Robocop Rogue City is Really Good - Review (PC)

Introduction

Robocop Rogue City is a beam of light in the darkness of current gaming, an industry that has been impacted negatively by political correctness and woke culture. This game takes us back to the 80s where things can be gritty and raw without being afraid of offending anyone; instead, it tries to be as faithful to the source material as possible giving it a feel of passion and authenticity. Rogue City is a movie-based game that actually makes you feel like Robocop, the whole game is based around you being a detective in the Detroit Police Department, after the events of the 2nd movie. capturing the feel and comedic tone that characterized the franchise. A straight satire about a dystopian future where OCP Corporation takes control of the now privatized police force. Alex Murphy, an officer in duty, gets murdered by a gang of criminals making OCP take the opportunity to revive him as Robocop.

There is a lot of attention to detail and love for the franchise, which reminds me of other projects where the team behind them wanted to create something worthy of the source material; so much so, that the original actors got involved for the voice acting, like in Ghostbusters The Video Game or Back to the Future The Game from Telltale with Rogue City not being an exception.

Along the course of the game, you will get to interact with many returning characters, like Murphy’s trusty friend and partner Anne Lewis, the chief of police Sergeant Reed, The Old Man and some new faces, like Ulysses, a young aspiring cop who wants to prove himself while keeping the family tradition of being a police officer. You will also get to visit iconic locations, like the abandoned steel mill where Murphy gets killed which are quite solid recreations of the original sets.

Gameplay

General feel and description

Rogue City is not a revolutionary game by any means, it doesn’t try to reinvent genres or break new grounds, instead it takes already polished elements from different games and adapts them to the world of Robocop, making it feel seamless to the original movies. As any good joke, what matters is the delivery and boy does this one delivers.

All the usual game UI elements are disguised under the main HUD which gives you all the information you need and that you have seen in the movies, which really helps on the immersion that you are actually playing as Robocop.

There are a lot of gameplay decisions in this game that have been made by staying true to the original concept of the main character: a heavy chunk of bi-pedal metal machinery. Robocop has never been agile, he is as stiff as it gets, which is what made Peter Weller’s performance in the movies so remarkable.

Developers took a gamble by staying away of modern trends of “fast paced games” and actually went against the grain by remaining true to the original material and making Robocop a slow-moving tank like in the movies and compensating by amazing sound design that makes you feel the weight of every footstep you take.

This game doesn’t hold your hand either, in fact when you start the game you are just thrown into the action which is quite refreshing in a world where every game puts you through a tutorial around key binds, I wish more games were like this. Although, later in the game you get introduced to every new special enemy by a small cinematic that I didn’t really like. I think they should have just stayed 100% out of the tutorials being part of the regular gameplay.

Stage and Level Design

The level design is pretty straightforward, consisting on individual stages of varying sizes and a small open world map of Downtown Detroit. The instanced levels give a lot of variety to the game as they are composed of different key buildings or locations from the city which along the small sandbox keep the game fresh. The scenery is handcrafted and well detailed making each of these stages feel different, popping up that dystopian 80s cyberpunk.

I found some minor problems with the pacing of some missions like for example the opening scene at the news station, there is a sense of urgency of rescuing the hostages as soon as possible, but the game penalizes your XP if you don’t take your time and check every corner of the maps to get “evidence” or find hidden doors to complete side objectives that don’t add anything to the experience. At least for me, they took me off the scene and made me aware that I am playing a video game.

At the end of each chapter your performance gets rated depending on how much you explored, which I really disliked, as it shows you how much XP you lost for not running around empty rooms doing nothing but chasing for “evidence” and doing “police work”.

RPG Elements

The RPG elements are basic, with 8 skill lines and pistol modification options. There is a progression in the strength of your character from the start to finish, where you do feel much more powerful as you get closer to the end. Every skill point makes a difference while having enough of them that you can’t go wrong with whatever build you choose.
You can pick up weapons at any time from the enemies but your main weapon will always be your signature burst pistol which you can modify through the Omni Board system. Basically, you pick up boards along the game that let you make different modifications based on the one you select. The problem with this mini game is that is never exciting because every new bigger board will be better, making the progression linear and the whole customization part feel lackluster.

You can do a few selections here and there, like adding more gore or rapid reload. Upgrading it does increase your power, the problem is that this system could have been simplified to be something less cumbersome, it just feels like the developers wanted to be a system where you swapped boards depending on the situation, but as it is, it doesn’t really seem to matter or add any deep into the game as it doesn’t feel you have an option.

Performance

The game runs in Unreal Engine 5 and requires a bit better specs than my PC has. To be honest this is the first time I have problems with my rig not meeting the minimum requirements and I felt it.

The game lagged sometimes on my machine depending on the map which some seemed to work better than others. Weirdly enough the big sandbox stage ran smoothly all the time, but some of the smaller instanced maps dropped frames considerably.
Despite this problem, it never made the game unplayable, just distracting. So, if you have a modest PC like me, check the minimum requirements in the references section at the end of this page.

Difficulty

The difficulty options of the game feel balanced. I played it on the hard setting on my first playthrough and except for the first time I faced R-209, the game was never too hard but challenging enough for a veteran player to keep engaged. After you finish the game, you get the option to restart and change the difficulty while keeping your gained XP, which gives the game some replayability.

Length

I finished the game in around 20 hours, which I actually appreciate a lot. I like games that respect my time as there are a lot of games out there that over extend their welcome by artificially extending the amount of time it takes to beat them to justify a price tag, pretty common around the AAA industry. While at some point I felt like I was in the end of the Lord of the Rings movies with the ending after ending sequence, I liked that they left no loose ends making it feel worthy as another Robocop story.

