Renegade Ops
Sporting one of the most generic titles in recent memory, “Renegade Ops” puts old school arcade action into a modern engine. The game is a top-down vehicle-shooter like the 80s arcade game “Jackal”, but uses modern duel joystick controls similar to “Geometry Wars.” “Renegade Ops” was developed by Avalanche Studios, the studio responsible for the “Just Cause” series, and the game uses the “Just Cause 2” engine to great effect. “Just Cause 2” was famous for its massive explosions and “Renegade Ops” averages around 10 per second.
Even from the top-down perspective where the enemies look like toy soldiers and matchbox cars, the explosions are gorgeous. The over-the-top tone of “Just Cause” is cranked up even higher in “Renegade Ops”. The opening cinematic features a general throwing his medals at the U.N. and promising to go rogue to stop the evil army led by the psychopath Inferno.
Gameplay takes place on a jungle-covered island strewn with enemy encampments. Every building is destructible and there are a plethora of explosive barrels to assist in the process. Enemies range from foot soldiers and tanks to huge hovercrafts crackling with purple bolts of plasma.
The primary vehicle is a sort of armored dune buggy whose control takes some getting used to. Most duel joystick shooters feature spaceships that respond instantly to movement commands for precision’s sake, but since whipping instant 180s wouldn’t make much sense in a dune buggy, “Renegade Ops” has much looser feeling controls than other duel joystick shooters. Moving the stick straight from up to down means your buggy will still have to go up for a while to complete its turning radius, and wrapping one’s head around this is key to avoiding damage. The buggies have a great sense of weight and a sharp turning radius, and can be whipped around with ease once you have a feel for them. Some levels also put you in control of a helicopter to defeat aircrafts and battleships. These sections hit my nostalgia button hard as I was taken back to playing “Desert Strike” for the Super Nintendo.
The main method of attack is a machine gun controlled by the right thumbstick that becomes more powerful as you blow stuff up. The feeling of blasting away with the fully upgraded machine gun is glorious, but it melts away when you lose all your progress upon death. The game works on the old school limited-lives system where a death means you lose all the upgrades to your machine gun, and too many means you restart the mission. Secondary weapons like rockets and rail guns are picked up from downed enemies, and each of the four selectable characters has a special ability that works on a cooldown timer.
As is now common for a game with old school mechanics, RPG elements have been injected for a delicious carrot to chase. The upgrades are divided into the typical three skill trees of offense, defense, and tactical. With a level cap of 45 it will take more than a single play-through to reach the maximum level and unlock every upgrade, but with multiple difficulties and the option to play cooperatively, getting to 45 is no chore.
I must note that if you have three friends with decent computers, the PC version is the way to go. The game goes on sale this week on Steam at the normal asking price of $15, but you can also buy a four-pack for $30. Four player co-op is where this game is at its best, so be a pal and send your friends those extra copies and blast away.