Renegade Ops

Renegade Ops, by Avalanche Studios and published by Sega, arrived in my Steam game collection over Christmas thanks to a friend.  Although Tim had already picked this up on the 360, the game has four player co-op, so having it on the PC as well was no bad thing!

While the Great Gift Pile objective list was up over Christmas, we had a quick go at it, with the aim of killing Santa and collecting one of his presents.. and although we discovered that the present only drops for one player, we had a lot of fun destroying things!

If your vehicle gets turned over, the game resets your position without taking up one of your lives.  This was just as well, because we crashed into each other a lot while slipping on the ice or even just trying to overtake each other.

We decided we should play the game properly..  though, that said.. we ended up playing the Coldstrike DLC before the original storyline.

The game has a choice of characters to play as: I played as Steam-exclusive Gordon Freeman, with the ability to summon a pack of Antlions.  During the chase for the objective, I had unlocked some upgrades which meant their deaths would spawn a health pack, or repair kit, depending on how you look at it 😉

As well as Antlion-related upgrades, I had the two other skill trees common to all characters: a defensive tree with upgrades to add extra lives, auto-repair and so on, and an offensive tree, with upgrades focused on improving weaponry.  I took a balance between the two trees as with friends, the game isn’t too hard and we were there to have fun!

For my secondary weapon, I found the Rocket Launcher and Flamer the easiest to use, with the Rail Gun less easy as you had to keep aiming at the target while charging, and I didn’t want to sit still.  I also continued the theme of crashing into everything as we went along, with plenty of smaller enemies and buildings being destroyed this way!

I really loved the sections of the game where we were given helicopters to control..

There was a little niggle in that we weren’t able to fly up and over certain obstacles, and had to go round.. but otherwise these were easy to fly, which meant I was able to focus on the destruction 🙂

The game is easy to play, though that coupled with playing in co-op meant more silliness and therefore more deaths.  Definitely a fun game, though!

Merry Christmas 2011!

Finally finished with work.. and the Christmas shopping.. time for games!

Well, time for finishing off a Christmas and pony related drawing for a friend, and attempting some of the Great Gift Pile objectives on Steam!  A fairly straightforward objective was to find an Xmas present in any multiplayer level of PAYDAY: The Heist.  In the First World Bank, the presents were waiting in the vault with the money 🙂

We also noticed new “beef” masks had been added to the game.. so here’s a friendly Tyrannosaurus with a gun! 😀

More games..

A friend bought us Renegade Ops, an action game by Avalanche Studios, featuring top-down driving destruction.. there’s 4-player co-op, so I can crash into my friends while I destroy things 😉

I took up an offer a while back for a different Christmas bundle; the Intermediaware Christmas bundle which also came with copies for friends too.  This pack contained eight games from Intermediaware.. shooters: Absolute Blue, Impact and Defense of Yano, puzzle games.. Captain Backwater, Temple of Tangram, Psychoballs and Atom Antics, and turn-based board game Kabama, for one or two players.  This bundle arrived by email as promised, on Christmas Eve!

I also won another game.. 11 Bit Studios‘ action-strategy Anomaly: Warzone Earth, from Day 5 of Splitkick.com’s Holiday Giveaway!