RoboCop: Rogue City

Rogue City is perhaps the best RoboCop game that could be made, and in many ways echoes the legendary films on which it's based: it may not be particularly complex in terms of writing, it may be slightly to very unpolished in places, but no one can deny that it's full of heart and soul.

A small team of Polish developers did something the big conglomerates like Activision or Electronic Arts would have botched and made a solid RoboCop game. Sure, there are a handful of technical glitches, but Rogue City builds on Verhoeven’s film, pushing the character in new directions. If you’re a fan of the movie, consider this worthy companion piece.

RoboCop: Rogue City isn’t one of those games described as “So bad it’s good.” It’s simply a good game from start to finish that pays homage to the franchise it’s based on and captures what makes it endearing. The narrative beats leave an impact through emotional plot points and dark humor in a city in need of a hero, where your choices truly matter. The over-the-top action and investigation segments are perfectly balanced, but the constant backtracking does weigh on the experience. Nonetheless, this game was a delight to play and one I can’t wait to discuss with others who give it a shot.

Robocop: Rogue City is the very definition of a solid 7 out of 10 which is somewhat reminiscent of the PS2 era in the sense that there were more outliers released during a given year - the type that would be establishing a lot of the formulas that in a risk-averse mainstream market we find difficult to break away from now. It's a strange point to make as we reach a maturation point in what is likely to be a historic year for risk-averse mainstream video game releases but if it were not for a set of fairly prominent technical issues at the time of release and the writing which, while capturing the broad strokes of the Robocop appeal, isn't quite as sharp as it could've been, Robocop: Rogue City puts all of its efforts into all of the right places and does feel like an outlier because of this. It simply is some of the most fun that can be had in interactive media this year and because of the frame it finds itself in will be a dead cert for a future hit cult classic.

RoboCop: Rogue City is an uncompromising shooter that became my guilty pleasure. It might lack high production values or the spark of ingenuity, but you can clearly see heart and soul put into it. The game was obviously made by RoboCop buffs for RoboCop buffs, because the amount of fan service it contains is overwhelming.