Avalanche Go To The Arcades: Renegade Ops

RENEGADE OPS! That's how I'm going to be pronouncing that game's name. Shouted, every time. It's a name that needs bellowing. But before you put on your haughty trousers, there's likely to be a touch of irony about such a bombastic name, since this is coming from Just Cause developers, Avalanche. It's described as a "twin stick vehicle shooter", according to Eurogamer, planned to be released as a download-only, arcade-style, top-down shoot-them-up. Phew.

It's something that seems to have been born of mucking around, which is absolutely the right way of things. Avalanche's Andreas Thorsén expained to EG,

"We were finishing up Just Cause 2 and playing around with the engine and we thought, what would happen if we moved the camera up a bit to a top-down perspective? We tried that and realised, wow, this is going to be an awesome game we want to play ourselves. We started creating a concept around that and at the same time we found out SEGA wanted to do something similar. So we did this."

He continues the theme in the game's press release,

"The IP is all about driving or flying around blowing stuff up while playing with your friends and that to us, is a dream-project."

There's plans for a single-player campaign, which will apparently be "quite big", along with local split-screen two-player, and online multiplayer for up to four people in what they're calling "competitive co-op". Here's the hype-o-guff about that:

"Renegade Ops puts players in a mobile commando unit sent behind enemy lines to defeat Inferno, a madman intent on global domination. Defeat enemies across a range of stunning environments using a wide variety of vehicles, from dispersing electromagnetic shock waves to the deployment of a huge Gatling gun armed to the teeth. Players have the choice to fight alone in single player mode, team up offline with two-player split screen or join the dynamic 4-player online co-op experience. Blast your way through enemy lines by working together, or compete for achievements as you and your friends aim to top the online leader boards."

The retro indulgence continues when they name their inspirations. Eurogamer says that "Renegade Ops takes its cues in this regard from Konami's 1983 cult classic Jackal, and 1993 hits Cannon Fodder and Jungle Strike."

ROPS!, as everyone will soon be calling it, is expecting in Autumn, and represents Sega's foray into the world of downloading.