die and can change weapons as well. There are also droids that charge up your health and ammo as well. All the maps are very well laid out and thought out. You may never find a hidden spot, but there is an advantage to exploring the maps. There are some hard to find hiding spots in all of them. When you play on the ground, you can change weapons and abilities at command posts. You to have 2 guns, grenades and special backpacks as well as the ability to run faster, have more health or a multitude of other things. All these things cost a certain amount of points, and you only ever get 100 points to spend. If you go over that, you cannot play. When playing, you can aim at certain targets and blast away at them with any weapon you have. You can dodge their aim, throw grenades, fly over them, anything. The only gun I don't like is the sniping gun because it is too hard to control and aim. To move and aim you use the little directional pad on the lower left hand side of the PSP. You can play on medium or hard levels settings.

There are several ways of playing Renegade Squadron. One is campaign mode, where you play every level of the story. Another way is to just play single levels with no plot at all. Then you can play a game where you must conquer the whole galaxy, planet by planet, and manage your money as well as think about tactics to beat the computer. Then you can play individual levels on the Internet with the wireless option, so you can play friends over the net. The on line version handles very well and is fun to play. When playing any type of game scenario, you can pick to be the rebels or the Empire. In the campaign mode, only the Rebel team is available.

The graphics are sort of weird. Action parts of the game look like a cross between the quality of a Nintendo 64 and Play Station 1. Everything is 3D, but sort of looks a little flat. That is still very good quality for video game systems for today though considering how small the PSP is and how well it performs. The color is good, the sound is good and it handles well. I feel that the controls may be a little frustrating at first but I quickly got them down and the game became fun. The music is just original scores from the music of the movies. I like the clip scenes of story time between action sequences. It looks like someone painted some very detailed pictures of characters, space ships and what not and then scanned them in and used these moving paintings to convey movement. It is actually very beautiful how they did it. It works well with the story

I like this game very much. I am glad I got it with my PSP and I would recommend it to anyone who likes action games or Star Wars. I am not a big Star Wars fan but I enjoy this game.