RoboCop: Rogue City Review – Serving The Public Trust

RoboCop Rogue City might be the best action game that the hero ever appeared in. That bar isn’t tough to hurdle, but the adventure delivers plenty of thrills for fans to be excited about. It’s a narrative-driven shooter that has respect for films, a great understanding of the protagonist and lots of fun references. Unfortunately, like the franchise’s vision of Detroit, Rogue City is very rough around the edges, resulting in a flawed hero but one that’s ultimately entertaining to patrol with. 

Between the Events of RoboCop 2.The following are some examples of how to get started: 3, the titular cyborg formerly known as Alex Murphy finds himself pulled in all directions. A mysterious figure known as “The New Guy” has arrived to rally Detroit’s top gangs to wreak havoc for an unknown sinister purpose. The police department is pressed under the thumb of Omni Consumer Products’ (OCP) supremely unlikable corporate stooge Max Becker, who views RoboCop and the police as ineffective relics of the past. Myriad of smaller threads vie for RoboCop’s attention, such as a snooping journalist seeking your aid in exposing OCP secrets, therapy sessions with a doctor looking to learn what makes you tick, and a new rookie partner who’s also an OCP informant among others.

This is an enjoyable and well-crafted story that has many surprises. Rogue City, despite its 20-hour journey and several false ends with red herrings in the final act, is better than RoboCop 3 movie RoboCop 3,. It’s fun to hear actor Peter Weller reprise his role as RoboCop, and while the other performances are decent at best, the character models and animations are as robotic as RoboCop himself. The lip-syncing, which is a major problem, breaks up in many scenes and gives the impression that people are communicating through telepathy. 

Roaming the explorable police station between missions or open hubs such as downtown leads to side missions that place RoboCop in bizarre, entertaining scenarios with Detroit’s finest weirdos. Whether solving a murder on a sunscreen commercial set, clearing boombox-blasting hooligans away from a storefront, or doing the “Robot Dance” at the request of a child, you could tell me these tasks are just thinly veiled vehicles for RoboCop to deliver delightfully dopey one-liners, and I would be okay with that. Rogue City doesn’t take itself totally seriously, capturing the first film’s dark satire and the sequels’ campy goofiness that, while not always hitting the mark, manage to work in a fun way. 

You can present yourself in a choice-driven dialog as an enforcer of the law who will not compromise or as a nuanced, empathetic character. Many choices capture the drama and do-gooder of RoboCop. You can choose to back one of two morally dubious mayoral candidates, or commit illegal corporate spying for a supposedly public good. These decisions can steer the plot and the characters in a variety of ways, leading to multiple happy endings. For example, if you decide whether or no a journalist will reveal your technical problems or help an informant and drug addict find their self worth. 

In order to fight crime, you must often march down alleys and corridors in order to slay a swarm of thugs who are hurling bullets your way. Rogue City is a game that makes you feel like RoboCop. You can’t duck or take cover and don’t need to; he’s durable enough to absorb dozens of bullets, and I loved popping off headshots while confidently marching through incoming fire as targets panicked in disbelief. Some times I liked grabbing opponents and tossing them about the room. In tougher battles with more enemies and stronger artillery (which usually mean higher numbers of enemy soldiers), rationing the limited health packs was a challenge. It is most evident during the big boss fights with RoboCop enemies, who are able to wreak havoc on you due their relentless attack and fast speed. 

In addition to RoboCop’s signature sidearm, which sports unlimited ammo, the weapon arsenal is by-the-numbers and hit-and-miss in terms of the punch they pack. The automatic weapons may feel great, but shotguns or sniper rifles are nothing to compare with. A.I. enemy is also dumb as rocks. Enemy A.I. The enemies often stay in one place and go in circles, or get caught in geometry. Two motorcyclists accidentally collided during a fight. 

The action is still solid, but in an old-fashioned way. It’s all just right to have a fun time. The environments can be destroyed, which adds to the spectacle of battles. Rogue City does not deliver on polish and ambition but provides an enjoyable, even if repetitive experience of shooting goons until they explode in gory showers. 

The unique benefits that come with earning skill points for traits such as Armor, Combat, Deduction and Engineering are a great way to spice up exploration and combat. One of my favorite perk is buffing up my armor so that bullets bounce off and kill their shooters. An engineering perk let me brute force my way into safes I’d otherwise have to find combinations for. I was able to use a combat perk that allowed me make trick shots on certain surfaces, eliminating targets hidden behind cover. The various chipboards that you can use to create passive perks, by placing different nodes, while trying to avoid hitting debuffs and other obstacles, improve performance. However, reslotting the nodes in every board was a tedious task.

You can also engage in detective activities outside of combat by searching crime scenes, gathering evidence and interviewing suspects. The process is streamlined – just scan highlighted objects until RoboCop and pals make a breakthrough, like opening a new dialogue option for interrogations – but these segments are nice breaks that mix up the gameplay while highlighting the character’s less-murdery talents. 

RoboCop’s recurring glitches are a primary plot device, but technical bugs became a real hindrance for the game. Combat encounters are complicated by enemies who tend to sink into the floor or phase through walls. Some cutscenes have transitions between scenes that are pixelated, while texture pop-in is common. Audio mixing is bad, so some characters sound louder than others. It failed to recognise when I completed an objective twice, so it forced me to load a new save file and replay the entire section. In the late game, some guns would fire automatically without me pulling the trigger. This wasted ammo. 

Updates should fix these problems, as RoboCop Rogue City is a decent adventure which feels like an old-school shooter from the early 2000s. Admittedly, the license carries the game through its rougher patches; if you’re not a RoboCop fan, the adventure may feel dated or buggy compared to other shooters. Rogue City, as an homage to Alex Murphy’s tin-man in blue is not a masterpiece. But it does bring Alex Murphy back into the spotlight.