I made a status a while back while playing it that covers the main elements of the game but in short, it's better than their previous game (Terminator Resistance) and has improvements made. It's got some flaws but it's full of stuff i liked.

The mean streets of Detroit looks great even with the graphic settings cranked down. They are fun to explore, and exploration in the game is fairly good, but i'd rank it below DX:HR

RPG/FPS/Pseudo-stealth games that play this clean and tightly together aren't that common, and most do something different (Deathloop) or have more elements thrown into mix. But Teyon seems to be getting the formula down with each additional serving of 80's nostalgia.

Make no mistake this game is an FPS. Its extremely violent and isn't watered down. Gunfights have a tendency to make things explode and destroy rooms really dramatically. once you upgrade the auto-9 to use the infinite ammo chip (Do this ASAP) you can redecorate any interior to your hearts content.

I loved the UI/HUD. It has a slight video grain to it at further distances. The green targeting HUDis incredibly useful and a cool concept for FPS games that should be replicated in other games. The way enemies can hide in smoke is also a nice touch.

What will be next? Aliens? Predator? Maybe with a separate campaign or mission mode for the enemy? I'm sure it will be at least as good as this and I look forard to it.

Normally this degree of gratuitous fan service would put me off, but it honestly works here for me. The devs lovingly recreated the tone, themes (mostly) and even the police station from the films. Even having Peter Weller reprise his role, which is just awesome he was game for it. Really adding to the authenticity of the game and its world. Like the films, this is firmly satirical with plenty of cheeky dialogue and silly one liners. That's in spirit of the film franchise. It also explores Murphy's conflict between being a corporate product and a human being. Which was a core theme in the film. The only thing this game doesn't get right is in its use of violence. Gamifying it and making it fun for you to be a veritable wrecking ball of carnage, which can be argued goes against Verhoven's philosophy and social critique from the film. In the original film, gratuitous violence was typically enacted by the corporate stooges, the goons and their machinations. Highlighting their callous indifference to the carnage they cause in their amoral pursuit of profits. The corporate greed and amoral pursuit of profits is still firmly part of the games themes, and while Robocop in the films certainly caused carnage, he tries to resolve things with less pew pew when possible. In this game, it's all about carnage and the devs make it bloody fun.

I never played Terminator Resistance but heard good things about it. Playing this game makes me want to check it out though.

Robocop: Rogue City is flawed. It can feel a bit janky. Most character models look kind of shoddy and like plastic. Lip syncing to dialogue from side characters can often be out of sync. They re-use the same actors for multiple characters (this is most notable with the punk goons). The game can suffer from mixing issues where some characters (Pickles in particular) will be very soft and hard to hear. The game reuses the same hub for most of the game, with minimal changes from each time you return (sure there are different quests, the time of day can vary, but collectibles rarely get replenished which makes exploration feel like it has a diminishing return). The game also had some performance issues for me. In some areas having the frame rate tank and the game crashed for me 3-4 times (once resulting in my whole PC crashing). While all of this may sound amateur, the game does still work. At least for me.

Gameplay isn't your typical adderal fueled twitch fest that CoD popularized and Fortnite made definitive. This game is slower paced. You are a lumbering tank and you move like one. Making this game feel more old school. This didn't bother me at all. The game is well balanced around this. Instead of having to slowly progress through corridors by taking cover, you just bulldoze down a hallway and light up all the goons your scanner detects. You are meant to tank bullets. You are a metal cyborg after all. The healing also takes a more old school approach where you have limited healing items. The game isn't particularly hard, you are still tanky and have plenty of moves/abilities up your sleeve to tip things into your favor. You can use bullet time, for example, which can enable you to clear out a whole room before the goons have time to react. You have a shield, you have a speed boost, you have upgrades to your armor, ect. I played this game on Hard and didn't really start dying until the end game. Even then, it was with gimmick scenarios. Such as a sequence where you follow goons down into a sewer and they have explosive barrels in every crevice and you need to take out all the goons to stop them from destroying a bridge. One stray bullets causes all the barrels to explode resulting in an instant game over. This forced me to use melee attacks more than my gun which is honestly a nice change of pace. I wish the game had come up with more unique scenarios like this one.

