Table of Contents
Game: Operation Tango
Platforms: PlayStation 4 and 5 and PC
Genre: Side-Scrolling Adventure Game
Developer: Blast Mode
Publisher: Playism
Reviewed on PC
Operation Tango is a co-op hacking action-adventure game where you and a partner can choose to play as a Hacker or an Agent to work together to solve puzzles and complete your assigned missions together.
The tasks you are given vary depending on the character you and your partner choose. Hacker or Agent, your experiences shall be similar but varied. I preferred playing as The Hacker myself, digging into files and hacking cameras in order to help get my partner through to their next task so we could complete the mission. The Agent mostly would be down and dirty in action, running from drones, avoiding lasers, solving puzzles and looting lockers for key items.
The majority of the game’s charm comes from talking to and interacting with your partner, you can work together to attempt a flawless mission, or you two can sabotage each other at every turn just to piss each other off until you both get tired and then start taking the tasks seriously. A little bit of frustration is a guarantee, but once you and your partner figure something out and accomplish the mission, a sigh of relief washes over you as you both feel proud of overcoming the challenge.
Some of the missions require you to relay information between each other, but some of them require real-time teamwork. Some hacking minigames have your partner take over half of the controls to a task making the two of you work especially hard to complete the task without fail. These ones were the most fun to me because I didn’t have to go digging for some code to give to my partner to plug in to unlock a door. It was much more hectic and enjoyable.
A fun little detail I noticed as The Hacker is that you can even display messages on things like elevators or train car windows to help or troll your Agent partner.
The art style is appealing and cool looking, I found it to be captivating, and I feel like it definitely will help the game age well visually. I played on a decently powerful PC. However, I believe the PS5 version would look the best visually.
We played on PC together, and both have similar specifications without CPUs and GPUs. Overall performance was decent with what we played on; however, a lack of customization within the settings is a bit disappointing. I would have preferred to be able to lock the framerate somehow. Also, being able to tweak the graphics more would have been a welcomed feature. There is, however, one graphics setting you can select, which is supposed to help with performance as well as a resolution adjuster.
Overall this is a fun and ambitious co-op spy game that my partner and I definitely recommend if you enjoy co-op games with friends or family. It’s also free to PS5 PlayStation Plus members currently!
