Developer-Avalanche
Publishers-SEGA
Release Date- September 13th, 2011
Price- $14.99 MSRP
Cool Down The Inferno
Renegade Ops is a top-down arcade twin-stick shooter in which you control one of four characters, or six if you purchase the two additional characters. Created by the developers of the Just Cause franchise, this game features lush visuals and explosive gameplay to accompany the late 80’s-90’s style action story. 
After attacks in Paris and other areas of the world by the evil Inferno, the leaders of the world come together to figure how to peacefully solve the situation. War veteran General Grant finds that there is only one way to deal with the situation and decides to put together a team of elite soldiers tasked with stopping Inferno. The story is mostly told by comic book style cut-scenes that briefly set up the next mission. Characters are a bit over the top, but that seems to be the point. It’s pretty hilarious to fight Inferno again and again and have him claim that he’s unstoppable, but never actually provides a real challenge.
Controls are simple and intuitive. The left stick controls the vehicle, while the right controls the direction of your gunfire. Special attacks are mapped to the triggers, with the left featuring a character-specific ability, and the right being used for collected weaponry like the rocket launcher. Each character has a special ability that can be used to clear out your surrounding area, and get you out of a jam. The character I chose was Diz, and her special ability was an EMP blast. Upon leveling up in the game, I was able to decrease the cool-down period, and affect enemies’ vehicles for longer periods of time. Ranking up comes pretty quickly, and after completing the game and re-playing a few levels, I reached level 31 of 45 with most of the upgrades, and am going to go back and work on some achievements to rank up a bit more. Even after reaching a higher level, the game still proves to be a challenge.
Depending on your difficulty, you’ll have to worry about the amount of lives you’re given. Playing on normal will get you about 5 lives, and after losing them, you’ll have to restart the mission, but thankfully you still get to keep any experience earned throughout the mission. Easy gives you infinite lives, but you’ll have no chance to receive upgrades or level up in this mode. Hardcore mode gives you fewer lives, but a higher score multiplier so you can level up a bit faster. Throughout my play-through on normal, I only died a handful of times, and most occurred on the last mission.
There are 9 missions in the game, and each last about 8-15 minutes, so you can expect to complete the game in a handful of hours, but the score based structure and upgrades provide good incentive to return.
Co-op play in Renegade Ops consists of completing the missions together via online or split-screen. Four players can work together online, while locally you can only play with two.
Overall, Renegade Ops provides some intense action with some replay-ability attached to it thanks to leaderboards, experience to gain, and new upgrades to check out. Don’t let Inferno win! Check out the game and join the Renegades!
Friday, January 6, 2012
