~The Unofficial Star Wars Battlefront Renegade Squadron Thread~ - Star Wars: Battlefront Series

Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron is the second Battlefront title to come to the PSP. Just try not to get confused when you remember that the first PSP entry was called Star Wars Battlefront II. We would accuse LucasArts of trying to confuse us, but the fact is, Battlefront II was a port of the console game of the same name (which was, of course, a sequel to the popular Star Wars Battlefront).

Battlefront II was a pretty good game, but it suffered from awkward controls and terrible multiplayer framerates. Seeing as how the game was originally designed for consoles before being quickly squeezed onto the PSP, problems such as this weren't all that surprisingly. Despite these problems, the game sold like crazy -- enough to convince LucasArts to create an entirely new Battlefront title that's optimized for Sony's handheld system.

And that leaves us with Renegade Squadron, which chronicles the adventures of the titular group of heroes. They're a band of soldiers put together by Han Solo and led by a man named Col Serra. The Renegades are called into duty to tackle some of the most dangerous and covert missions that face the Rebel Alliance after the battle of Yavin 4 (that's the end of the original "Star Wars" movie to you and me). Serra's tale is told in Campaign mode, the game's main single-player mode, through a series of comic book-style cut scenes with full voiceover.

The actual gameplay is pretty much what you've come to expect from this series. You run around a map shooting at bad guys while attempting to accomplish a particular goal. Usually, this involves collecting an item, wiping out the opposing army, or capturing enemy command posts. Occasionally, you'll play a space mission that allows you to pilot one of several ships. Here, you're usually attacking vulnerable spots on the enemy's capital ship. You can also dock in their vessel to take them out from the inside.

Unfortunately, Campaign mode is frustratingly short. After a couple of hours of shooting at Stormtroopers, you're watching the credits roll. I suppose that's what happens when you limit the narrative to only two of the six Star Wars movies. I mean, if you're going to make up a group of new characters for a game, couldn't you make it so their exploits would take more than an afternoon to plow through? The CPU's often questionable AI doesn't help matters, either. It's almost tougher to lose a battle in Campaign mode than it is to win them.

All Too Easy

Equally short is the other big single-player mode, Conquest. There's no storytelling here, just a series of battles linked by simplistic strategy elements where you purchase and deploy troops to occupy new planets. Having to do a little bit of thinking before the fights is nice, but once again the difficulty and length works against this mode. It's just over way too soon. The final single-player mode is Instant Action, which simply dumps you into a battle of your choosing for when you want to make with the "pew pew" but don't want any of that annoying structure or planning.