The new RoboCop game might just get what makes RoboCop great
RoboCop has been badly mistreated by the video game medium. Outside of Data East’s very good 1988 arcade game, studios have condemned RoboCop to appear in mostly lousy licensed video game schlock over the past 35 years.
November’s RoboCop: Rogue City may reverse the cyborg crime fighter’s fortunes, based on a meaty demo released on Steam earlier in October.
RoboCop: Rogue City is wise to borrow from the harshly satirical style of Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 original film. It opens with a news broadcast that establishes the crime-ridden state of Old Detroit, and the continued proliferation of a highly addictive designer drug called Nuke. (Rogue City is set after the events of RoboCop 2, which introduced Nuke, giving RoboCop fans another chance to ignore the existence of the third film, in which RoboCop gets a jetpack.) Developer Teyon maintains a satirical edge through the opening moments of Rogue City, and nearly pulls off saying something. Some clumsy dialogue stands in the way, but the developer is at least trying to do more than just deliver a RoboCop shooting gallery.
The first mission of RoboCop: Rogue City is pretty much that, though; Robo and his partner Anne Lewis raid a TV station that’s been taken over by a gang called the Torch Heads, led by a Keith Flint lookalike. RoboCop and Lewis clomp through the station’s corridors and stairways, and players dispatch scores of armed gutter punks using high-powered guns. There are exploding barrels to shoot at, bulky computer monitors to throw, health kits to consume, and enemies that are pleasingly dumb and easy to dispatch. This is pure RoboCop power fantasy; you’re a walking tank with mostly infinite ammo and programming that demands you mete out justice with your
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