The death of AA games has been (slightly) exaggerated. The folks at Teyon, makers of those Heavy Fire games you see littering the shelves at GameStop and that godawful Rambo game from 2014, have followed up their surprisingly good 2019 effort Terminator: Resistance with another surprisingly good FPS adaptation of a different 80’s sci-fi action film franchise.

Rogue City was clearly made with a lot of love of respect for the original and sticks close to its vision of a comically over the top retro-future dystopia. You can arrest a guy who will thank you for it because it means he gets guaranteed food and shelter. You can find memos from OCP, the evil megacorp that created Robocop, telling employees not to kill themselves because it will create more work for their coworkers. Early in the game there’s a quest concerning the filming of a TV commercial for a sunscreen so toxic that they have to have a stunt double put it on. It all feels like stuff that would be right at home in the original film.

While Rogue City does spend some time examining the tragedy of Robocop and his struggle to reconcile his past life with the not-quite human not-quite machine affront to nature he is now, its primary objective is to sell the fantasy of being Robocop, and it pulls that off in spades. Walking through fire, bullets bouncing off your armored body as you lay waste to legions of gangsters is never gets old, and Robocop has this ridiculous grab that can pick up objects from several feet away. Pick up explosive barrels and chuck them at crowds, snatch enemies off their motorcycles while they’re riding them and chuck them at other enemies and then throw the motorcycle at them too for good measure, the hundredth time you do it is just as fun as the first.

There’s a wide variety of weapons to use but you’ll start each chapter equipped with only one: Robocop’s iconic Auto-9 pistol (with unlimited ammo) and you’ll rarely need to use any other weapon. The Auto-9 has several motherboards you can find and freely switch between that each offer different boosts to its base stats and upgrades like explosive rounds, additional firing mode, and piercing bullets. I spent the latter half of the game rocking a full-auto with bottomless mags and max damage and accuracy, and it was like I was ED-209, and the enemies were that unfortunate OCP executive.
Speaking of ED-209, this game features 4 boss fights and all of them are lame. 3 of these boss fights are against 3 separate ED-209s, and they all boil down to “pummel its weak spot until it dies”, preferably doing so while standing in a sweet spot where you barely have to move to avoid its shots. The game is also a bit rough performance-wise. I noticed frequent texture pop-in and crackly, de-synced audio. During the final stretch of the last boss fight I suddenly lost the ability to aim, forcing me to reload the checkpoint which was all the way at the beginning of the fight.

Teyon has had quite the developer glow-up in recent years. This studio has spent most of its existence pushing out the kind of generic shovelware you see filling the bargain bins at Walmart or polluting GameStop shelves, but it seems they’ve really found their bag now, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t kind of excited to see what they might do next.

Great dick shooting simulator

But in all seriousness, Teyon really did a smart move by basically taking whatever lessons they've learned from their last 80s action icon adaptation Terminator Resistance Which i reviewed here and its expansion also reviewed here, And decided alright lets make the robocop sequel we SHOULD have gotten with this blueprint.

Basically take the gameplay from that terminator resistance infiltrator mode like throwing around enemies like bowling balls, the dashes, ripping enemy turrents into guns, the slow mo punch, etc. mix in some slow mo bullet time like in F.E.A.R or Trepang2 but with rigid movement (which is good in this case because this isnt 2014s reboot sleek robocop, this is OG TANKY SLOW WALKING robocop), destructible environments, ricochet bullets with your trusty Auto-9, some VERY light detective work (literally press and hold the aim button to scan evidence, Don't expect some L.A. Noire shit), and You get a game that makes you FEEL like robocop, its like Teyon looked at that old ass robocop game from titus and said "Ok lets not repeat the same mistakes and get an actual BUDGET this time" Because unlike with Annihilation Line where they unfortunately couldnt get michael biehn for kyle reese, They made sure to get Peter Weller for Robocop. It just wouldnt be the same without him. On top of that, Running on Unreal engine 5 with destruction physics and lumen lighting really makes this otherwise budget game look a lot more polished than their previous work. On top of being semi open world hub (just one town of old Detroit) with bombastic setpieces here and there. Including a shit ton of enemies from armored goons, to punks with gas canisters to turrents to OCP copbots to bikers to a handful of ED-209 bosses, Yes- Bosses, Plural. and all of em have a borderlands esque enemy intro detailing you what they are capable of.

