I'm happy to recommend this game, but only when it is pretty heavily discounted (90% off as I write) and with some very important caveats.
1. If you haven't watched the two original movies, you won't really understand Murphy's motivation or his relationships with Lewis and others, not to mention his singular approach to upholding the law. The game is a real love letter to the films, and most of what's wrong with the game - and there's a lot wrong with the game - can be forgiven in light of the homage, and much of the story-telling.
2. The game looks great, especially on decent hardware, with beautifully lit, immersive areas filled with authentic and appropriately satirical detail, but the maps are incredibly underwhelming in their simplicity. I don't mind rail shooters, but these maps are about as sophisticated as 90's Doom.
3. This is an [i]anti[/i]-cover shooter. Robocop can't really sprint, he can't crouch, he can't lean and he can't jump. You have to think of him as an implacable, walking tank, which would be ridiculous if this wasn't exactly how he did in the movies. It can make for some pretty frustrating fights early on, but you [i]can[/i] edge around walls, and the indispensable slo-mo, dash and shield skills, which should be the first ones you pick up, make a sort of sense of it all.
4. Robocop has his own gun, the Auto-9, which you can augment very easily with a nice little flow-puzzle mini-game, to improve damage, handling etc. Unfortunately, the designers saw fit to allow infinite ammo for this weapon which, along with an autoloader special-ability about halfway through the game, makes it incredibly OP. There are secondary weapons you can wield, which can be fun for a minute, but they're mostly useless compared to the augmented Auto-9. I'm not a particularly competent gamer, but on normal difficulty, i found the most of the fights trivially easy, particularly because the enemy AI was as dumb as they come, and the final boss-fight took less than a minute between cut-scenes. :/
5. The story, characterisation, acting and dialog were all really good for 3/4 of the game, but took an unfortunate dive in the final act. I was quite disappointed by the way all the narrative threads frayed toward the end, and the final fight, which [i]literally[/i] comes out of nowhere, made no sense whatsoever. It really felt like the developers were suddenly in a rush to publish and couldn't marshal intelligent writing for the final scenes. It definitely left a bad taste in my mouth.
There's more I could gripe about - especially the Street Vulture's side quest in the last (of several) Downtown mission - but I don't want to pan the game too heavily. It was smaller and shorter than it deserved to be, and the combat could have been a lot more satisfying, but Teyon completely nailed the brief and I had a good time taking out the trash. Now i'm off to rewatch the first movie! :)
7/10
