RoboCop: Rogue City review - double-A throwback too faithful for its own good
RoboCop: Rogue City would have been the absolute biz back in 2005. This might sound like a criticism, and to a certain extent it is. But I mean it equally as a compliment to developer Teyon's work. The studio's latest licensed FPS following Terminator: Resistance is a fine example of a AA game, with an ambition that exceeds its budget, and a sincerity that helps power through no small amount of wonk. It's a decent shooter, a surprisingly involved policing game, and an authentic RoboCop experience. But as with all Teyon's games it lacks refinement, while it adheres too closely to the themes and plot points of the films to truly flourish as its own tale. Taking place between RoboCops 2 and 3, Rogue City kicks off with a glorious statement of intent. A gang of crazed punks named the Torch Heads takes over Detroit's TV station, to send a very public message to a new and mysterious crime lord in town, creatively referred to as "The New Guy in Town". The message is straightforward enou
RoboCop: Rogue City would have been the absolute biz back in 2005. This might sound like a criticism, and to a certain extent it is. But I mean it equally as a compliment to developer Teyon's work. The studio's latest licensed FPS following Terminator: Resistance is a fine example of a AA game, with an ambition that exceeds its budget, and a sincerity that helps power through no small amount of wonk. It's a decent shooter, a surprisingly involved policing game, and an authentic RoboCop experience. But as with all Teyon's games it lacks refinement, while it adheres too closely to the themes and plot points of the films to truly flourish as its own tale.
Taking place between RoboCops 2 and 3, Rogue City kicks off with a glorious statement of intent. A gang of crazed punks named the Torch Heads takes over Detroit's TV station, to send a very public message to a new and mysterious crime lord in town, creatively referred to as "The New Guy in Town". The message is straightforward enough: "We're here, we want to work with you, and we mean business". To prove it, they take a bunch of hostages.
And so in you stomp, as RoboCop, to put an end to this special broadcast. Armed with his Auto-9 pistol, you carve through an army of Keith Flint wannabes in gleefully excessive style. As your machine-pistol rakes across neat and tidy news offices, the air becomes filled with sparks and paper and crumbling concrete. When shots land where they should, enemies fly back in in a shower of unctuous red squibs, limbs shredded, heads squelching like a pineapple in a printing press. The environment is a weapon too, letting you grab objects like chairs and computer monitors to toss at criminal creeps, or wrap your metal fingers around their necks, tossing them out of windows or at other foes to knock them down. I became particularly fond of throwing them up into the ceiling, not least because there was always a one-in-five chance they might glitch through it, their ragdoll legs dangling through the world geometry.
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