Growing up as a kid I grew very fond of films from the 80’s. One of which, I may have watched a bit too young of age, but I relished in how cool and violent it was. That film is of course 1987’s “RoboCop.” It wasn’t until I got older, I started to realize this wasn’t just a standard violent action sci-fi, but also a very comedic satire, especially towards capitalism. While the sequels, tv shows, and remake were fine for what they were, nothing quite lived up to the original… Until now! “RoboCop: Rogue City” is a game created by fans and treated with the love and respect the IP deserves. Developed by Teyon, most notable for their previous work on a game starring a different cyborg in “Terminator: Resistance,” which was a fairly decent little game when I checked it out back in 2020. It’s been over twenty years since a RoboCop game has come out, and that one just wasn’t what it needed to be, but with “Rogue City,” there’s a lot I want to talk about.
As it should, the game starts off with satirical news coverage and then leading into a hostage situation that our boy Officer Murphy takes to the scene. Officer Lewis is also in this game which was great to see, [spoilers] seeing as she died in the third film, I’d have to guess this game takes place some time after the second movie, but before the third. It was with my first footsteps, those very sudden but floor shaking footsteps, I knew this was going to be special. The franchise is known for its hyper violence and the developers took that to heart, because the first time I drew my handgun and open fired to witness a thug just burst into a bloody mess, the smile on my face was growing from ear to ear. So much about this game brought back so many nostalgic bits that I was just eating up, there was always something that was continuing to expand my level of impression. When I shot an enemy in the crotch area and a trophy popped, which sounds gross (because it is), it’s also a fun little love letter to the first game.
What “RoboCop: Rogue City” does best, besides proving its love of the original film (and why that film is great) is that it never forgets that it’s supposed to be a fun video game. They take the satire to another level to the absolute absurd and make it obvious to the player that it knows what it is and just come along this crazy journey and have some fun. So, I did! I grabbed many enemies by their necks only to throw them directly at other enemies which they will then accidentally cause some sort of explosion by accident and hurt even more enemies. While RoboCop is a cop always searching for justice and scanning crime scenes with his special vision, at the end of the day the best way to solve all these crimes is just to shoot first and ask questions later. To my surprise, this game offers more than just levels of a game you need to complete, but there are also side missions you can complete by just walking around the city and helping civilians with miscellaneous crimes/issues going on. I even wrote a ticket for an illegally parked car, because well, I’m a cop and that’s what should be done.
I know I’ve been overly positive as of late about this game, but does that make it perfect? No, absolutely not. There are things that didn’t fully work for me, such as a mechanic I didn’t expect to see in this game, but we have an RPG mechanic. At the end of each big mission, you go back to the police headquarters and you are given an evaluation on how you did, which will give you a certain amount of XP. If you don’t scan certain items to piece together the crime or don’t save all the hostages, you lose possible XP you could have earned. All this XP is used to unlock talents in a talent tree, which you can use to improve things like Robo’s armor, combat, scanning, deduction, and more. Which unfortunately tells me that you don’t start the game as the best version of RoboCop that RoboCop can be. I suppose that’s not an awful thing, but this is a level of complexity that this bonkers game didn’t really need to fully enjoy. A slightly better element was throughout my playthrough I’d find these little motherboards that I can use to attach to my gun to further program it and make it an even cooler handgun than it already is.
Performance wise, is mostly just okay. There will be a lot of times where characters will glitch out or dialogue feels out of sync, but it mostly didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the game. Later on in the game, enemies do start to get more protective and become bullet sponges before they get killed, also without really spoiling much, you do also encounter other robots, which does add to the difficulty, but it got really repetitive and I felt like the game forgot what made the game fun in the first place. All-in-all, while the game isn’t perfect, with its odd uncanny valley character animations, and sometimes cringey, if not over the top dialogue, it makes it perfectly clear you’re on a very absurd journey. The biggest compliment I can give “RoboCop: Rogue City” is that it made me feel like a kid again. “I’d buy that for a dollar!”
8.5/10
RoboCop: Rogue City se available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, and Epic Games Store.
Related: Nick Navarro Reviews
Gaming since I was given an original Nintendo as a kid. I love great storytelling and unique ingenuity. When both collide in a single game, I'm a happy gamer. Twitter/IG @NickNavarro87
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