Hands-on: Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron
You can never get enough Wookie action.
Tags: Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron Categories: PSP Previews, Previews
Posted by Tracy Erickson on Jul 28th, 2007
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Whoever came up with the axiom “all good things come to an end” clearly never met George Lucas and his team of interactive entertainers at LucasArts. The purveyors of the Star Wars experience are extending its most popular gaming franchise, this time exclusively on PlayStation Portable. Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron ventures into new territory not only for the series, but the platform as well with impressive online features and promising action gameplay.
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Unlike most PlayStation Portable titles, Renegade Squadron emphasizes multiplayer over a single player experience. Both Ad-hoc and Infrastructure modes are supported, offering up 8 and 16 players respectively. In contrast, the PlayStation Portable port of Star Wars: Battlefront II only handled a maximum of 4 players in Ad-hoc mode. Several game types will be available naturally, including conquest, capture-the-flag, hero capture-the-flag, and others. While none of the multiplayer game types are groundbreaking, the ability to participate in 16-player online matches is a huge leap forward for portable play.
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Customization will be a huge part of playing Renegade Squadron. Gone are the classes of Star Wars: Battlefront II, replaced instead by a 100-point credit system. The game gives players 100 points to spend in customizing your character’s abilities and equipment during each match. Players are free to dole out the points in whatever manner they see fit, enhancing health, speed, and agility or equipping advanced weaponry for increased attack power. Since players are limited to 100 points, they can only customize a character to a certain extent; in other words, the game appears to be balanced in order to prevent creation of overly powerful characters.
Along with the ability to customize a character’s combat skills and weapons load out, players will also have the option of personalizing their appearance. Several races from the Star Wars universe will be playable including human and Mon Calamari. Additionally, it’s possible to personalize an avatar’s body type, insignia, and uniform.
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Beyond the battles raging planet-side, Renegade Squadron will boast a number of enhancements to space combat. Revised controls purportedly allow easier handling of vessels; moreover, an automatic docking function has been added that allows targeting of a capital ship and hitting triangle to park your ship. Players will be able to pilot a wider range of ships in the game including B-wings and TIE defenders; even better, they can play as hero ships the Millennium Falcon, TIE Advanced, and Slave One.
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Renegade Squadron focuses mainly on multiplayer, although it does include a single player campaign. Set during the classic era of the original trilogy, players become a member of Han Solo’s elite strike team. On his orders, they’ll traverse the galaxy in pursuit of objectives supporting the rebel alliance’s war against the empire. 11 missions comprise the campaign beginning with the evacuation of Yavin 4 as depicted in Episode IV and concluding on Endor as shown in Episode VI.
From our hands-on time with Renegade Squadron, it appears well on its way to surpass previous installments of the series. A huge list of improvements and additions promise to bolster what was already solid action-packed gameplay. All that’s left is watch these promises unfold come the game’s September release.
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Tags: Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron
Posted by Tracy Erickson on Jul 28th, 2007 and is filed under PSP Previews, Previews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
