RoboCop: Rogue City Review

thesixthaxis.com:

Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop was the film in my school that everyone under the age of eighteen wanted to watch but wasn’t allowed to. Fortunately for my friend and I, we managed to sneakily watch his Dad copy on VHS. As a naïve tweenager I was blown away by what I saw. The hyper-violence, the dark satire, and the coolest hero I’d ever laid eyes on; Robocop proved an explosive experience that only led to a handful of sleepless nights due to nightmares about melting faces. Since his iconic debut though, times have been hard for the cyborg cop. A series of lacklustre film sequels and an awful modern remake have all helped dull Robocop’s once-shiny armour. Step in RoboCop: Rogue City, the first video game starring the titular hero in years. Has developer Teyon’s latest FPS got what it takes to restore the RoboCop legacy? Well, unfortunately, no.

Set between RoboCop 2 and 3, what Rogue City gets absolutely right is its visual and aesthetic representation of Detroit City and its notorious inhabitants. This game looks like it stepped straight out of the late 1980’s, and I mean that in a good way. Buildings are blocky grey concrete monstrosities bathed in mist, office workers wear ill-fitting suits with enormous shoulder pads, and every punk about to be blown away looks like an extra from Mad Max. In this retro-futuristic world, cassette tapes and computer monitors the size of a small county are the height of smart technology.

RoboCop himself is also captured perfectly, thanks in part to the standout performance of returning original actor Peter Weller. The opening level, which sees RoboCop clear out a punk-infested TV station, is like a nostalgia punch right to the cerebellum. Those clunking footsteps, the thrilling musical score,