Renegade Ops is a blast, be it blowing stuff up or getting yourself blown up.
Renegade Ops is a top-down vehicle combat shooter. You drive with the left stick while shooting with the right stick, pulling the L trigger to activate your abilities and R trigger to fire your secondary weapons. There are three kinds of secondary weapons you can use: the Flamer, which is your standard flamethrower, Rockets, and a Rail Gun. There are also pick ups that upgrade your machine gun. You can boost with A to either escape from harm or quickly cover ground to get to the next objective. Maneuvering around the game's nine missions is relatively easy, but the game features a robust physics engine that can very easily cause you to get to flip yourself over and become a sitting duck. You'll need to do more than just drive circles around your enemies if you don't want to be shot.
The missions themselves are pretty straightforward. You travel from point to point shooting down armies of men and pelting enemy vehicles with searing hot lead. Some objectives will have you taking out missile encampments, crippling army installations, destroying tanks and acquiring key cards, and rushing ahead to clear a path for General Bryant's own devastating tank. There are even a couple of times where you'll leave your four-wheeled killing machine in exchange for a helicopter to rain fire upon trains and battleships. Regardless of the mission objective, it all amounts to the same goal: blowing s*** up. The only time completing an objective doesn't involve you shooting something into oblivion is when you enter a building. Here, you have to mash the A button where you watch a quick comic book panel cutscene of your character beating up men and flipping a switch.
The game features four different characters to choose from. Each one has their own vehicle and special abilities. The hulking Armand drives a tank and his ability is a shield, negating damage from projectiles. The sultry Diz packs an EMP on her armor-plated vehicle. The petite red-headed Roxy drives a buggy and calls in air support when things get too hot. The slick and handsome Gunnar drives a Hummer-like vehicle and instantly swaps out his standard machine gun with a heavy gun to destroy anything in his line of sight.
This isn't one of those games where you can hightail it out of the area and wait for your energy to recover, so you'll need to constantly destroy enemies to reveal health pick ups. This in combination with timed primary objectives help keep the game's action moving at a brisk pace. Renegade Ops provides you with plenty of time to move from one primary objective to the next, but the secondary objectives that appear can easily distract you. If you spend too much time on them, you may find yourself completely out of time when the current primary objective three minute timer begins to count down. You can drive pretty much anywhere (and through almost anything at that) you want in the sandbox style environments, but there will always be an arrow guiding you to your next objective to prevent you from getting lost.
You can level up in Renegade Ops, and experience points are directly attributed to your score. If you manage to deliver a consecutive amount of damage in a short enough time, you'll earn a Damage Streak. During these streaks, multipliers will increase your score, thus increasing the amount of experience points you earn. When you level up, you'll be given skill points to spend on upgrades that give you different enhancements to your defense, offense and secondary weapons. You have to unlock them in their respective skill trees in ascending order to be able to equip them and you can only equip so many at a time. This gives Renegade Ops a tactical incentive, but it makes the player beg for more equipable slots.
Renegade Ops has three difficulty levels ranging from easy, medium and hard. What makes these difficulty levels interesting is that they greatly affect the way you play. On easy, you're given infinite lives, so you could very well bowl your way through the entire game with no problem. You won't, however, be able to level up, use any upgrades, and your score will be reduced. On medium, you need to be more careful as you're given five lives (and there are no checkpoints in any of the missions). You will be able to level, use upgrades and your score will be increased. On hard, you're only given three lives and your score increases even more. If you're the type of gamer that loves to climb leaderboards, playing the game on hard is the only way to ensure you stay at the top.
Visually, this is one of the most impressive Xbox Live Arcade titles available. At almost two gigs, this means that the textures of the environments and vehicles are of the utmost quality. The jungles are lush with detail and you can actually see the heatwaves emanating from the scorching hot sands of the deserts of Africa. The graphics are even more believable thanks to the excellent use of lighting and particle effects. Because this game's all about action, the special effects are of course remarkable. Whether it's a buggy or a massive Juggernaut armed from head to toe, when something goes boom, the fireballs makes Hollywood producers salivate. Even subtle effects are greatly appreciated such as the dust trail your vehicle leaves behind and the snapping of power lines as you run over their poles. The cutscenes are told via motion comics, and the artwork is terrific with the style perfectly becoming of a B action film. The only visual hitch, however, is the game will freeze for a split second at times, and a buzzing sound will occur.
The audio definitely carries its own weight as well. Machine gun fire becomes more deafening as you upgrade your weapon. Rockets WOOSH towards their targets and rail guns charge up with an ominous hum. Fires burn with a crackling intensity and explosions rattle your speakers as greatly as they light up your screen. The only sound effects that aren't truly impressive are that of your vehicle's engine and nitro boosts; they just don't sound as loud as they should. The music is excellent from the theme song to the tracks playing during missions. They fit perfectly and amp the player up as they go about their destructive business. The voice acting also is enjoyable only in a way one would love cheesy acting from a B action movie. The one major lament, however, is that the renegade ops themselves do not have their own voices; it's always General Bryant that's speaking.
Very fun gameplay and terrific visuals adds up to Renegade Ops being a fantastic game that gives so many satisfying explosions, it's almost too much to contain. It also has such a hilarious ending, so you just have to see it through for yourself. The asking price of Renegade Ops is 15 bucks. If you're only going to play through the game once, you may not find the game long enough to provide you with much content. There is a great likelihood, however, that you'll end up loving it and want to play through it again with a different character. It offers plenty of incentive to replay levels for better scores. The game also supports four player offline and online co-op but at the time of this writing, not a single soul was found online. If you're looking for a vehicle combat game that appeals to the inner megalomanical pyromaniac in you, look no further than Renegade Ops.