twin stick shooter

Renegade Ops was developed by Avalanche Studios and published by SEGA. It was released on September 14, 2011 and retails for 1200 MSP.  A copy of the game was provided for review purposes.

Avalanche Studios have quickly become known for over the top action, the Just Cause games allowing players to perform the craziest action movie stunts. Who hasn’t wanted to ride a motorbike off a cliff, open a parachute and glide to safety? No one, exactly. With Renegade Ops Avalanche have brought their brand of over the top action to Xbox Live Arcade in the form of a twin stick shooter. Admittedly it’s not quite as extreme as Just Cause but it easily manages to be just as fun.

You play one of four members of the Renegade Squad, a group setup by the disillusioned General Bryant to bring down the maniacal supervillian Inferno. Each character has a unique special ability to go with their personal vehicle, all of which are equipped with a roof mounted machine gun. Armand has an APC with a shield ability which brings down tough armor plating making him impervious to enemy fire. Diz drives an armored truck which comes with an EMP that can disable enemy weapons. Roxy rides in an especially bouncy buggy and can call down a devastating air strike. Gunnar jumps around in a jeep which has a heavy gun that inflicts way more damage than his regular machine gun, he can’t move while using it though.

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Seizonrenda was developed by Inland Studios. It was released October 30, 2010 and retails for 80 MSP. A copy of the game was provided for review purposes.

Seizonrenda is a twin stick shooter taking place on a barren moon. The goal of the game is to survive and score points. Waves of floating asteroids and sentient enemies continually fall to the moon in increasingly complex patterns. The action is fast and gets complicated quickly as more and more enemies pile onto the screen.

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We got the chance to play Renegade Ops at the Sega Arcade down at San Diego Comic Con and we have to say the game is looking fantastic. Developed using the same engine as Just Cause 2 Avalanche Studios’ Renegade Ops is a twin stick shooter involving a black ops team specialized in vehicular combat–their goal: stop the terrorist agenda of Madman Inferno. Players take control of one of four different operatives each with their own vehicle and special ability. Players can join up alongside a buddy locally or up to three other players online.

A dynamic mission system gives players primary and secondary objectives to score points and advance the story which is voiced over entirely and accompanied by crisp comic-styled panels. Players compete competitively for points and cooperatively for mission completion all while  completing objectives in the most over-the-top, explosive way possible. Renegade Ops came about when Just Cause 2 developers turned the camera top-down and started messing around with the vehicles, so expect all the same fun with explosions, action and chaos. Read More

Alpha Squad was released January 12, 2011. It was developed by DragonDivide and retails for 240MSP. A copy of the game was provided by the developer for review purposes.

The Indie Games section of the Xbox dashboard is filled with twin stick shooters. It takes something special to make one of them stand out above the others. Alpha Squad by DragonDivide attempts to differentiate itself with impressive art, beautiful in-game lighting and other gameplay mechanics. But does it succeed in rising above the sea of competition?

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Where there’s Treasure, gunfire is never far off, Or in this case: missile fire. Watch as thousands of rockets are launched in this trailer for a madman’s bullet hell dream known as Bangai-O HD: Missile Fury. It looks as if this mind blowing shooter will launch sometime in the spring. Until then watch the trailer below, scope out the new screens, and consider picking up a copy of Bangai-O Spirits on DS.

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The following article is based around an email interview conducted by our team with Naked Sky’s CTO Joshua Glazer. Naked Sky is also known for their previous XBLA title RoboBlitz, which was released back in November 2006z.

Microbot is a twin stick shooter that lets the player battle malicious viruses and diseases as a microscopic nanotech robot injected into someone’s bloodstream. As players travel travel through veins, bones, lungs and other organs, they can collected data fragments that allows them to customize their microbot with powerful weapons, defensive systems, movement parts, and special abilities. What got yours truly’s blood pumping about this title, is the planned cooperative drop-in/drop-out mode.
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