RoboCop: Rogue City is… good?!
Forgive the surprise, but 80s action movies haven't typically made for the smoothest transitions to modern video games. Predator had Predator: Hunting Grounds, for instance, "a naff waste of great material". Terminator had Terminator: Resistance — "generic and boring". The infamous Aliens: Colonial Marines was admittedly followed by Alien Isolation and the enjoyable enough, fun-flamethrowing-with-friends of Aliens: Fireteam Elite, but still. When RoboCop: Rogue City was announced and subsequently delayed back in 2021 by Polish developer Teyon — the studio behind Terminator: Resistance and its sumptuously awkward first-person sex scene, no less — I can't, personally, say I was too optimistic.
And yet! I've played some of RoboCop's new demo in the current Steam Next Fest and actually… it's not bad? In fact it might actually be kind of good?
The setup here is simple enough, and delivered through a pleasantly hammy introduction of down-the-lens newscasting and caricatured bad guy monologues. There's a new threat in town — an unknown ringleader literally called The New Guy In Town by the city's press — and it's got all the preexisting gangs especially excited. You're thrown into a classic tower block raid, with some relatively simple whack-a-mole gunfights and a couple typical hostage situations providing a bit of basic fun.
The magic is in the pairing — RoboCop's nature as another 80s action protagonist that feels like he originated in video games first, less man-with-gun than a sentient gun with limbs attached. Have you ever felt like a bit of a giant baby in modern action games, spoon-fed your activities while thoughtlessly following orders from one waypoint to the next? Consider Officer Murphy as he slowly toddles into
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