Review
Played on: Xbox 360
Released: 2003 (Xbox)“Does anyone remember the Splinter Cell style game where you play as a soccer mom?” is literally the tweet that acquainted me to Rogue Ops. A long-forgotten stealth-based, action-adventure in the vein of both Splinter Cell and Perfect Dark, check out my review on the latter here.
After checking out a few gameplay clips, I decided to give Rogue Ops a go. I still don’t entirely know what made me do it, but I’ve always been weak for a third person, action game with a kick-ass female lead.
Rogue Ops was released on all platforms during the sixth generation of consoles. PS2, GameCube and Xbox, with the latter being the visually strongest of them. Luckily, it’s one of the original Xbox titles that’s backwards compatible on the Xbox 360. All I needed to do was to dust off my Xbox 360 Slim and order a copy on eBay.
Sure enough, I wasn’t expecting much. This is after all, a budget title made by the unknown developers Bits Studios and published by Kemco, known for budget titles. However, during the initial training level, which stealth-based title doesn’t have one, I was pleasantly surprised to how well it controlled and easily it played. My interest peaked and I continued to the next, proper mission level.
Low and behold, it pulled me in and I ended up completing the whole thing in a few evenings, hitting roughly the ten-hour completion mark. I was really enjoying myself and needed a light-hearted approach to the stealth genre, with a little Perfect Dark femme fatale mixed in with gadgets, traps and weapons from the not so distant future!
Nikki Conners is the, typically late 90s sexualized, star of the show. She loses both her husband and child in a car bomb attack and swears revenge on the killers. She’s recruited into Phoenix, a counterterrorist group. Sending her on worldwide locations to hunt down a brutal terrorist organisation named Omega 19. She's literally a soccer mom hell bent on revenge.
In classic secret agent fashion, Nikki ends up in various countries and settings. Spanning from warm Spain to icy Russia. Each mission is usually divided into 2-3 levels. They work as one massive mission, the levels are divided by loading. Although focusing mainly on indoors areas, there’s a lot of concrete bunkers and warehouses of course, the levels feel fairly large and detailed for their era. Containing a lot of room detail, traps, surveillance equipment and terrorists to take down, albeit lacking the interactivity that Splinter Cell has.
Gameplay is what first pulled me in, as Nikki manoeuvres quite elegantly. She’ll run or walk depending on the joystick forward motion, while backwards and sideways will interestingly sidestep her in a quiet, but elegantly animated manner, perfect for the stealth focus. Walking lowered will have Nikki being able to hide more easily, be it behind boxes, under tables or in shadows.
Rogue Ops was released on all platforms during the sixth generation of consoles. PS2, GameCube and Xbox, with the latter being the visually strongest of them. Luckily, it’s one of the original Xbox titles that’s backwards compatible on the Xbox 360. All I needed to do was to dust off my Xbox 360 Slim and order a copy on eBay.
Sure enough, I wasn’t expecting much. This is after all, a budget title made by the unknown developers Bits Studios and published by Kemco, known for budget titles. However, during the initial training level, which stealth-based title doesn’t have one, I was pleasantly surprised to how well it controlled and easily it played. My interest peaked and I continued to the next, proper mission level.
Low and behold, it pulled me in and I ended up completing the whole thing in a few evenings, hitting roughly the ten-hour completion mark. I was really enjoying myself and needed a light-hearted approach to the stealth genre, with a little Perfect Dark femme fatale mixed in with gadgets, traps and weapons from the not so distant future!
Nikki Conners is the, typically late 90s sexualized, star of the show. She loses both her husband and child in a car bomb attack and swears revenge on the killers. She’s recruited into Phoenix, a counterterrorist group. Sending her on worldwide locations to hunt down a brutal terrorist organisation named Omega 19. She's literally a soccer mom hell bent on revenge.
In classic secret agent fashion, Nikki ends up in various countries and settings. Spanning from warm Spain to icy Russia. Each mission is usually divided into 2-3 levels. They work as one massive mission, the levels are divided by loading. Although focusing mainly on indoors areas, there’s a lot of concrete bunkers and warehouses of course, the levels feel fairly large and detailed for their era. Containing a lot of room detail, traps, surveillance equipment and terrorists to take down, albeit lacking the interactivity that Splinter Cell has.
Gameplay is what first pulled me in, as Nikki manoeuvres quite elegantly. She’ll run or walk depending on the joystick forward motion, while backwards and sideways will interestingly sidestep her in a quiet, but elegantly animated manner, perfect for the stealth focus. Walking lowered will have Nikki being able to hide more easily, be it behind boxes, under tables or in shadows.
However, it seems like the slow and stupid enemy A.I. rarely sees beyond a certain cone of sight. Allowing me to blatantly cross their path far ahead, clearly visible, but going unnoticed.
