Signal Ops is a 2013 First-Person Shooter Stealth-Based Game, created bySpace Bullet Dynamics Corporation and released for PC through Steam and GOG.com.
The player takes the role of an Officer 2059 assigned to Signal Operations Facility 7C who controls various agents through TV Screens as they accomplish missions of no moral dubiousness for the Dark Father.
The game can essentially be considered a first person version of Commandos.
The game is notable for how you can see the perspective of every deployed Agent at once via your televisions as well as how you have to keep a radio charged in the field in order to actually see what they're doing.
This Video Game contains the following tropes:
- Action-Based Mission: Mission 6 has you defending a parade while hordes of enemies try to stop them, notably you're given 15 reinforcements instead of the usual 10 for this mission.
- The finale involves you defending the base while it's underattack by the military complete with facing off against tanks!
- Almighty Janitor: The base has a literal janitor who gives you some hints when talked to and he's the final agent who saves you in the finale.
- Artificial Limbs: Officer 0259 has both a hook hand and a peg leg.
- Badass Bystander: It's rare but certain civilians are armed and will attack your agents upon breaking into the buildings they are in.
- Beneath Notice: The Spy is just a harmless old man so enemies will never attack him, even if the rest of the squad are in a gun fight they'll just assume he's an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire.
- Communications Officer: Bolt is this as he carries the radio that the squad needs to broadcast to your televisions.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: During the Parade mission, enemies are shooting from windows with cloth coverings that completely stop your bullets but they can shoot through easily, not even sniper rifles can take them out meaning you have to storm the buildings to fight them directly.
- Diegetic Interface: Every HUD element is part of the televisions you use to interact with your squad, the map is presented as the officer looking at his clipboard and the main menu/pause menu is presented as the view inside of a camera inside the bunker looking at the officer.
- Difficulty Levels: An unusual case as the difficulty levels added by patches do not actually effect stealth or combat and instead effect the game's radio mechanics:
- Hard: The original difficulty, if the radio dies you completely lose the ability to see what your agents are doing and need to order Bolt to retreat to the last used powersource .
- Normal: Radio coverage is now permanent, you still need it charged to enter new areas but you can still get a signal instead where you've already been if it dies.
- Easy: You have permanent coverage over the entire map from the start essentially making the Radio redundant.
- Doesn't Like Guns: The Spy refuses to use weapons and can't even hold up enemies meaning he's purely for recon/distractions.
- Easy Communication: Averted as you need to keep your troops in your radio range to be able to actually see what they're doing, if the radio runs out or they somehow are no longer in it's range, your screen will become completely static and you'll have to press a button to have them retreat to the radio/last used charging station. (You can still control Agents who's screens are fully static but this is difficult for obvious reasons.)
- Elite Mooks: There is a heavily armored version of the military soldier, notably their armor enables them to survive sniper headshots and melee attacks which are normally one-hit kills.
- 11th-Hour Ranger: The base's janitor becomes the final playable agent for the finale.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Since you're operating secretly, even the police and military will attack you in addition to the rebels you are operating against and you'll even occasionally encounter hostile civilians. though it turns out the military and rebels are working together and in the end, even your own side start shooting at you in the finale.
- Guide Dang It!: Sometimes unique gimmicks for certain missions aren't exactly obvious:
- When trying to find the Thief's location, you have to "climb" over a bed to reach a window, this is the only part in the game where you have to "climb" over an object that isn't an obvious ramp.
- The Escort Car in the band mission is completely indestructible unlike every other car in the game, so trying to defend it aggressively is a bad idea, you can leave it to get shot at.
- In Mission 8, you need to not only operate agents indirectly (by giving them orders from other agents) but you need to use forklifts which never appeared before to lift crates out of the way.
- The Tank in the final mission needs two of Demo's bombs to destroy, considering how you can only make one at a time and how quickly it blows up the base's door, if you take long enough for the tank to spawn then it's basically game over unless you know ahead of time to place bombs in it's path.
- The Janitor has to interact with buttons that look like alarm switches in order to finish the final mission which the player likely assumes they shouldn't touch at all like the rest of the game, while you did use these earlier in the game, it was only for tutorial missions at the start while the rest of the game has had them be alarm switches that shouldn't be used unless you want more enemies attacking you.
- Infinite Supplies: All agents have infinite reserve ammunition for their weapons.
- Hook Hand: Officer 0259 has a hook replacing his left hand.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The member of the Church who takes over giving you missions after giving you bonus missions dies because he didn't tell the guards that he should be excluded from the "Shoot anyone who tries to leave the control room" order.
- Master of Unlocking: Wrench can unlock any door and unusually can even lock them to slow down enemies.
- Non-Standard Game Over: Present in the finale of the game where if you fail to defend the base or if the Janitor dies, you'll be told to "Eat your lead quota to restart the mission" and military soldiers will storm the control room with the mission restarting after the officer is gunned down.
- Ominous Multiple Screens: How you control your agents.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: The various agents are only known by their nicknames.
- Scatterbrained Senior: Some of the Spy's dialogue makes it clear he's this, to the point of not remembering how to operate firearms.
- Seadog Peg Leg: He's no pirate but Officer 0259 has a metal left peg leg.
- Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: The military and rebel enemies will attack each other if they meet.
- Shear Menace: The Demo carries a pair of scissors as his melee weapon.
- Static Stun Gun: Bolt's Powerfinder device which can detect power sources for the radio doubles as a stun gun he can use to shock enemies.
- We Have Reserves: You have 10 reinforcements per mission that can be deployed after an agent is killed to replace them.
- Wrench Whack: The titular Wrench carries a Wrench that he can use to beat down foes with some hostile civilians in the second mission use the Wrench as well as the Janitor.
