holoz0r's A-Z of Steam: Command & Conquer: Renegade

If you're as old as me, and you're a PC gamer, you've probably played something from the Command and Conquer series. But have you played Renegade? Unlike almost every other game in the series, which is a real time strategy title, Renegade is a first person shooter.

Well, not entirely a first person shooter, because you get to jump into vehicles as well as roam about on foot; and those sequences are rendered in the third person.

This game was released in 2002, making it over twenty years old at the time of my writing this review. A lot has changed in gaming in twenty years, but Renegade still feels modern.

I had no problems running the Steam version of the game on Linux, I have no idea about Windows Compatibility, but the game ran smoothly, without any crashes.

This is truly an old school game. It is mostly scripted events, linear, and suffers a little from that age, and the rigid structure. Animation on units in the battlefield is a bit rough, but there's rudimentary lip sync. The character models are also THICCC, in the sense that these characters have real bulk, which you would expect, for hardened war-people.

Like many strategy games, the objectives on offer in this shooter are not very varied. Each level tends to have a "go here, kill them, blow that up", sort of structure, with different vehicle sequences thrown into the mix for a bit of variety.

Enemy intelligence is also lacking for games of that era, compared to things like Half-Life.

There are also a lot of elements of Commmand and Conquer's rich lore deposited all over the levels of the game. In an early mission, you are rescuing some prisoners from a concentration camp like structure, and you can destroy the projector that is feeding them their "retraining" material, prior to freeing them. That training material is broadcast for you to hear, and serves to make the game more immersive.

I am fairly sure that there are better games to play in the present day, but I don't know that there are games that have such a comedic, self aware tutorial.

You're shot by an officer explaining how armour and health works. You get healed. She shoots you again to demonstrate, just in case you missed the point. Probably a war crime, but hilarious, and so very offbeat and in universe for Command and Conquer.

Renegade is a fun little relic of the past, if you like old-school shooters, with all the awkwardness that comes with them.