Pulling a gun while crouching will have Nikki straighten her back in a fire ready position, with a cheap butt focused camera, however I found this aiming pleasantly good to get a heightened view of where to shoot and a steady aim. Gunplay works satisfyingly fine too, with a strong focus on pistols. Aim control allows you to get in precise shots from afar, thanks to being able to zoom in with the nudge of the right analogue stick.
Pulling a gun while crouching will have Nikki straighten her back in a fire ready position, with a cheap butt focused camera, however I found this aiming pleasantly good to get a heightened view of where to shoot and a steady aim. Gunplay works satisfyingly fine too, with a strong focus on pistols. Aim control allows you to get in precise shots from afar, thanks to being able to zoom in with the nudge of the right analogue stick.
That said, close combat is terrible. it can only activated when you creep up behind someone that's unaware, resulting in a quick time event to kill them off. You can’t fight someone by melee otherwise, screwing you over when enemies rush you or you're out of ammo. Be sure to keep your distance, move slowly forward, take out everyone from afar and remember to search bodies for extra ammo.
Nikki also has a few gadgets at her disposal: her sunglasses have a, visually cool looking, infrared x-ray filter to spot traps and lasers. She also has a retinal scanner scope, a small robot insect that can fly into small cable ways and even a slow motion injector, allowing you a short burst of, typical 2000s decade, slow motion.
She also can enter air ducts, hang from ledges, push boxes and pull herself up with a grapple hook. Opening up different solutions to traverse each level, yet there always seems to be a certain path, with fewer choices compared to Splinter Cell.
Nikki also has a few gadgets at her disposal: her sunglasses have a, visually cool looking, infrared x-ray filter to spot traps and lasers. She also has a retinal scanner scope, a small robot insect that can fly into small cable ways and even a slow motion injector, allowing you a short burst of, typical 2000s decade, slow motion.
She also can enter air ducts, hang from ledges, push boxes and pull herself up with a grapple hook. Opening up different solutions to traverse each level, yet there always seems to be a certain path, with fewer choices compared to Splinter Cell.
Herein lies a sort of strength though, it’s never overly complicated, while at the same time offers enough variation to each level. It is a light stealth game at it's core, focusing more on action and ease of tactics. Combined with the solid gunplay, I had a lot of fun sneaking about, shooting cameras, avoiding detection and killing off stupid enemies easily.
The voice acting has a typical 2000 feel and are quite bad, although I can’t help smiling at Nikki's extremely aggressive and ruthless attitude to everyone, killing off one bad guy after another. Cutscenes look basic and mostly just introduce each level's mission objective. Story is simplistic and ends on a ridiculous note, but it works fine considering its budget and release era.
They’ve done a solid job visually, albeit with a bit of framerate fluctuation, it stands out as a good looking release for its time and elegantly mixes typical Splinter Cell locations and high tech environments reminiscent of Perfect Dark. It goes to show, that putting in a fair bit of work back in this era, allowed you to stand out from the crowd. It was varied enough visually to not roll my eyes, with fairly little use of repetition. Most levels are quite standard secret agent game levels though.
Overall, I found Rogue Ops to be Splinter Cell light, with much less difficult gameplay, with a lot of Perfect Dark influence too. It doesn't take itself too seriously and allows the player a lot of room for error in completing their tasks. It balances action and sneaking well, focusing mostly on gameplay versus plot.
I’m surprised to end up recommending Rogue Ops, there were quite a few stealth-based action-adventures in the 2000s, but it’s entertaining, visually well done and has solid enough gameplay to be a welcome alternative to play compared to more famous secret agent and stealth titles of its era.
The voice acting has a typical 2000 feel and are quite bad, although I can’t help smiling at Nikki's extremely aggressive and ruthless attitude to everyone, killing off one bad guy after another. Cutscenes look basic and mostly just introduce each level's mission objective. Story is simplistic and ends on a ridiculous note, but it works fine considering its budget and release era.
They’ve done a solid job visually, albeit with a bit of framerate fluctuation, it stands out as a good looking release for its time and elegantly mixes typical Splinter Cell locations and high tech environments reminiscent of Perfect Dark. It goes to show, that putting in a fair bit of work back in this era, allowed you to stand out from the crowd. It was varied enough visually to not roll my eyes, with fairly little use of repetition. Most levels are quite standard secret agent game levels though.
Overall, I found Rogue Ops to be Splinter Cell light, with much less difficult gameplay, with a lot of Perfect Dark influence too. It doesn't take itself too seriously and allows the player a lot of room for error in completing their tasks. It balances action and sneaking well, focusing mostly on gameplay versus plot.
I’m surprised to end up recommending Rogue Ops, there were quite a few stealth-based action-adventures in the 2000s, but it’s entertaining, visually well done and has solid enough gameplay to be a welcome alternative to play compared to more famous secret agent and stealth titles of its era.
