A completely fine, functional Katamari game. If you own a modern console, just buy the remasters of the first two games. If you already played those and want a new Katamari summer fix, this is a totally fine way to get that.

Really, the only problem with Beautiful Katamari is that it reuses so much from previous entries that it felt less like a new game and more like an opportunity to replay classic Katamari with some new requests.

But there's some great music, a few silly character moments with the King, a good couple of power trip levels to close things out, you know. Like I said, it's totally fine Katamari!

It makes me a bit sad though that if you really think about it, the Katamari franchise is two games and a bunch of half-baked (maybe three-quarters baked sometimes...) spinoffs. I really want a Crash Bandicoot 4/Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble-type sequel for Katamari. There's a lot you could do with this franchise (let alone the concept of rolling things up) and no one is really doing it. Hopefully the remakes are a step toward this goal.

Taken as a whole, this is an unbelievable video game.

You're telling me that a Polish studio got the original voice actor for RoboCop -- who is nearly 80 -- and got him to do a performance AS GOOD AS THE ONES HE GAVE IN THE FIRST TWO ROBOCOP MOVIES? You're telling me you made a full-length FPS where you lumber around as Robocop with big stomps everywhere you go, even during slow RPG sections? And you're telling me the game itself is actually damn good?

RoboCop: Rogue City is a narrative-driven FPS where you play as Alex Murphy in an original story that takes place between RoboCop 2 and 3. Using an infinite-ammo RoboCop sidearm (which you can modify and upgrade) and various FPS guns you pick up, you kill massive waves of enemies in levels themed after locations like an arcade, a rock concert, a prison, and more. Although the game gets tough at times, you generally cut through enemies like butter, rip them apart with bullets, and pick up and throw them like Gmod objects.

The power fantasy is fantastic, but it's not just that. You get optional quests during the game's slower sections where you basically turn into RoboCop Kiryu doing Yakuza substories in a Detroit city block. They're not entirely as silly in Rogue City, but they're close. On top of that, you get a ton of small choices (via dialogue options) that let you reflect on RoboCop and decide what kind of cyborg police officer you want to be.

What takes this game over the top is its environmental design, which manages to immerse you in its weird retro future dystopia like a kind of lo-fi Cyberpunk 2077. I would at times wander around a convenience store or a locker room at one of the game's open areas and just appreciate the sense of place here. You really feel like you're in RoboCop's Detroit.

The story, meanwhile, is surprisingly pretty good! It feels a bit like a Netflix 20-years-later sequel movie with a bunch of callbacks to the originals and admittedly less teeth, but Rogue City is ultimately fun enough that it manages to get over the line of "this feels like a lost RoboCop movie that deserves canonization." While there are a few small stumbles along the way (I don't really buy this game's characterization of Old Man + there are a lot of really bad American accents), you get more introspection and analysis into Robocop's psyche than any piece of RoboCop media I'm aware of -- and they actually do a really good job! The villain is quite good too.

In sum, RoboCop: Rogue City captures the 80s/90s sci-fi action movie vibe better than perhaps any game I've ever played, thanks to awesome power fantasy gameplay, a good story, impeccable environmental design, and an excellent lead performance from Peter Weller. For whatever nitpicks you could level here, this feels like a video game that has never existed before and should not exist in the first place.

P.S. Pls watch RoboCop and RoboCop 2 before playing this. Also in general.