It is obvious that a lot of heart and soul went into making Robocop: Rogue City. This game nails the aesthetics and atmosphere of the first two movies. Thanks to Unreal Engine 5 the areas of this game look realistic and capture the style of desolate 80’s Sci-Fi Detroit perfectly. Advanced lighting and filter techniques make this look retro and modern at the same time. The same goes for frequent firefights with all kinds of bandits and robots. Partly destructible environments, over-the-top splatter and beautiful pyro effects also remind of the cult movies. Add the pushing original soundtrack and you have the perfect Robocop game, right? Unfortunately, the good points of my review end here. While Unreal Engine 5 is great for non-AAA development teams to make stunning environments, the same is not true for animation and character work. I have to admit, some of the major characters like Anne Lewis, Warren Reed and Robocop himself look rather good. But most minor characters don’t look good. It gets a lot worse with all the stiff animations. All of this wouldn’t be as big of a problem if Robocop: Rogue City concentrated on the rather fun, albeit dull and slow first-person-combat encounters. But with Rogue City the ambition was more: The developers wanted this to be a hub-based action-RPG with detective work and sidequests. And honestly, I was bored to tears with all the side activities, collectables, optional dialogue and “detective” work this game offers. Actually, there is no detective work, there is just following markers, holding down buttons and scanning areas. There are a lot of NPCs that offer dialogue with different outcomes depending on the player’s answers, but the writing isn’t good, the side characters are boring and the quests are just way too uninteresting. Then there are RPG elements like levelling up Robocop and his abilities which also feels pointless and unrewarding. There is even an unnecessarily complicated crafting system to enhance Robocop’s pistol.

Looking at the reception this game got, I know that I am in the minority. But in my opinion, the developers should have cut all the clutter from this game and concentrated on and improved the firefights. There was potential for a good and violent 6-8 hours romp here. But instead, I threw the towel after 8 hours of mostly boring busywork when I looked up a walkthrough and realised that I am not even at the halfway point. Games are just too long and bloated these days.