Renegade Ops – Review (PSN) Playstation 3
Publisher: SEGA, Developer: Avalanche Studios, Genre: Action, Release Date: Sept 14, 2011, Rating: Teen, Systems: PC, Playstation 3, Xbox 360.
Presentation: Renegade Ops is a action packed high explosive twin stick shooter that puts you in the role of mercenaries and their mobile units in a top-down view. This game came across pretty basic in terms of presentation with its old school gameplay roots. You have plenty of action sure. The multiplayer was fun which features co-op gameplay. The visuals and story are bland and the writing was sub-par Renegade Ops did run smooth however. I experienced no gameplay technical issues during my playthrough. The atmosphere is pure macho filled with cheese and reminds me of 80′s action movies in regards to presentation.
Story: You play the role of a group of rag-tag mercenaries including Armand, Diz, Roxy and Gunner in hopes of hunting down Mastermind Terrorist Inferno. Each character has a special mobile unit along with special abilities and upgrades. Like I said above the writing and story are afterthoughts, its pure cheese but in a bad way. Renegade Ops is simply about driving around in a top-down view blowing stuff up.
Visuals: Visuals while not bad aren’t very good either. The texture work is blurry on most NPCs. The settings I did like and the different operable vehicles looked pretty good regarding design. The explosions did rock the screen quite a bit and featured good lighting and particle effects. The comicbook style cutscenes weren’t nothing special visually but did feature decent imagination regarding design.
Sound: Voice acting was pitiful as well the sound design. I just didn’t enjoy the sound design as a whole in Renegade Ops. The music wasn’t particularly memorable as well.
Gameplay: Blow stuff up, rescue hostages destroy enemy vehicles and compounds makes up the bulk of Renegade Ops’s gameplay. One thing I must point out is this game’s difficulty, its not a super easy game to play and you will die. You can upgrade your vehicle’s abilities and weapons. There are many types of power-ups on screen you can collect. Gameplay is fun at times but also repetitive with the whole go here to point A blow stuff up routine. Controlling the vehicle units on screen is pretty fluid. Depending on who you use and the vehicles of course. Boss battles are challenging as well fun in co-op mode. Renegade Ops is more old school in design as far as gameplay is concerned. You do get to command flying vehicles such as helicopters on special occasions to take out specific targets. I played the campaign with a few different vehicles and they do have their own characteristics and such. Some have special armor you can activate or a huge machine gun or an EMP blast. This game is suppose to be 4 player co-op and yes all four mobile units fit on the screen with room to spare. To sum up Renegade Ops its gameplay is twin stick shooting. There are plenty of explosions and gadgets to use. The atmosphere for some reason just seemed pedantic.
Replayability: Renegade Ops supports a full online or offline 4 player co-op. I played the co-op over PSN and its pretty good. You can connect to matches on the fly (at any point in the story campaign). Four player co-op online is fun and has a old school vibe about it. Overall the game is average as far as replayability is concerned. After you beat the game on its hardest difficulty a more difficult option arises.
Final Verdict: Renegade Ops is a good little twin-stick shooter that features explosions, co-op and a cheesy story. Thanks for reading.
7/10
