Renegade Ops

So what do you do when a madman threatens to burn down the world, and the world seems content to do nothing? Well, if you're General Bryant, the top military official for an organization that would appear to be the U.N., you abandon your post and lead a collection of renegades to go out and do the job the world's governments won't do.

In Renegade Ops, you take on the role of one of Bryant's renegades, an individual with more than a few screws lose, as your goal is to save the world from the terrorist known as Inferno by, get this, driving a single car with a machine gun strapped to it. Yes, that should be completely effective against armies of infantry, attack helicopters, and tanks.

Realistic? No. Fun? Heck yes.

There are four regular characters available in the base game, one special tribute for the Steam edition in the form of Gordon Freeman, and two additional characters if you purchase the correct DLC. Each character, in addition to driving a unique vehicle, also has a special ability. My favorite character, Roxy, can summon an air strike, which really comes in handy when you're getting swarmed by enemies. Other special abilities include turning your car into what is essentially an artillery turret, a temporary shield you can use to avoid extremely damaging attacks like enemy rockets, or summon a swarm of antlions to attack those pesky tanks.

Each character can be further differentiated through the use of their skill trees. Yes, this is a driving game where you shoot things with machine guns, rocket launchers, flame throwers, or just run over generic henchmen, and it has skill trees. As you play through the game, you'll get points for any damage you cause. You can string together damage streaks for even more points. All of those get added up, and you will eventually level up your current driver. When you level up, you get a few points to spend on talents, which are broken down into three categories - offensive, defensive, and tactical, which is the proper name for the special ability. Offensive lets you start with a secondary weapon, or increase the clip size of those weapons, while defense focuses on things like slowly regenerating your health when you're low, or having the chance to drop health packs from your own vehicle when you take damage. Tactical is specific to your character - in the case of Roxy, you can unlock larger air strikes, or ones that launch without delay. There are a total of 6 skills in each tree, and you have to unlock one to get the one above it. Furthermore, you can only have 4 skills active per level, though you only start with 2 open slots. By the time you reach level 45, the cap, you should have everything covered.

Skill trees? Let the theorycrafting begin!

Of course, those skill trees only enhance the fundamental gameplay, but do not drastically change it. While it is nice to have extremely powerful special abilities, or more ammo for your secondary weapon, most of the time you'll be killing things with your machine gun. This too is upgradeable, since, as you're slaughtering enemies, you'll encounter a variety of crates, which offer health, one of the game's three secondary weapons which you can switch out if you already have one equipped, ammo for your secondary, or add extra machine guns to your car. These are also the sort of thing you tend to lose if you die, so it's in your best interest to stay alive as long as possible, dodging in and out of the line of fire or using your special ability to deal with particularly tough enemies, since it does really suck to lose your level four machine gun, rail gun secondary with full ammo, and that nice kill streak you had going just because you took a turn too fast and ended up flipping over...right in front of a tank.

The story in this game is told in comic book style, with frames popping up on screen during the mission or just cut scenes before and after levels. It all fits in very well, though some times it is a little...over the top. For example, the antagonist, Inferno, always seems to be broadcasting from the pits of hell, judging by the flames behind him. Or the few times during the game when you must mash your A button - and yes, that's button, not key, because the game advises you to use a gamepad - to defeat enemies guarding a bridge or door control off screen, which causes another comic book like window to pop up showing your character beating the heck out of World War I German doppelgangers. My personal favorite though, is one cut scene in which General Bryant punches someone, and then follows it up with "How's that for a punch-line?"

If they ever made a movie out of this, that line could only be delivered by Samuel L. Jackson.

The missions themselves are pretty straight forward. You'll have a variety of objectives that evolve throughout the level, such as rescuing prisoners, destroying specific targets, or out racing a bomb blast. Some levels also have additional secondary objectives, which are a great way to increase your points total. However, you shouldn't dillydally too much, because the mission is actually timed, though you'll only find that out if you aren't prompt about completing your main objective, because after a time things will suddenly slow down, the music will dull, the screen goes black and white, and then a clock appears, letting you know to get a move on it. Thankfully, you can pull up a map overlay on the center of your screen, so you know just where to head to, which is good for you, but not so good for the prisoners who suddenly won't be getting rescued.

The game plays well enough, particularly if you fallow the recommendation and use a gamepad, in my case an Xbox controller, because those double joysticks are nice for driving in one direction and firing in another. You'll quickly learn what tactics work best with various enemies, such as dodging mortar strikes, or taking off the armor plating on the back of a tank to expose it's weak point. At that point it becomes a matter of just how good of a driver you are, and how accurate you are with your various weapons and special abilities, all of which you'll need to utilize if you want to get those really high scores.

Unfortunately, Bam, Pow, and Wham, are not included.

There are a total of nine levels in Renegade Ops, and if you're into that short of thing, you can go back and play them again and again to grind up your character's level, or just try and set the highest score you can. The three levels of difficulty can assist with this, since you can earn more points, but at the cost of extra lives on higher difficulty settings. It took me about 5 hours to play through the whole game on normal, and I generally had a positive experience, except for those times when I did in fact roll my car over in front of a tank. Still, the explosions, the feeling of destroying buildings by crashing through them, and the experience of successfully taking out a tank that is surrounded by several rocket turrets was pretty satisfying.

I had really only picked this up because it was associated with a Steam achievement contest, but am happy with my purchase, particularly since the version I got came with both DLCs for one low price. While I haven't gotten around to the Coldstrike DLC yet, I would still recommend looking for the game around the $5 mark. This game is above average, and something I would recommend, but not something that is so good I am likely to come back to it and grind up, or test out the multiplayer mode, rather holding off until there is a new campaign or something much more substantial to delve into - 6 out of 10.

So, the final breakdown:

Score: 6/10

Suggested Price: $5