And while the story isn't groundbreaking, and takes its sweet ass time to setup (if you do side missions as well, you WILL feel the length of this game), it is simple and sweet, even get to do little mini side stuff around the precinct and have dialogue options to make this game really feel alive and make ya care about the characters including newcomers like "pickles" the druggie fed informant, Ulysses, the rookie appointed by OCP, and Olivia blanche, a psychologist that you evaluate with at the end of most levels. What i didn't expect was all the glitchy trippy sequences where murphy is fighting within himself and his psyche as robocop to go all out and pull something straight out of condemned or that doctor who episode with the mannequins, or some screwed up visions while chasing down the main bastard. Im a sucker for those kind of sequences so of course, thats a plus.

But id forgive the long setup because of the payoff and when the payoff of just straight up chaos happening in the 3rd act of the story due to a major plot twist, thats when the game came into its own. Until it decides to drag it out near the end, it even had the triumphant main theme going on like with Terminator Resistance's last level.. On the 2ND to last level. Which just feel so damn bizarre to me where its like, shit i can really feel the runtime here. At the END of the game, which is weird because i thought teyon did have a better sense of pacing with resistance where it all came ahead to a satisfying conclusion, This was bittersweet where i was ready for it to end one mission before the final fight. Honestly, if they had save the theme for the final fight, i'd wouldve been super hyped but alas.

What also didnt help was the skill tree, now like resistance, this has a skill tree thats focused on Combat, Armor, Dialogue Deduction, Health, Movement, etc. Here's the thing, this is one of those games you'll have to play the new game plus to actually unlock the TRUE potential of the combat.

And i'd love to, if it wasnt for the frame rate drops, holy hell, Look i ran with this game with my rig which is a GTX 1660 super with an i5-10400f and with a DLSS to FSR mod which gives me more frame rates because my god, this is more shoddly optimized than terminator, which unfortunately is to be expected from a stutter engine 5 game but christ, It went into SINGLE digits during one section where you pick up a trash can and slide it across to activate all the landmines. The combat was great but damn did it feel like ass when everything was going on and my framerate TANK when its otherwise normal 100+ fps, on top of the open world sections having the same issue while linear levels is much smoother to play with.

But don't let that deter you from trying this game, You should try it but before i play this again and actually appreciate the combat with all the skills unlocked, i oughta play a patched version that doesn't CHUG the framerate hard while attempting to do so.

What it does well is the action and actually making it feel like you're in control of Robocop and not just a generic shooter with a Robocop skin. Though the parts that aren't shooting suffer for it. Constantly walking back and forth, at times where it really should just teleport you, at Robocop's snail pace.

The story is the dullest, driest and most long winded so far. And a lot of it is just repeating elements from the original film, but not understanding pacing. In the film, the scenes that focus on his family take up about 5 min or so, here it's at least 30 minutes. Maybe an hour. Endless cutscenes and walking through hallways with hallucinations. If you're gonna make a 10 hour long movie, you need something worth watching. And this isn't it. Like most games.

The game ran well at the start. But it seemed the further in I got, the less optimization there was, During some of the latter fights my fps dropped down to 25 fps. And the game really doesn't look impressive enough that this should be the case. As for copying the look it more than works, but it clearly needs some work to run properly.

And this really shouldn't be a 50-60 dollar game. I've completed it, 100%, and my play time is less than 10 hours despite the copious amounts of padding.

On paper, this game should not be as fun as it is. Video games from movie franchises are usually destined to fail and a SINGLE PLAYER FPS at that. That being said , Game was all fire. Killing Enemies (and there are plenty) never stops getting satisfying. The level up system keeps you engaged and toward the end I felt like the game threw just enough at you to feel OP but still will punish you if you play too reckless ( I played on Hard) . I did every side mission and beat in 25 hours but if you do only main missions you probably would finish way sooner for the game is not long. FUN ASS GAME