RoboCop: Rogue City

For a franchise as revered and beloved as RoboCop, it’s seldom seen in the video game space, which is a damn shame. And in this day and age, it’s easy to gloss this one over as nothing more than some subpar cash-grab. But I say with true honesty that the folks at Teyon stepped up to the plate and knocked it out of the park with Rogue City. Not only did they nail the power fantasy of being a walking shiny tank with a handheld handcannon, but understood that Robocop is a classic for more than just the action sequences and cheesy one-liners, coming together to form an amazing love letter to the movie and the franchise as a whole. The game manages to capture the dark-comedic spirit of the movie wonderfully, faithfully recreating that bleak, corporate cynicism we’ve come to know and expect in dystopic Detroit through environmental storytelling. And yet it also has a surprising amount of emotional depth, mainly centered on the man behind the machine, who struggles with his identity if he’s more than just a corporate Frankenstein’s monster. Even after 40+ years, Peter Weller fits back into his role as Detroit’s finest like a glove, which only makes the game feel that much more authentic. And that’s what makes the game so much fun: the constant care and respect it shows to the source material through total and unashamed fanservice. From returning to iconic locations from the first film, to having gunfights wrapping up with RoboCop spinning his gun, to being able to take down even the toughest enemies by shooting them where it really hurts. It really goes to show that Teyon just gets it on how to make fans happy. The biggest fanservice this game can give is the fulfillment of the cyborg power fantasy of being a walking tank packing a burst-fire handcannon. Teyon had a good sense to implement convenient FPS tropes to up the action so it never feels dull, with upgrades to both Robo and his trusty Auto-9 to really spice combat up. Even the more nuanced gameplay moments like walking the beat are pretty engaging, either giving warnings or handing out tickets, influencing the public’s perception of RoboCop, tying back into the story’s themes. Now the game isn’t perfect by any means. It definitely has its fair share of issues like the occasional bugged-out NPC, frame rate drops during heavy action sequences, and even the game crashing once or twice. And outside of the performance issues, the out-of-sync dialogue and shoddy voice acting can be glaring. But honestly, it feels pretty manageable, considering it’s not made by one of the big dev studios that tend to eat up the marketspace. It’s all you’d ever want in a RoboCop game; dealing out justice to brain-fried junkies and lowlife creeps right in the balls. Overall, I give RoboCop: Rogue City an 8.5/10.