Oct 27 2009
Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron Demo Is A Bust
I’m fresh off playing the new demo for the upcoming PSP game Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron. What I’ve seen and done here really disappoints me, I have to say. The concept seemed larger than life, and I just don’t think that the PSP was the place for such a concept. In Elite Squadron the big hook is more massive battles, in which space and land skirmishes take place at the same time. You’re able to travel to the ground, and into space to wage war.
Of course the PSP isn’t powerful enough to house a battle like this, so what you’ve really got is two different battles going on simultaneously. Through a starship you can choose to enter a nice little pre-rendered cutscene that shows you either entering space, or entering the atmosphere to join the ground battle. That’s a very cool concept, unfortunately I’m just not impressed with the end result.
When you’re in space with your starship, the battles are nice and big, plenty of open flying space, and enemies to blast. Then you transfer to ground, and the game’s “massive” scale battles are exposed for being nothing but small skirmishes. It’s pathetic trying to fly a starship around the miniature ground battle environments. The level I played might have been the smallest ground skirmish area I’ve ever seen in fact, in a Battlefront game.
From there you discover that the controls have become a right mess, if you’re trying to fight on the ground. Space combat plays as well as ever, which has been a series shining accomplishment since Battlefront II. But here the changes made to ground combat are just horrid, and mar the experience as almost unplayable.
Because you only have one analog nub on the PSP your aiming depends on auto targeting the enemies around you. The problem with this principle is that in big firefights, you frequently target the wrong enemy, over and over again. I died more than once trying to target a closer enemy, finding I could only target the same far away foe I had been shooting. There really is no useful means of target switching on the fly, that could be considered effective.
All in all this is a mess, and serves as a fine example why Lucasarts is slipping in the gaming world. Starting with Force Unleashed, continuing with Fracture, and all the way into Battlefront: Elite Squadron, everything feels cheaply thrown together and rushed. Elite Squadron has a fantastic premise, but portable systems just aren’t the place for such a massive idea.
Elite Squadron is screaming for a console release, where the game can take on the massive feel that it really deserves. But here on PSP, the game rots in the inferior processing power, and small fight environments available. Maybe Lucasarts will finally learn though, and give us the Battlefront game we’ve all been waiting to see. Just make the 360/PS3 version everyone wants. PSP is not the place to take this game online, or try to emulate shooter gameplay.
