Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron review

We liked to run and gun with the classic Blaster rifle while activating a Hulk-like power up called Rage, which offers extra endurance and power. But if you want to jump into battle with triple health, extra speed and nothing but a pocket full of thermal detonators... as Bobby Brown says, that's your prerogative. Whatever your personal selection, the gameplay is blissfully blast-happy. Capturing bases, manning turrets, piloting familiar machinery and fragging Wookies is just as fun as it should be.

Theaction is just as fun and frantic as any console counterpart, with any issues fans had with the previous PSP version (Star Wars: Battlefront II) dutifully addressed. Wireless ad-hoc play has doubled to an eight player maximum, and when when we played sessions at full capacity, wesaw no loss in the framerate. If you lack eight friends with PSPs, up to 16 players are able to duke it out online. (For those keeping score, yeah, that's as many as Halo 3.) Thegalactic dogfights are back and aslaser-happy as ever, with the ability to exit space crafts and enter capital ships now proudly present inthe handheld version.

The game's controls still suffer a little in someindoor areas. Even the lock-on can't compensate that well, and will leave you staring at the ground and bumping into walls. It's somewhat difficult to move around in tight spaces, but most of the game takes place in larger outdoor environments, and the real meat of Renegade Squadron is the multiplayer. Meaning that, sooner or later, people will gravitate towards the maps that don't suck.