But I had fun the whole time. The level of detail in destruction makes the combat very satisfying. Such as how you can blow apart concrete from pillars and objects. Really making you weapons feel like they have a punch. The OG Robocop handgun does feel like the best weapon, especially since you can upgrade it. That's not an issue since it feels great to use. Especially after you unlock a motherboard that gives you both no reload and full auto fire. This does further prevent the game from every being too difficult but it stayed fun to use from start to finish so I'm not mad.

There are light RPG mechanics to the game. By doing side quests and main quests you get points you can spend on upgrades that give you abilities and enhance things like damage, health and armor. You often need to interact with NPCs and you are given options that are either in service to the people or "the law." None of these decisions you make drastic change gameplay, but it does serve to make your actions feel impactful. More importantly, a good chunk of these side quests and interactions can be funny. So I found myself doing them all. Not only to get upgrade points but also to enjoy the writing. There is also an investigation mode to the game, but this is pretty hollow to be honest. Just like how it was in the Batman games. You just turn on your scanner and scan things. Maybe follow a green glowing trail. So nothing complex, but it does serve to give you a break from the intense combat. I'm always game for games to include better pacing.

Sure not everything is great in this game. It's flawed, but it gets the comedy and satire right from the films while also making a fun FPS game. It won't be for everyone. But if you like Paul Verhoven's satire or old school type shooters then this is worth checking out.

RoboCop: Rogue City has potential that goes largely unexploited. This game leaves me with no doubt that the devs wanted to make something earnest here. This is not some cynical cash grab using an established IP. However, the new ideas they bring to the table are in development about as sophisticated as the Matrix reference in the first level.
However, one part does stick out in how well-thought-out it is: the shooting. The game really nails the feeling of being the embodiment of the law, catching up to criminals, who are then mercilessly pumped full of lead. There is virtually no recoil, even for heavy weapons, and RoboCop walks with a loud metallic thud. You feel like a walking turret. But even this well-executed part will become a dull routine after the 10-12 hours this game takes to finish. Everything else is plainly bland from the start.
Thematically, the game focuses on RoboCop's remaining humanity. Conceptually, this theme is compelling but never develops past the surface level. Even hours in, Rogue City will ask the same questions regarding RoboCop's humanity that already came up way earlier. An answer is not one that you will receive.
Maybe a satisfying answer for the player could be arrived at through the game's roleplaying mechanics. However, those purely manifest as combat upgrades and dialogue choices. The player is given the option of RoboCop to voice his opinions on his humanity. Sure, you can roleplay as a RoboCop that prefers to be called Officer Murphy, or as a Robocop that is a coldly programmed tool by OCP, but in what engaging ways do these differences manifest? They don't. You can help the anti-OCP journalist break her story or not. You can build up the rookie cop assigned to you or not. You can help the homeless police informant put his life back together with some 'tough love' or not. Am I exaggerating? Yeah, but the consequences of your actions are not much more colourful than how I listed them.
Oh, and don't get me started on the side quests trying to mimic boring police work. That's how you make boring sidequests.

More focus and shorter play-time would have greatly benefitted Rouge City.

(Also, the performance is exceptionally poor. I played two levels where I must have accidentally enabled 'slideshow' mode on my PlayStation.)

This review is for the Playstation 5 version of the game.

RoboCop: Rogue City was clearly made by developers who are passionate about the RoboCop movies. It takes bits and pieces from the movies, never outright reusing parts, and yet still tells it's own story.

The game starts up with you already playing as the robotic policeman, trusting you already have an idea of the characters which is great as it doesn't waste time trying to tell you the backstory. Mission structure balances between a semi open chunk of Detroit, and more linear bits where you have to follow a general set path through a building or other area. One aspect that is very true to the story, but could have been implemented slightly better in game is how slow you move. The movement does make you feel like you're a big heavy robotic force, but when trying to get from one side of the city to the other it can be almost a little painfully slow.

The action here is top notch. You have your standard side arm pistol that isn't as powerful as some of the other weapons you can wield, yet it has infinite ammo to go to town with. There are a lot of collectibles you can find that grant you additional XP for leveling up, as well as nods to the franchise and story in general. There are a lot of upgrades you can get that make the fights more fun to experiment with.

