Developer: Teyon
Publisher: Nacon
Steam Deck Compatibility?: Playable
Rrp: £44.99 (Gog.com, Humble, Steam and Epic)
Released: 2nd November 2023
Available on: Gog.com, Humble, Steam and Epic
Played Using: Mouse and Keyboard
Approximate game length: 20+ Hours
Of all the franchises to have a new game released I never expected it to be Robocop. The last Robocop film to be made was in 2014 and that was a reboot of the original (I only just discovered this at the time of writing). So to make it clear the Robocop that this game features is not from that film. No, this one is the classic Robocop, the one from the late eighties and early nineties.
This game takes place between the events of Robocop 2 and 3. Don’t worry though, you don’t need to really know anything about what happened in the first or second film, the only thing I can remember is that Robocop was once an actual man and was ‘rebuilt’ after dying… I want to say he was shot but after having watched the trailer for the 2014 Robocop I’m not so sure. Anyway, my point is my memories of Robocop are extremely murky and it didn’t hinder my experience at all.
The game is set in Detroit, as Robocop always is and of course you play as the titular Robocop, (which is voiced by the original actor of Robocop, Peter Weller). The various gangs of Detroit are running rampant all trying to catch the attention of someone simply known as ‘The New Guy’. All that’s known about The New Guy is that he has a lot of money and wants a partner in Detroit. Of course, the police are stretched thin trying to keep the gangs under control while not being given the budget to do so by their corporate masters, Omni Consumer Products (or OCP for short). Oh, didn’t I mention this is a dystopia where corporations can literally buy the police? Honestly, it’s not that far off from the current reality…
Robocop: Rogue City is an FPS with light RPG elements. I am aware that generally the term for such a game is usually ‘immersive Sim’ but in this case I don’t think this game fits into the immersive sim genre. You see, in an immersive sim you are usually given multiple ways to approach a situation. You can gear up for a stealthy approach, maybe go in guns blazing, talk your way through… that kind of thing. That’s simply not the case here, when playing Robocop you basically have two modes, combat and investigation and those modes are transitioned between automatically. There is no stealth element here, and to be honest, Robocop is not built for stealth at all. When you encounter enemies you enter into combat mode and Robocop pulls out his gun otherwise all your abilities and weapons stay stowed. When out and about patrolling the streets or when in the precinct you’re in investigation mode. In this mode you use Robocops ‘Robovision’ to highlight clues, footprints and basically anything marked with a question mark.
As you play you gain XP from completing objectives, finding clues and killing enemies. For every thousand XP gained you are awarded a skill point which can be spent in one of eight skills; Combat, armour, vitality, engineering, focus, scanning, deduction and psychology. Each point spent makes you more efficient in that skill and as you put more points into them new abilities will appear. A feature I appreciated a lot was that each skill tells you what it does when you select it so that you can make an informed choice.
Between most missions you will return to the police precinct to undergo evaluation, I can understand why many people would find doing this tedious as it breaks up the flow of the game. But I actually like that it does that. It allows the other side characters to make themselves more felt and fleshed out. Plus one of the side missions you can take part in is opening a queue for people to report their problems and most of the problems they come to you with are pretty funny.
The evaluations that Robocop undergoes are both a part of the overall plot but also act as a grading system showing you what you did and did not accomplish. At the end you’re given your grade and whatever XP the various objectives you completed are worth.
Combat in this game can be pretty over the top, but it’s always satisfying. This isn’t the type of game where the enemy has deep reasonings for what they are doing. Most of them are gang members of some kind or another, be they bikers or drug-addled maniacs.
You can only carry two weapons, of which one is Robocop’s signature weapon, the Auto 9 which has infinite ammo that cannot be dropped.
After a few missions you will be able to upgrade the Auto 9. You do this by inserting microchips into a PCB circuit board to make connections to positive nodes while trying to avoid negative ones. Each microchip has a percent number and a shape, the shape dictates the directions the energy will flow (as shown in the screen shot below) and the percentage is how much bonus that will provide to your gun. Each node shows what statistic that percentage will be added to.
You can occasionally find more PCB circuit boards within missions. You can only have one PCB circuit board active at a time and each one has different benefits that can be activated (assuming you have the microchips to activate them).
Microchips are a much simpler affair to find when compared to the PCB circuit boards as they are found when you open OCP boxes that are scattered throughout the various missions.
As you upgrade the Auto 9 you will end up using the other weapon slot you have a lot less, especially as most of the weapons the enemies drop are worse than your Auto 9. However, there are some exceptions such as sniper rifles, or heavy assault guns.
Once you complete the game you can play again in New Game Plus which allows you to keep all the skill points, PCB circuit boards and chips that you had gained in the last playthrough. It will also unlock a new harder difficulty and give you a few extra PCB circuit boards and chips.
While I’m glad that this feature is included I personally won’t be making use of it. Unless something about the story changes I will almost always pass on playing a New Game Plus.
This game isn’t going to be setting the world on fire, but it’s also by no means bad. It’s a damned solid game that runs well… for the most part. I did have some odd moments, specifically within investigation mode, where I ended up having to restart from a checkpoint because the question mark icon wasn’t appearing where I needed to scan making it impossible to continue the story. Thankfully, reloading like that always rectified the issue and the checkpoint system is fairly generous so I have never set back more than say thirty seconds.
Did I enjoy the game? Yes. Would I recommend it, also yes but with major caveats because not everyone is willing to deal with a slightly janky game.