A couple of the side quests felt like chores to extend the play time, but to be fair, they are well integrated into the world, dialogue and the NPCs to the point that they didn’t bother me as they made me interact and get to know some of the side characters.

Atmosphere

This being a game based on a nostalgia franchise, the atmosphere takes a very important role in the decision making. In Rogue City, some of the locations have been carefully recreated from the movies really bringing up that feeling of nostalgia and putting you up there in the world of Robocop.

Added to the nicely recreated settings, there are also a lot of references to details from the movies like the ridiculously inefficient 6000 SUX luxury car, the Sunblock 5000 and many more you will find while walking around Detroit Downtown.

As mentioned with the references, the humor is all there, this game is very funny with its satire and made me laugh more than I though it would. I found myself paying attention to the NPCs dialogues and laughing at their remarks or comments about the situations happening around them.

One of my favorite details in the game is the fact that the NPCs are usually having conversations about the city, their lives or sometimes referencing events that have or will transpire giving the city a feel that it’s actually alive. Their dialogue is also very well written and usually filled with lots of humor keeping that Robocop satire feel authentic.
The Autosave feature, while I don’t think it’s perfect, it doesn’t offer a real cue of when the game saved so it’s difficult to tell when you can actually close the game, still works for me as it didn’t allow me to save scum to make a perfect run, which did make an impact on me whenever I failed a side objective like saving a hostage and reflect on my mistakes, encouraging me to play it again some other time.

I really liked the game music, the soundtrack includes a couple of variations of the original theme song, a few combat songs that change depending on the locations you are fighting, and a couple of catchy rock songs that fit the setting and are actually attached to the story of the game. I especially loved the song “Nuke”, based on the drug that riddles the city of Detroit in Robocop 2, I’ll leave the link to it on the description in case you want to give it a listen.

I will mention two small problems that broke the atmosphere for me, which were noticeable and bugged me a bit. The first is how you can see the limits in the budget of this game by seeing how many NPCs get recycled around. You see some faces all the time with just different colors of skin. The second one which could be circumvented is that sometimes some conversations trigger when you are about to exit a map but when you load at the other side of the door the dialogue is lost and since you can’t really reload, it’s all up for a 2nd playthrough to hear them out, which honestly isn’t that big of a deal.

The story

After a small and short cutscene that makes a great job setting up the game, you start as Robocop dealing with a hostage situation on the news station, no tutorial, nothing, you are just there and you have to deal with a bunch of punks have taken the whole building. It’s up to you and Lewis to lead the front of the assault. This event starts a police investigation about the motives of the criminals and starts the game with some action as any good movie.

The game then it’s divided in lots of different chapters where you change locations in order to do some detective work and find out the culprit of this new menace on Detroit. Between investigations, you will spend some time in the Police Station where you will get to know and bond with your fellow police officers which show their appreciation to what you (Robocop) represent to them.

The NPCs are well written as characters of this world, giving the setting that feel of nostalgia, along with some other quaint elements of the 80s. One that really stood out for me was meeting Samantha Ortiz, a mainstream journalist with integrity that is chasing the truth to expose the corporations and protect the people.

Robocop gets real character development, as he goes under a lot of situations during the course of the game that you resolve giving you strength to face the final chapters of the game; in the movie industry, this is called an arc and it helps making the experience feel more cinematic, showing that one of the best parts of Rogue City is the writing. I won’t give away the story, but overcoming all these problems made me feel I played the sequel to original movies.

There are numerous side quests clearly designed to extend the game time, but they are all related to the world and actually add a sense of you being a machine willing to help the people around you. The interactions with NPCs in these quests make you empathize more with your colleagues while also helping you have a break from the main story arc which can be very intense at some points, leading to a great ending that ties all the loose ends, totally worthy of the Robocop legacy.

Value

Robocop Rogue City is an AA, a mid-budget game and while that shows sometimes, the love for the game and the franchise overcomes any corners it cut.

The game can be finished casually in around 20 hours but there is enough there for an immediate 2nd playthrough. Although this game has so much soul that I know I will be revisiting it every now and then throughout the years. With some AAA games nowadays stretching their limited gameplay to force you to play around 100 hours to finish it, I would rather play 5 high quality short games like this than 1 of those games that never seem to end.

This game is available DRM free on GoG but if for some reason you don’t like owning your games, it’s also available on Steam and Epic stores. I bought the Alex Murphy edition which includes a armor, a weapon skin and a extra shotgun, but in my opinion they these extras really don’t add much to the game unless you are a hardcore fan and you want some variety on extra playthroughs. The shotgun does help a bit on the early levels but you will totally be fine without it.

This game frequently goes around 60% discount on all platforms so I recommend you wait until it shows up there again, I bought my copy for around $15, but the standard edition is an amazing value at around $13.

Conclusion

As long as you're aware of the somewhat steep system requirements (link in the description) and the game's less-than-perfect optimization, this game is totally worth the price at a discount. Make sure you buy it on GoG or Steam, where you won’t have a problem returning it if it doesn’t run to your liking on your system.
With that said, this is one of the best movie-franchise-based games I’ve ever played, and it really hit all the right spots for me. Highly recommended for all Robocop 1 and 2 fans out there.

References

This game is available on GoG, Steam, Epic, Xbox and Playstation.

★ GOG and Steam product links + System Requirements

★ Rogue City Soundtrack

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