A twin stick shooter for XBLA/PSN? Doesn't sound like my kind of game, yet..after a mere twenty minute demo, I feel such a draw to come back and play the full game. Renegade Ops is made by the same guys that made the Just Cause series,  the newly formed Avalanche Studios, and it you can really tell it was made by the same guys. The environment, although top down and not third person, are lush tropical areas with destructible buildings and massive explosions. You can choose from four different characters, but not in the demo, and each character has a different type of car, each of which has it's own special abilities. The first thing that threw me off was the map, mainly because there was one and that's pretty odd for a arcade style overhead twin stick shooter. If someone is unaware of what I mean when I say twin stick shooter, let me attempt to explain. Twin stick shooters are games that put you in control of one person, or vehicle, and you mainly control it with two joysticks, like most consoles controllers. There doesn't really seem to be a real definition of this genre anywhere, but that's the best I got. Anyways, all of you have in Renegade Ops is your two joysticks and then one button for rockets and one button for your special, so it's a pretty minimal control scheme.

The demo/trial has you playing the first mission, a tropical island that is being invaded by the main evil villains army, yeah the story isn't too important, but it does take on a tone of old action movies or games, like G.I. Joe. The first level gives you a large island to explore while you complete secondary and primary objectives, some of which are timed, but mostly you can just drive around blowing up enemies and saving civilians.  By killing enemies you regain health, upgrade your weapons and get experience. You actually do level in this game and each time you level up you get a new upgrade, but you don't get to mess around with upgrades at all in the demo. Right at the end of the demo you get to fly a helicopter for about five seconds, which looked equally fun, but instead of me having a good time they faded the screen to black and made me sad. This game is silly, addicting, has some slick controls and is pleasingly difficult, but really enjoyable and even more fun if you have other people to play with you. It does have a cooperative mode, which goes through the missions, with split screen and online. If you have a few minutes, give this game a try, the demo is short and small in size. It is available on PSN and XBLA right now, with the PC version coming later in 2011. Thanks for reading.



-Written by Sean Cargle