Preview: Renegade Ops Launch Event - Hands on

Just the other day, Sega held their launch event for their latest title, Renegade Ops upon the mighty HMS Belfast on the London pier, while the venue indeed was impressive it only added fire to my excitement even more as I boarded and headed for the room where all the consoles were set up.
See a highlight video from the event!


The room itself was filled with Xbox 360 stands and lots of gaming site/ magazine people mingling and just having a good time. In the corner however was the was an expert artist who was elegantly body painting army camo on to a model live! Pictures were taken, drinks were drunk and jokes were made about the funny hat they were offering us to wear but enough about that and more about the game itself.

In a nutshell Renegade Ops is a dual stick, top down arcade style shooter which actually plays smoothly and dare I say it, it is most likely the best dual stick game out there! Control wise it’s actually pretty easy to just pick up and play and for its genre, graphics are pretty detailed which gives the game an incredible amount of eye candy from the impressive explosions to crossing the dangerous sea it really improves on the old school arcade look.

So yeah... their playing Renegade Ops.

One other notable game being Super Stardust HD however one area that Renegade Ops comes out on top is the actual longevity of its levels. I only managed to go through the 1st mission but even that in itself seem to become a task that took more than a mere 10 minutes as games would commonly do, this may be due to the actual missions themselves and the continuous back and forth job of picking up prisoners but it is something that makes it pretty appealing for its genre.

Now getting to grips with it is pretty simple as most of the time you are either saving prisoners or stopping the opposing forces from harming those prisoners who for some reason found that the local church is the best place for them to hideout. At the beginning you are required to pick a character, each with their own unique abilities that will cater to your play style. Even though I did try choosing a different character, the game still started exactly the same way which to me kind of makes the choice of choosing in the first place irrelevant.

Blow @%**$ up! Yeah!!

The game is split up into side missions plus the actual main missions, which are indicated by a red arrow and sometimes require you to complete them before time runs out. What I found really appealing was the game’s open world; it offered a lot of freedom in terms of how you manage to get yourself to the spot where the mission begins as most of the time I found myself never using the main roads instead taking a short cut through the farm land or jumping off the edge of a cliff while performing a slick looking barrel roll.

The Multiplayer was fun and enjoyable as the game made use of sending you on objectives that you and your friend could complete together but also sending you off on separate tasks at the same time. Once a mission was completed, you had the option to upgrade the character you were using in the form of more fire power or better health options.

Ha! Who said we had to be in the same place at the same time.

The day ended with a competition to see who can get the highest score. The winner was awarded a cool canvas bearing artwork from the game which I have to say was pretty huge! No wonder they said they would send it to the winner. Renegade Ops does look to be a game to purchase, easy controls, upgrades, awesome graphics and a fun Multiplayer.

For more info on Renegade Ops, follow this link - http://bit.ly/renegade-ops