Renegade Ops sees players going off the grid in pursuit of world’s ultimate villain, appropriately named Inferno. Despite him wanting to burn the entire globe to a crisp, the world’s heads of power elect to negotiate with Inferno. Fed up with his leaders’ inaction and stupidity, the gruff General Bryant relinquishes all formal military ties and decides to pursue Inferno for himself. Together with a small band of soldiers, the fighters of Renegade Ops begin their search for the malevolent Inferno. The narrative is a simple but endearing yarn in the same spirit of the movie The Expendables, told through colorful comic book cells and over-acted voice-overs. Never taking itself too seriously, the story adequately pieces the game together and reinforces the overall B-movie vibe the developers have opted for.
Chopping away.
Renegade Ops is a dual-stick vehicular shooter that is an absolute joy from start to finish. Tight controls ensure that you always have a good handle on your vehicle, as you speed around a number of large and visually impressive maps, laying waste to absolutely everything in sight. For a downloadable title, Renegade Ops holds up beautifully in the visual stakes. Like the recent From Dust, players are treated to a spectacular top-down view of the game world. Set in the depths of South America, players’ progress through a number of challenging scenarios, such as destroying bases and chasing enemy vehicles. The section where you pilot a helicopter and rain death from above is particularly fun. Gameplay essentially remains the same through the entire game – speeding across the map in your vehicle while destroying everything in sight. Things become a little repetitive by the time you reach the final level, but overall, variety is really a non-issue as you are usually having too much fun to notice. Renegade Ops also maintains the intensity by piling a mission timer on top of primary and secondary objectives.
Before beginning each level, players choose from Renegade Ops garage of death machines. Each vehicle possesses a different special ability, each with its own pros and cons. For example, you might want to drive the vehicle with a shield, a heavy machine gun or the ability to call in air strikes. Offensive players may prefer the devastating armaments like the heavy machine gun, but as you cannot move while firing this weapon, you effectively become a sitting duck. The shield and EMP are useful if you prefer a good defense, but these abilities need to be leveled up before they are particularly handy. We recommend playing around with each vehicle to find one that best suits your style.
An explosive situation.
In addition to your vehicle’s special ability, each ride comes equipped with a set of machines guns that are fired by moving the right stick. As you spread death across the map, secondary weapons such as rocket launches and flamethrowers also become available. Renegade Ops’ great variety of weaponry compliments the mechanical mayhem beautifully, as you blast through a never-ending assortment of enemies such as tanks, cars and helicopters. With the enemy always hot on your tail, speed is just as essential as firepower. Staying out of the line of fire is vital, as vehicles are not invulnerable. Tearing through Inferno’s forces makes for some intense and exciting gameplay, especially as you aim for a score multiplier by destroying as many enemies as quickly as possible. At the end of each level, your score is converted into experience points, so netting a high result is both highly satisfying and rewarding.
As you progress through Renegade Ops, you gain experience points that can be spent on upgrading your vehicle. As we alluded to before, choosing to invest points in special abilities makes them even more devastating, but the trade-off to this is upgrading your basic stats such as increased health and lives. There are 18 upgrades in total for each vehicle, but don’t think you spec out your ride to the max all at once, as only a few improvements can activated before each mission. Hence, spreading your points between both defensive and offensive upgrades is best, as survivability becomes a real test, especially in the later levels.
Tanked.
Renegade Ops can be played solo, but for maximum pleasure, it is best experienced with other people. Levels can be tackled with up to four players online, or in two-player split-screen. The developers should be commended for including local multiplayer, but given the immense scale of the game, joining with your buddies online creates the best destruction and mayhem.
Renegade Ops can be completed in a five hour sitting, but higher difficulty levels and leaderboards – combined with the immense satisfaction of wreaking havoc on the enemy – are guaranteed to entice players back for a another try. Priced at 1200 Microsoft points on Xbox LIVE and AU $15 on the PlayStation Network, this game is one of the best downloable destruction derbies that gamers can experience. With robust controls, sublime presentation and exciting dual-stick shooter gameplay, Renegade Ops is an operation that should not to be missed.
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