The game is relatively short, with the main story taking me I think about 17 hours. I did experience some fps bugs playing the ps5 version. After playing for a few hours, the fps would go from a solid 60, down to what felt like sub 20. I'm not sure what causes this and it seems to not be a widespread issue. This in itself wouldn't be terrible if it weren't for the really bad checkpoint system. The game slows down to where it's near impossible to shoot anybody, so you close the game out and restart it. Unfortunately, without a save system and relying on autosave you may have to replay the last near 20 minutes because you didn't hit the next checkpoint. Again, thankfully this only happened maybe 4 times throughout my play time but one of those times I had to replay basically a boss encounter which featured a pretty long and difficult gunfight.

Don't let that stop you from enjoying this love letter to the series. The developer also recently came out with a DLC that is seemingly reviewing very well!

Like I said about Resident Evil 2 Remake, twenty years ago I wouldn’t have believed something like this was possible. Honestly, even now it feels a bit unreal. RoboCop: Rogue City gets so much right—from Lewis as RoboCop’s partner to Murphy’s own hallucinations—that it almost feels like a lost sequel from the era.

Gameplay-wise, it plays a lot like BioShock 2. You’re a hulking, unstoppable presence: slow, sturdy, and methodical. Enemies are nicely highlighted, and while you can pick up their weapons, the default Auto-9 is more than enough for most of the game. It’s accurate, has burst fire, and delivers glorious old-school ultraviolence—heads popping, bodies flying, like it’s the year 2000 all over again.

Also borrowing from BioShock, RoboCop himself is upgradeable. There are eight different skills, each with their own perks, using a fairly linear system that reminded me a bit of Mass Effect. It’s simple, but effective.

That said, the budget limitations do show in places—most notably in the facial animations of second-tier NPCs. You also have to deal with the walking tank enemies a couple more times, and while they’re mostly a joke at long range, they’re still unmistakably bullet sponges.

After a truly disastrous first boss fight, I was surprised by how good the final boss turned out. It has distinct phases, clear weak spots, readable attack telegraphs—overall, just a very enjoyable encounter.

The story is bolder than I expected. I assumed they’d play it safe, Warhammer-40K-style, leaving everything exactly where it was. Instead, they actually get rid of some key characters. The narrative blends elements of RoboCop and RoboCop 2, setting things up neatly for the Japanese arc of RoboCop 3. OCP controls the Detroit police force while simultaneously sabotaging it, hoping to make the city unlivable so it can be rebuilt from scratch. The OCP CEO—literally called “Old Man”—is terrified of death, so he uses the psychologist assigned to RoboCop to attempt to digitize himself for the afterlife. After all, RoboCop is the only successful experiment. A fun twist is that the main antagonist, who claims to be the brother of the villain from RoboCop 1, turns out to be a fraud. His real name is never revealed—because who cares?!

One mechanic I don’t remember seeing much elsewhere is competing with allies. RoboCop sometimes works alongside ED-209 or SWAT teams, and if you rack up more kills than they do, you earn bonus XP. It’s a small thing, but surprisingly fun.

That said, the actual fight against ED-209 is frustrating. RoboCop’s slow movement combined with the robot’s accuracy means you often die to chip damage. Even though the game hints at a frontal weak spot, it still feels like shooting a wall of hit points.

Weapon variety is solid. Enemies drop plenty of guns, including classics like the Barrett sniper rifle, the G11, and the SPAS-12. Still, most of the time you’ll stick with RoboCop’s sidearm. It has infinite ammo—either a cheeky nod to ’90s action movie logic or just pure convenience—and its burst mode handles almost every situation. You can also customize it by finding alternative PCBs and solving simple puzzle layouts: turning it full auto, making it a single-action Magnum-style cannon, or even adding a belt-feeding mechanism so you never have to reload again.

I think it’s pretty clear that when it comes to the 80s franchise to obsess over, I put all my chips into Indiana Jones. I’m not a diehard Robocop fan. I’ve seen the original once, but it was back when I was a teenager. If I were to rank it, I’m probably a C tier fan. I remember the general themes of Robocop and the catchphrases, but not much else. Still, I was interested in Robocop: Rogue City after I heard it was a pretty solid game. I’m glad that I put off buying it on sale, because I got it as part of the free monthly PS5 games.

From jump street it’s pretty evident this game comes from an AA developer. I feel like a hipster every time I say this, but I do find the AA games to give a better experience than AAA. They usually are still a reasonable $50-60 and not overloaded with in-game stores that they advertise on the main menu, looking at you Assassin’s Creed. There are still great AAA games, like Indy and the Great Circle, but I find AA games to be more consistently interesting, willing to take more risks, and there’s a charm in their low-budget spunkiness. That manifests in Robocop with the fact about half of the citizens in Detroit are voiced by Kerry Shale and the NPC models look like they’re from the late PS3 era. Some of their idle animations are very janky, like Robocop isn’t the only cyborg in Detroit. There’s also an issue with clipping, it never broke the game, just broke immersion. I would toss a goon at a wall only to have him bamf through the wall or Robocop’s thighs would disappear into his torso when he sat down.

