14 DAY TRIAL // 
Just as Judge Dredd, Batman or Hellboy, one of the iconic figures of pop culture remains Robocop. But the similarities continue with each of these figures getting their own videogame adaptation. Though the quality varies across the board, somehow the games centered around these heroes manage to capture the essence of their universe and translate it into a great atmosphere. But is there more to Robocop Rogue City than the shiny outer shell?
After dusting off Rambo and shipping Terminator Resistance, the polish guys from Teyon took aim at another legend from the VHS era. The result is Robocop Rogue City, that is a mixed cat of bags with both good and bad, that feels just like an old videotape: flawed, but with its own indubitable charm.
Playing Robocop Rogue City is like having a meal at your favorite fast-food place: you feel a little bad because you know there are better options for you out there, you will notice at every step the shortcomings, yet you don’t care and you don’t want to stop. Despite the nagging feeling that the graphics are not always the best, despite the voice sync being worse than an 80’s bootleg tape, and the dialogues being quirkier than any uncle jokes.
It is hard to believe that the developers did not notice all the big issues like the framerate drastically dropping through the cutscenes, the terrible dialogue and even worse lip-sync, all the clipping issues and many more glitches when they were to thorough as to create a very real extension cord clutter under the desk of sergeant Reed.
And this duality is omnipresent throughout the entire game, leading us to believe that we deal with yet again the release of an unfinished game, that was built on good intentions and had a lot of potential, but was released prematurely.
The story of Robocop Rogue City picks up the events after the first two movies, but before the third part. The setting remains unchanged: Detroit swallowed by the OCP trying really hard to turn it into Delta City, poverty ridden streets overflowing with a deadly drug called Nuke, and a police force heavily outgunned and outnumbered. In the middle of this we find what remains of Alex Murphy, along with the most memorable characters from the movies such as Anne Lewis or Warren Reed.
Extra kudos for the developers bringing back Peter Weller to voice Robocop. During the around 20-hour long campaign a big part of the corny, yet charming atmosphere is due to his performance - despite the often not very smart script. The story itself revolves around the same ideas as did the movies, such as corruption, politics, personal loss, tossing in the same identity issues Murphy needed to deal with as transitioning from police officer into cyborg.
The game space is limited to a handful of levels, but the story unfolds seeing our tin can officer revisiting the locations built in a maze-like structure. Being a good officer, although most of the time Robocop will be busy tearing to pieces everything that moves, he still finds some time to hand out tickets for parking violations, arrest people for causing public disorder or issue verbal warning for dumping trash in the streets. These bits serve not just as comic relief, but also a welcome respite from the nonstop mindless shooting.
Because as much fun as the action is in the beginning, due to the limited AI, the extremely small variety of weapons and enemy types, and even the shootout contests with OCP SWAT teams or ED robots it becomes somewhat tiring. After a point the shooting in Robocop feels like a bit stale, and things are not improved by the skill tree or the clanky weapon upgrade system. They feel like unfinished elements, tossed together at the last minute, lacking the polish they would have deserved.
The controls are not very tight either and this is not caused just by the fact that you are controlling a walking tank. Sure, we can understand the tradeoff for the fact that Robo can take quite a lot of punishment and by gathering XP you can invest in skills that further his survival abilities, such as him not being able to jump or to run very fast.
But climbing ladders is quite clunky due to the game design, and even with upgrades to Auto 9, most weapons feel like garden sprinklers, that maim or decapitate everything at close distance. Also, the adaptive triggers feature on the PS5 is still not working.
The graphics themselves suffer from the same duality as the entire game: some of the environments can look convincing, especially at night on the streets, but the character design is just awful. The interiors are bland even for the Robocop universe, due to the limited number of environmental items being reused in all locations. The lip-sync is almost nonexistent, as well as the visual effects would tie everything together.
The dialogues can’t be saved by the voice acting, and though you can hear the news of music coming from TVs, with the exception of cutscenes and CC TVs, all the displays will be black. The second half of the game presents mixing issues as well, the sound being affected by static and other errors.
The Good
- Incredibly engaging atmosphere
- Nostalgia inducing nods to the movies
- Destroyable environments
The Bad
- Awful lip-sync
- Unfinished/rushed game mechanics
- Repetitive design on all levels
Conclusion
With enough time to implement, polish and test the gameplay mechanics, the game would not be remarkable thanks to the powerful atmosphere, but it would also be like a VHS action movie: quirky, yet unbelievably entertaining. As it stands today, it needs a lot of patch work just to iron out the glitches.
Review key provided by the publisher.
