RoboCop: Rogue City Review: Murphy’s Law

Yeah, OCP, you know me. RoboCop: Rogue City is available on PSN monthly games, and it’s money well not spent. That would indicate it’s not worth your precious time, but it was ok eight hours later and a platinum trophy. I’m glad I didn’t bite the bullet on release day and shell out £50.

That’s not the vibe you would have got from the original preview, as it shot to the top of my list. A big pile of games to review and tight pockets meant it sat on the wishlist for a few months, then deleted as it was doubtful it would get played. The price didn’t help, but in a sale..? After seeing it on the PS5 monthly games, I felt it was time to revisit.

RoboCop: Rogue City is part FPS, part narrative adventure, as Alex Murphy is part man, part machine. The initial demo showcased some stunning visuals, and quite frankly, RoboCop himself/itself is pixel-perfect—including Peter Weller doing the talky bits. Robo will walk around the desolate Detroit, shooting up the place and its resident bikers, hunt down contraband for XP and then choose from a series of dialogue paths that will influence the outcome of the ending.

RoboCop: Rogue City Review (PS5)

RoboCop is an RPG tank in the traditional sense. He can walk straight through the middle of a skirmish and take plenty of hits, but he can do as much damage with his Auto-9 pistol, machine guns dropped by crims and hurl explosive barrels. He can also punch through skulls with finesse. Delicioso. As expected, Robo moves at a snail’s pace, so the guns will do all the heavy lifting.

After first playing RoboCop: Rogue City a couple of years ago, it felt like a cheat code storming through, targeting enemies, and gunning them down without breaking a sweat. That’s mostly the same, though the ED-209 battles are prolonged and only remedied by upgrading the Auto-9 through collectable PCBs that improve damage, reload, armour-piercing perks, and auto-fire. It’s seriously a game changer, and once you work out how to configure it, it makes the game a doddle.

There are two main challenges in the game: the pace and dialogue. As accurate as RoboCop: Rogue City is to the original films (expertly done by Teyon), it’s… boring. Robo pounds through the streets and up and down the stairs at the precinct, doing side quests. If you complete the optional tasks, that means more XP and unlocking perks yet with a few minor exceptions, they don’t make the experience much better.

God Mode Po-Po

Skills such as hacking turrets are only helpful in two main quests, and even then, they are not worth it. Unlocking safes seems to be a thing of the past after the first hour, and slowing down time to take out enemies appears the most useful – especially at the shooting range, but when you master the Auto-9 PCBs, that’s it. Easy. Granted, you could increase the challenge, but it’s boring. Robo will complete his main quest (a convoluted plot that’s unnecessarily confusing) and sit in a chair for an evaluation, and by the time the credits roll with a screenshot epilogue, it’s massively anti-climatic.

However, as stated, RoboCop: Rogue City captures the original film’s ambience. If you’re also from the era and grew up with the films and original arcade games (amazing… at the time!), reliving Robo with so many familiar faces and playing in God mode without needing a Game Genie is fun in bursts. So, too, are the scanning elements that tip-toe into Batman territory, but they never seem to have enough depth.

Presentation-wise, it’s stunning, and the modelling for RoboCop is faultless. While Peter Weller does a stellar job, some of the other characters’ voice acting was poor – way past being so bad that they’re good. That lack of empathy didn’t help, as this cop wanted to go rogue and kill ’em all. The only redeeming character was a new recruit from OCP, who you can take under your wing for a couple of chapters, though, as stated, it was all over after eight hours, so it’s not like a buddy-buddy experience or anything.

RoboCop: Rogue City Review Summary

So yeah, RoboCop: Rogue City looks fantastic and is quite comparable to the films in that you’re mostly passive and watching the spectacle. I don’t regret playing the game, as it was good in places, and shooting criminals as RoboCop was genuinely entertaining, though I’m so pleased I didn’t pay full price. I wouldn’t buy it for a dollar.