When you hear about a big game coming to the PSP you can't help but cringe a bit. Starting to think about the load times that are going to come along with a game like this is just the sort of thing to make you curse disk based media. With this in mind Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron was approached with much trepidation. Nobody wants another "portable" game that you can't actually play on the road because it takes so long to load the next level.

Featuring all of the combat you've come to expect from the Battlefront games including ground, space and vehicle combat. Much like in its console big brothers you can start a fight on the ground, using speeders and other vehicles, get into ships and then take the fight to space so you can siege an enemies' ship.

To say that there's a whole lot of game here is a complete understatement. You can get into sixteen player online multiplayer battles. The only real limitation to this is that there can only be twenty four active combatants on an individual level. This means that if all sixteen players are fighting in one level you will have only a few bots running around the field at the same time.

However considering the nature of these sorts of battles you will find yourself wanting to spread out your troops meaning that things are likely to be more spread out and chaotic. To expedite this sort of chaotic combat a new option has been added to the battlefield; that of drop pods. To reduce transport time from shipboard combat you will be able to climb into drop pods and crash straight to the planets surface to bring the fight quickly.

Now you might think that this is going to be a loading nightmare as you transition from combat zone to combat zone. But the guys working on this game have done a whole lot of work optimizing the title for the PSP. Load times are generally within the four to six second zone with small cutscenes that play as you transition to help cover the lad time. This gives a near seamless experience to the game.

The core singe player experience has been really buffed up for this title as well. The Galactic Conquest mode will feature around the ballpark of thirty five hours of gameplay wherein you control a single clone trooper from the episode 1 storyline all the way down to past where episode six ended. There is even a hot seat mode where up to three players with one disk can pass the PSP around and let the computer decide the outcome of their battles giving the game a strategic board game feel to it.

Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron will release this fall for all of us nerdy Star Wars fans. With such a hefty amount of content in such a small title this is looking like a definite must own. If you are a fan of large scale battles, Star Wars or just tight shooter action then this title should definitely be on your radar. Look for more information as the release date nears.