But it’s not all buggy animations and models. The game world itself is fun to explore. The developers nailed the dingy, rundown feeling of modern-day Detroit. The government buildings are dirty, graffiti and police tape litter the apartment buildings, the underpasses are filled with homeless camps. You visit a particular city block over and over again. This was probably to save time by reusing locations, but it also makes sense. Robocop is a cop who has a beat to walk while he’s unravelling the bigger mystery, it makes sense he’d have a city block that was his to patrol. It also lets you get familiar with the locals. And at night, the city oozes ambience with the rain puddles reflecting the streetlights. You also visit other locations throughout the story. These are standard “gritty crime story” locations, like a meat processing factory, the sewers, prison. You also visit the steel mill where Alex Murphy got turned into Swiss cheese and the OCP headquarters. Everything has an 80s futuristic vibe to it. Arcades and VHS tapes are still popular. They have killer robots, but their cellphones are the big bricks. The music was also a standout. They have the benefit of the original Robocop theme being an awesome swelling score. It comes in at the best times as Robocop is marching through a gauntlet of bad guys.

The gameplay is a bit of an odd bird. It’s an FPS, but Robocop isn’t your standard FPS protagonist. He’s big and slow. He doesn’t bounce around like Doomguy or peek in and out of cover like a military shooter protagonist. The playstyle I settled on was “always be advancing”. I’d walk down the middle of a hallway, blasting bad guys and soaking up their bullets. Early on, it did lead to me being at low health often. You can use cover on some occasions, but a lot of cover is destructible and enemies like to throw grenades to flush you out. I found as long as I kept a steady march I’d lose some health, but still come out on top in most fights. Later on, as I unlocked pistol upgrades and increased my skills, I did start feeling like the unstoppable Robocop of the films. The developers did a good job balancing challenge and power fantasy. The upgrade system covers the standard things: increase damage, increase health, scan more items. Each 4th level also unlocks a new ability for Robocop, like slowing down time, a short dash move, or temporary shield. They all add up to make combat a fun, if unoriginal, romp.

The pistol upgrades are where the game gets ridiculous. You unlock motherboards for your pistol and use chips to power different nodes, like a pipe direction game. One of the motherboards gives your pistol what is basically an infinite ammo cheat. It removes the need to reload and it fires full auto. The kickback isn’t terrible, so I could hold down the trigger and spew lead like a water hose at my enemies. It made combat easier, but not trivial. Some of the bigger enemies could still take a chunk outta me. There’s a few boss fights and some mini-boss enemies and those are the weak point of the combat. They usually have weapons that can knock out Robocop in 5 hits, don’t stagger often, and worst of all, are bullet sponges. Most of the boss fights were finding a place I could stand and not be hit and just cheese the boss as I slowly ticked down its health.

When not in a fight, the other part of gameplay is investigating crimes & questioning people. Robocop can scan evidence at crime scenes, and most of the clues are easy to find. These aren’t LA Noire cases. You don’t have to debate who’s really guilty, each case ends with a smoking gun making it obvious. There is still a reward to being thorough though. Some cases have little out of the way clues that give Robocop access to additional dialogue when questioning someone that allow for a better outcome. Dialogue consists of a basic dialogue tree. Occasionally you can use one of your other skills to make a skill check, but most conversations are just about improving your relationships with important side characters. When dealing with petty offenders, Robocop can either chose to uphold the law by ticketing them or endear himself to the public by letting them off with a warning. There is a “Public Trust” meter that the game secretly tracks. You can see when you increase your public trust, but there’s no chart showing where it’s at currently. I don’t know if there’s a sliding scale with “public trust” on one side & “upholding laws” on the other. Public trust is one of the stats that figure into the ending. The other is how you help your friends. There’s three characters who Robocop can help: Washington, a rookie cop who needs help with his self-confidence, “Pickles” the hobo police informant you can help get off drugs, and Samantha Ortiz, a journalist whose out for the true story and takes her fashion advice from Rosa Diaz. If Robocop helps them out, everyone gets a happy ending. I imagine doing the opposite leads to a bad ending.

