I can pinpoint the moment when the game went severely downhill. A handful of hours in, Robocop has just broken up a gang’s territory, and his backup, ED-209 a bipedal killing machine, goes haywire and becomes an impromptu boss fight. What happens next is a drawn-out and protracted experience that magnifies all the issues with the game.
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Some issues can’t be forgiven, like the framerate that jumps all over the place; the badly animated models that rarely lip-synch to the voice lines; and horrendous audio bugs that cause some dialogue to sound like a whisper while the next line is delivered with excruciating volume.
Robocop: Rogue Citydoes get a few things right. The environmental visuals are stunning, particularly at night when neon signs can pop from the darkness and the streets are filled with a light mist. This quality of fidelity is also given to the 3D model of Robocop which looks ‘new-gen’ shiny and smooth, and as the game progresses, character models do start to match the level of quality.
There’s a conversation system where you can choose Robocop’s responses, making him more or less human, or tread a weird line between holding up the law or looking out for the people. It’s an odd addition, but it goes some way to bringing personality to a completely robotic character.
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The ‘fan service’ moments of quotable dialogue, appearing characters, and the brooding scenery of Detroit, all land wonderfully. Everywhere feels seedy, including the police station and the NPCs are a quirky mix of outlandish and over-the-top acting, peppered with 80s flair and insults that died on New Year’s Day 1990.
The system for upgrading Robocop’s signature gun is also a quirky mini-game that plays a little like a pipe game; where you have to link the power source to the nodes that will improve the weapon while avoiding those that will reduce things like damage, recoil or ammo count. You find tiles for this system out in the world in the form of computer chips and it pushes players to explore the semi-open world.
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This is obviously a conscious design decision, but Robocop is plodding, dull, and oftentimes horrendous to control. If you’ve seen the films, it’s an obvious design flaw. He moves like a tank; slow and with intention. He isn’t spritely which is the video game opposite of enjoyable movement. The developers have blessed us with a sprint button, but it’s merely a light jog. It takes ages for Robo to get anywhere.
This restricted movement is also seen in his aiming which is so hideously clunky that for the majority of gunfights you’re standing still in the hopes that you can nudge the crosshair onto an enemy without overshooting and blasting the wall behind them. It reminds me of playing first-person shooters on PlayStation 2. Moving the reticule around the screen is like wading through treacle and the worst part is, it makes sense. That is how Robocop moved in the film. It just translates badly to a video game.
The AI is equally disappointing, often resulting in grenade spam and sheer numbers to take down Robocop, rather than any kind of intelligent design. I’ve never seen so many grenades being thrown outside of VeteranCall of Dutycampaigns. Sure, it makes for a more chaotic fight, but seeing as Robocop can’t run away from anything with speed, it usually results in tanking the damage while you frustratingly nudge around the reticule.
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And this is summarised in the ED-209 fight I mentioned at the start. In the fight, ED-209 plods around a small courtyard alternating between spraying bullets and launching barrages of missiles. Robocop staggers from cover to cover desperately healing because even when standing behind concrete pillars Robo seemingly takes damage due to the destructible scenery. This intersperses the shooting which, most of the time, misses ED’s weak spot. Even using different weapons, like the AK47 or .50 CAL sniper feels like shooting blanks rather than fully loaded rounds.
From this point, the game never really bounces back. All the weapons suffer the same curse as Robocop’s primary side-arm; the variants of the AI punks add little to no depth just because they’re snipers or grenadiers; everything starts to feel like a bland pastiche.
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The biggest crime here is, oddly, the faithfulness to the source material. On paper it makes sense and it does evoke the same feelings as the films, but it makes for a very frustrating experience that ends up being a bitter disappointment. When the worst part of your shooter is the shooting, then something went badly wrong.
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Pros: Fan service, authenticity to the franchise, visuals
Cons: Bad movement and aiming controls, spotty audio volumes, skipping framerate, boring dialogue.
For Fans Of: 80s Action films
4/10: Below Average
Topics:Xbox,PlayStation 5,PC
