This past Saturday I was busy doing practically nothing when I happened to flick onto ITV at the right moment to catch the end of one of the old Star Wars films. In spite of not having seen one for more years than I care to remember, something that struck me was how quickly it drew my attention away from whatever the heck I had been doing prior and held my focus until the end credits rolled. As much as I didn’t know it (or perhaps didn’t like to admit it), something in me is a bit of a Star Wars nut.

The fact that this all happened when I was just about to kickstart my review of Rebellion’s Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron was most fortunate – rather like if I had gone into a curry house and had an unexpected yet tasty round of popadoms prior to the main course. Having played the PSP Battlefront game until my fingers had blisters there were high hopes, and thankfully Elite Squadron proved to be a rather tasty meal indeed.

The first reason for this is the campaign mode, which is enjoyable and features a well-told story of two clone brothers who end up on two opposite sides of a struggle during the Clone Wars. It changes through a decent number of locations and objectives along the way and constantly plays on the game’s commendably wide scope to offer the player a pleasingly varied single player game experience.

You may, for example, find yourself running around gunning down enemy troopers on moment, then find yourself hopping into an X-Wing for a spot on space combat before boarding an enemy ship and destroying its reactor core. Another moment you could find yourself having to blast a ship’s shield down from a ground-based energy cannon, or roaming around in an AT-AT picking off marauding troops. There’s plenty to do, and with great use of film footage in between the action you’ll find yourself compelled to carry on through to the conclusion.

The controls work well too, although as with everything on the PSP they have to make up for the lack of a second analogue nub. In terms of ground combat you run about with the analogue stick and hold in the right shoulder button to auto-aim whilst flicking the D-pad left and right to change targets, and although initially it feels slightly tricky, you quickly find yourself getting used to it. You can also perform a quick barrel roll left or right to dodge enemy fire by tapping the circle button, which is once again simple enough and very effective when used at the right point.

It’s the space combat where the game really shines, though. Zipping around in your spacecraft pew-pewing the heck out of enemy ships is great fun, and control is tight enough to allow you to perform all sorts of ducks and dives to give you the edge. The game also gives you the option of tapping right shoulder to automatically lock onto a target and track it, which proves a godsend in the middle of hectic fire fights and stops you flying aimlessly in circles trying to find your targets.

Whilst the single player modes, supplemented by an Instant Action offering as well as Galactic Conquest, which is a strategic offering eneabling you to take over the galaxy by upgrading and moving your forces, is an enjoyable experience it is undoubtedly the multiplayer aspect from which most Battlefront fans will look to get the main enjoyment out of the game; luckily, it more than holds its end of the bargain. Personal preference was toward the Conquest mode, in which two teams battle it out to be the first to either win 1000 points or capture all five of their opponent’s ground-based control posts. It’s hectic, and it recreates a particularly exciting and authentic Star Wars feel along the way.

The general gist is, of course, that killing things is good. However, one way of gaining a particularly chunky points bonus is to destroy the enemy’s capital ship, which involves first making it to a ground cannon to blast the shield away and then rushing toward the nearest available star fighter to launch an ambitious raid as you try to gain entry to the ship and blow its core. Going out on such a run in the star fighters feels particularly exciting as the enemy team try to ping you out of the sky in their ships, and making it on board and battling through to the core is thrilling stuff. As said, it captures that Star Wars feel perfectly, and with 16 players catered for either locally in Ad-Hoc or online it is a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

It’s not half bad technically either, as although the game’s more busy moments can see the frame rate occasionally struggle along for a little bit it does push through an impressively busy environment. Sound-wise it’s pretty much as you’d expect from a Star Wars game, with every lightsaber buzz and laser pew represented as authentically as you could wish for.

Overall, it’s a great little game to get people playing their dusty PSP’s again. Most impressive of all is that Rebellion have managed to make something on such a small screen feel so vast in scale, with both the campaign and multiplayer modes throwing you into the middle of impressively epic battles. It’s a great example of a game hitting all the checklist ticks it can for its hardware, and for any Star Wars fan, die-hard or, like myself, closet, is a great addition to our games libraries.