Robocop is a fun character to play as. He’s a tin-plated Boy Scout, or he’s a sweater short of being an insightful 80s TV dad. They got Peter Weller back to do the voice, because I don’t think he’s got much else going on. Robocop is a bit monotone by design, but you can tell Wellers is putting some effort into his portrayal. The game balances the gritty and humorous sides of Robocop. A lot of the humor is due to Weller’s deadpan delivery and isn’t over the top. I tried to put myself in the mind of a police robot and often picked the dialogue responses that sounded like they were from a motivational 80s anti-drug PSA. Robocop does quote a few classic lines from the movie, but the game overall does a good job of being original and not just a nostalgic quote fest. I was surprised they refrained from dropping the “I’d buy that for a dollar” quote in the game somewhere.

Themes are the Robocop story’s greatest strength and its biggest hinderance. While at first blush, Robocop seems like a “turn off your brain” meathead series about a big robot man violently blowing away gangsters, it’s satire of corporate culture is not subtle and you don’t have to look hard to see the underlying themes. Before I started the game, I knew the bad guy was going to actually be an OCP executive. Along with the series’ anti-corporation stance, that has aged like wine, it dabbles in the notion of humanity as Robocop struggles with his past life as Alex Murphy. These themes can tie the hands of anyone trying to make new Robocop content. If the game was nothing more than a “Robocop stops a gang leader”, it would feel like a filler story. I think the developers did their best with the tall order of making an impactful original Robocop story.

So, the story, and as such spoiler time. A new crime kingpin rolls into Detroit and Robocop is on the case. Robocop and his partner Officer Lewis hunt down a gang leader that gets them an audience with the kingpin. We learn he is Wendell Antonowsky, brother to a bad guy in the first film (I had to look that up), so like Die Hard with a Vengeance. He shoots Lewis, but luckily she survives. She’ll just be sitting out a large portion of the game. Robocop makes it his goal to hunt down Wendell. He assaults a biker gang stronghold and learns they’ve been stealing brains from dead bodies for some reason. After a failed bank robbery, the biker gang is nearly wiped out and their leader give Robocop some info about Wendell. Wendell is arrested, then escapes prison, and starts a full-scale riot. During all this, Robocop is plagued by memories of his former life and voices of his loved ones and friends that belittle him. Outside of passing out, we never get a real deep character moment on how Robocop handles that. He does have a psychiatrist that helps him decompress, but these are usually very short sessions. He also has to deal with OCP sabotaging him and the police force. The OCP rep for the police, Becker, looks like he would’ve been played by Michael Keaton if this was a movie made in the 80s. Robocop learns that Wendell is an OCP stooge, told you, and he’s being financed by someone high in the company to develop project Afterlife, basically an evolution of the Robocop program. Initial suspicion is cast on Becker, but he’s got his own side hustle of developing robots to replace the police force. In the end it turns out the CEO of OCP, the “Old Man”, was using the data from Robocop’s therapy sessions and Becker’s robot technology to develop a way for him to cheat death. Again, it’s what you expect from a Robocop story, but it is still well told.

One thing that stuck out to me is how the game characterizes the police. They are portrayed as the underdogs. They are trying to keep Detroit safe and dispense justice, but OCP holds all the actual power and control of the city. In modern times when police forces are under heavy scrutiny for abuses of power, it is a change up to see them cast as the scrappy good guys in a piece of media. They are under the boot of OCP like everyone else and throughout the game they keep talking about striking to call out OCP’s bullcrap. Granted they are based off of a police force from a movie in the 80s, but I wonder, were this game released 4-5 years ago when anti-police sentiment was at a high point would it’ve received a less-friendly welcome online.

All in all, I enjoyed my time with Robocop: Rogue City. It feels like a game made by people who were really passionate about the franchise, especially since there isn’t some current Robocop film to piggyback off of. The story moves at a good pace, Weller fits easily back into the role, and the combat is fun, if simplistic. If you are someone who chose Robocop as your 80s franchise obsession, you’ve probably already played this, but if not I highly recommend it. Even fair-weather fans like me got a worthwhile enjoyment out of it.

Post-Script: I have officially grown tired of the "spooky teleporting mannequin" trope. Guys, we've been using it too much lately. Time to let it cool it's heels a bit.