Command & Conquer: Renegade gets a playable PS Vita port

Command & Conquer: Renegade has received a playable PS Vita port, with the first public build now letting players run the game’s opening tutorial on Sony’s handheld. The project is still in development, so this isn’t the full 2002 shooter squeezed onto Vita. What’s available right now is a working version of the M00 Tutorial, complete with movement, combat and adapted handheld controls. It’s the clearest sign yet of the port moving beyond early testing and into something players can actually try. The release marks the first playable public step for a game which never received an official handheld version.

Renegade has made the jump to Vita

The current version focuses on the M00 Tutorial, which introduced players to Renegade’s controls and basic combat in the original PC release. On Vita, movement sits on the left stick and camera control uses the right. Weapons, jumping, crouching and interaction have been mapped across the handheld’s buttons, giving Renegade a control setup closer to a modern console shooter. It’s still an early release.

Players shouldn’t expect to start the campaign, spend a weekend blasting through Nod bases and finish the whole thing from a Vita memory card. This version serves as the first proper playable slice of a larger project, with more of the game still being worked on. Even so, the tutorial offers enough to show how unusual Renegade remains.

Command & Conquer from a completely different angle

Command & Conquer: Renegade arrived on PC in February 2002, developed by Westwood Studios. At the time, Command & Conquer meant strategy. You built bases. You gathered resources. You produced tanks, infantry and aircraft. Battles played out from above, with armies moving around maps under your command.

Renegade changed the perspective. Instead of commanding GDI troops from the sky, players stepped into the boots of Nick Parker, better known as Havoc, a GDI commando sent on missions against the Brotherhood of Nod. Suddenly, buildings from the strategy games had doors.

Vehicles could be driven rather than selected with a mouse. Nod soldiers appeared directly in front of you. Familiar bases became full environments, with refineries, barracks and other structures towering above the player rather than sitting neatly on a strategy map. It gave Command & Conquer a very different identity.

Havoc brought a louder style to the series

Renegade’s campaign played like a mixture of first-person shooter, vehicle action and Command & Conquer sightseeing. Havoc could use a wide range of weapons, climb into vehicles and attack Nod installations from inside their own bases. Missions moved between outdoor battlefields, underground facilities and large military compounds.

The game never tried to copy the strategy titles directly. Instead, it took familiar pieces and rebuilt them from a soldier’s perspective. A tank wasn’t a unit icon anymore. It was something parked nearby, waiting to be stolen. A base wasn’t a collection of buildings viewed from above. It was somewhere to enter, search and destroy.

Renegade had multiplayer too, with GDI and Nod teams fighting across maps built around each side’s base. Players could buy vehicles and character classes, attack enemy structures and try to cripple the opposing side’s ability to fight. For many players, multiplayer became one of Renegade’s biggest attractions.

The Vita version is still very early

Anyone hoping for a complete handheld edition will need patience. The Vita project currently gives players the tutorial rather than the full campaign, and several parts of the game still need more work before a wider release becomes realistic.

Installation isn’t as simple as buying something from the PlayStation Store either. Players need a modified PS Vita, and they need files from their own PC copy of Command & Conquer: Renegade. So this isn’t a new commercial release. It’s a fan-made version aimed at people already comfortable using homebrew software on Vita.

Renegade remains one of Command & Conquer’s strangest spin-offs

More than 20 years later, Renegade still occupies a strange place in Command & Conquer history. Westwood took one of PC gaming’s most recognisable strategy series and turned it into a shooter without abandoning the factions, units and buildings players already recognised.

Now, part of that experiment is running on a handheld released almost a decade later. The Vita version has a long way to go before it can offer the complete game, but the opening tutorial is playable, the controls have been adapted for Sony’s handheld, and the first public build gives players a clear idea of where the project is heading.

For now, it’s a small slice of Renegade on Vita. For anyone curious about Command & Conquer’s unusual shooter spin-off, the new Vita build offers a first chance to see how the game translates to Sony’s handheld.

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