PSP

Star Wars: Battlefront II

It sounded like the coolest idea ever. Still, Lucasarts delivered on its promise. It let you play as either the Rebel Alliance or the Galactic Empire in a series of epic, multiplayer confrontations spanning famous Star War locales. The game, of course, was the original Star Wars Battlefront. By all accounts it was a particularly huge game. And it wasn't just its scope or attention to detail, either, it was the fact the whole shebang was multiplayer and online ready.

Battlefront II for the PSP boasts a lot of ways to control your Star Wars experience, whether it be co-op battles over ad hoc wireless, the chance to down Gungans as Boba Fett, or control Jedi over a variety of maps. Ironically, the one thing that taints the experience is the controls. Although it gives you four ways to configure them, none of the options made me feel really comfortable. And for an action game like this, if you don’t like the controls, you aren’t gonna get your kills. This Battlefront II doesn’t have the driving story of the console version, but it does give you the predominant experience – including the not super-fun space battles. There is a certain charm to this game, but it’s basically a big Jedi mind trick.

It's got some of the console and PC versions' mechanics, but the lack of a story-based campaign and online multiplayer sucks much of the fun out of this PSP shooter.

Al met al is SW: B2 dus een ietwat kale versie van hét succesnummer van LucasArts van eind 2005.

Moins convaincante que sur consoles de salon, la version PSP de Star Wars Battlefront 2 pâtit de son multijoueur limité à 4 joueurs en LAN et de son mode solo auquel il manque une campagne pour parvenir à retenir notre attention. En outre, la réalisation n'est pas non plus parmi ce qui se fait de mieux. C'est très dommage car les développeurs avaient réussi à rendre leur création jouable malgré le peu de touches disponibles sur la portable de Sony.

"Sequel The Best Selling Star Wars Game of All Time." That's what the back panel of Star Wars: Battlefront II proclaims. Best selling? Of all time? This seems off tto me, yet NPD numbers seem to prove it true, at least across all platforms. But it seems strange, with so many classic Star Wars games that have popped up over the years. X-Wing;Tie Fighter, which of course begat X-Wing Vs. Tie Fighter; the classic Super Star Wars series for the SNES; Shadows of the Empire, one of the few good Nintendo 64 games for the first dry months of the console's lifespan – even budget classics like Yoda Stories (not the Gameboy version!) should have sold quite a few copies to curious fans.

These guys sure know what Star Wars fans want. In the first three single-player levels of Battlefront II, you get to exterminate Gungans, Jawas, and Ewoks. Smart. But guess what else you'll get to fight in those first few stages? The control scheme. The PSP just isn't made for shooters, and this is one of the most ambitious around.

Star Wars Battlefront II for the PSP is simply the Death Star. It's an immensity that is chock-full of destructive power, symbolized by the multiple re-creations of the biggest and baddest battles in Star Wars history. Its seemingly flawless exterior is made up of snazzy graphics and authentic pewpewpew laser sound effects. Yet, for all that is good about it, like the original Death Star, it has one flaw that slipped through construction, a flaw that is significant enough to blow the entire thing apart. That flaw is the terrible framerate during multiplayer. If you're into single player, the game is actually quite good...