$15Is Renegade Ops worth it?
Renegade Ops is worth it if…
- you want a co-op game you can finish in a couple of evenings
- you miss the arcade shooters where one vehicle fought an entire army
- you like fast top-down action where the plan falls apart and that is the fun part
- you enjoy competing with friends for points while technically fighting on the same side
Screenshots
Better with friends in the passenger seat
The whole campaign works in co-op, and that is where the game is at its best. Two players share a couch with split screen, and the dividing line shifts dynamically as you drift apart or converge, so nobody is boxed into a corner of the screen. Online, up to four of you can pile into the same mission. You can play it straight and clear objectives together, or turn it into a rivalry: everyone competes for points while fighting the same enemy, and the online leaderboards keep score of who blew up the most. One player chases a side objective, another mows down infantry, and the mission still gets done. Usually.
Five heroes, five very different rides
You pick from five characters, and the choice matters more than the name above it. Each one drives a different vehicle with its own special ability, from a jeep with a mounted machine gun to a buggy that can call in an airstrike, and the playstyle changes a lot depending on who you take. Points earned in missions feed experience into your character, and leveling up grants upgrade points and perk slots across three skill trees: offensive, defensive and one that boosts your special ability. Two players can build the same hero in different directions, which gives a reason to replay missions with a different loadout.
Everything explodes, and it looks great doing it
This is an arcade shooter in the old sense: you drive freely around a map, one stick steering and the other aiming, and the world is full of things that go boom. Buildings collapse when you drive through them, tanks catch fire in bright, saturated explosions, and the environments shift from deserts to snow with a lot of detail packed into every level. Enemies drop pickups along the way: health, machine gun upgrades, secondary weapons like a railgun or a flamethrower. Ignore the main objective too long and a countdown starts, so the pace stays high. Missions rarely outlast a coffee break, which makes it easy to promise yourself one more go.
Can you play it solo?
Can you play it solo?
Yes. The full single player campaign is there from the start, with the same nine missions, the same five characters and the same upgrade system as co-op. It works well alone, but the game was clearly built with friends in mind: the four player online co-op and the split screen mode are the reason many people keep coming back.
How long is the campaign?
Nine missions, and most of them are short, arcade-style affairs that wrap up in minutes. A full playthrough fits into a couple of evenings. What stretches the game out is replaying missions with different characters, builds and friends, plus chasing high scores on the leaderboards.
What happens when you die?
You have a limited number of lives per mission, and losing the last one restarts that level, though any experience earned still counts. Die with lives to spare and you respawn without losing anything, but upgrades picked up during the mission are gone. It gives runs a bit of arcade tension: play carefully or start over.
