RoboCop: Rogue City (PlayStation 5) review "Detroit. Detroit Never Changes."

In the near future, Detroit is a dystopian city riddled with crime and widespread corruption, but the upstanding Omni Consumer Products corporation has a solution: RoboCop. Using the remains of the violently killed Alex Murphy, the Part Man-Part Machine entity goes about his duties dispensing brutal justice while also wrestling with memories of his former life. This outline serves as the overarching theme for the movies, and that tradition continues with the 2023 release of Rogue City, which canonically takes place after RoboCop 2.

Within a first-person viewpoint, the game wastes no time thrusting you into this viscous world as RoboCop and his no-nonsense partner Anne Lewis plow through a TV station being held captive. As he steps foot through the entrance, the trigger-happy thugs greet the cyborg with a hail of bullets. Here, you gain control in the very first combat scene, and the devs knew what players wanted right away; as you aim with his trusty Auto-9 gun, Murphy's vision will mark all nearby enemies, just like in the movies, making it easier to blow them all away. Literally. If you hit a head, it pops, if you shoot an arm enough times, it'll blow off in a bloody mist, and if you destroy someone's crotch, you'll get a PS5 trophy. And all this carnage unfolds as the iconic main theme plays on.

While firing the hand cannon is gratifying, you also have several methods for eliminating scum, such as dropped weapons like assault rifles or the Micro SMG. While these have limited ammo compared to your default gun's unlimited use, they get rid of enemies quicker, which is useful when there's a ton of them in a small crammed room. And if you're feeling sassy, you can walk up to a foe and punch their face in or, more hilariously, grab and throw them at someone. There's also specific environmental objects at your disposal, such as computer monitors, chairs, and even dumpsters that can be tossed, and a dangerous amount of gas containers laying about; if you like body parts comically flying about in your violent video games, this one gives you many opportunities.

But Rogue City is not just a string of shootouts; between the action, RoboCop is placed in spacious environments, whether it's a multi-floor police station or a steel mill. The majority of locations aren't open world or even really sandbox in nature, but they are big enough for you to complete several multi-layered objectives if you don't strictly stick to the main story missions. Most side quests start very "innocently," such as finding a working payphone to call a drug dealer. However, this call quickly turns dire when someone shows up to the dealer's apartment menacingly. This spirals into arriving at the building and scanning his place for clues, which eventually concludes with talking the dealer from jumping off the roof.



The thing about the roof incident is that you can pick from choices to convince him down, and this goes for most conversations that involve a crime or a disturbance in progress, big or small. One such small example is someone playing loud music in front of a small store, and you're given two impactful choices: threaten to rough them up or destroy their boombox. Another incentive for doing these tasks is for experience points, which you also obtain when finding stolen items or during combat with expert kills. When you reach a new level from experience gains, you get one point, which you use to fill a slot in a skill tree. The increase in skill ranges from health and combat, to scanning and psychology, with every few slots granting a special ability, such as stunning enemies or unlocking safes without codes.

With mentions of dialogue choices, experience points, skill trees, and a sci-fi dystopian setting, this sounds like similarly-released games that are big in scope; tone down your expectations if you think this to be just as huge. However, even with it being more linear and smaller scale, the game still works, and it's mainly due to the devs handling the IP with respect. The RoboCop world is bleak with everyday violence, cynicism, corporate greed, and what have you, though the satire and other minor silly moments help in alleviating some of the misery. But then there's RoboCop himself: despite his struggles with mortality, despite interference from OCP to make him more machine, he still carries out his matter-of-fact justice for the repressed and unheard, because he represents the hope in humanity.



The Rogue City team have taken these concepts and successfully transformed them into a video game version of the movies. Murphy relentlessly destroys anyone who points a weapon at him or an innocent, but also takes the time to serve his community; whether it's giving a stern warning about littering or helping an informant lecture a young kid about using a gun for the wrong reasons, nothing is ever beneath Robo when it comes to helping. He does this while occasionally delivering a witty one liner, and it doesn't hurt that the original actor, Peter Weller, returns to voice the cyborg.

The devs have also payed close attention to the "near future" aspect as depicted in the first two movies, which were released in 1987 and 1990. They easily could have updated some of the technology to reflect what we see at the time of the game's 2023 release, but staying true to the IP's time frame, you'll see stuff like VCRs and bulky computer monitors with floppy disk drives. The fashion sense is also noticeably from the 1980s, with tight jeans, leather coats with spikes, and dyed mohawks aplenty. Shoot, they even recreated the restrooms in the OCP Tower... and yet nothing even happens in there; it's just a corner of the building that you can wander into. The dedication!



Though, if you're purely just a player looking for something neat to play, which isn't as long as some modern action-adventure games tend to be, then this will indulge you for about 20 or so hours. However, if you want to extend your play time, there's also harder difficulty settings and even a new game plus to satisfy those needs. As for fans of the series: this is a love letter. Of course, there have been many games released prior to this, but Rogue City is easily the closest it has come in terms of portraying every aspect of the franchise's universe in video game format; if you want to play as RoboCop in his best showing yet, don't pass on this.

Community review by dementedhut (September 05, 2024) T.J. Lazer would be proud.