Going into my preview of RoboCop: Rogue City at , I had a clear image💎 in🍰 my mind of what I thought it was going to be - a simple third-person shooter with an OCP coat of paint, a ton of references to the movie (and hopefully not too many to the sequels), and some squishy nutshots.
As a big fan of the original film and someone suffering from sleep-deprived day-three Gamescom brain, 🍌all I real൩ly wanted from Rogue City was to jump into the metallic boots of Alex Murphy for a little bit and feel like RoboCop. Nothing more, nothing less.
While Rogue City certainly succeeds at doing that, I was surprised to find that it’s also so much more. Yes, you’re doing the whole “Dead or alive, you're coming with me” bit and blowing creeps away with surprisingly satisfying arcade shooting, but you’re also making decisions that affect the story, investigating crime scenes, and upgrading RoboCop with a dense skill tree. It’s the closest thing to a RoboCop simulator there’s ever been and one of the most memorable titles I played at Gamescom.
My demo started with Alex Murphy rocking up in the middle of a bank heist and doing what he does best - busting in and bus💖ting heads. I immediately wiped out a row of baddies with headshots from my Auto 9, b🐷efore lumbering forward to grab another dirty criminal and toss him around like a bag of meat, all while getting shot from every direction and not feeling a thing. The last lawbreaker saw his end after I used my special targeting function to shoot a metal plate behind him and bounce a bullet through his brain.
That was all in the first five minutes of my time with Rogue City. The rest of my session saw me throwing motorbikes around, punching enemies across the room, and skillfully popping headsho💖ts like it was nothing at all. Teyon has nailed how RoboCop feels here - he’s slow and tanklike, but he’s also dressed to the nines with useful tech and feels near-inviꦰncible against a bunch of goons.
As great as all that wanton murder… er, I mean, upholding the law, was, the best part of my demo came when I was told to take a look at RoboCop’s skill tree. I was met with a baffling amount of options that not only hinted at a ton of variety and customisation for RoboCop, but also came with a minigame of sorts where I had to direct the right amount of power towards upgrades in order to feel the full effect of them. Considering how powerful RoboCop already felt, I was pleasantly surprised with how many options there were and eager to tr🌠y them all.
The surprisesꦿ kept coming as I r🏅eached the bank’s offices and ran into a journalist, who had figured out some kind of conspiracy regarding the heist. Here, I was given the choice to follow one of my prime directives by apprehending her for breaking the law or let her go and see Alex Murphy’s human side shine through a little.
I, of course, chose to 🥃apprehend her and push RoboCop further into being more machine than man, but I’m intrigued as to what would have happened if I had let her go. I was told that the player’s choice𒁏s can impact the ending and which characters are kept around, which is a level of depth I wasn’t expecting after I just spent the last 15 minutes turning a bunch of baddies into goo.
The rest of my demo was focused more on shooting and action as RoboCop made his way out of the bank and into the mean streets of Detroit, but I was told there was a lot more to the game, like investigation sections where RoboCop has to gather clues to solve crimes, side missions that can be solved through less violಌent means, and some open environments to explore.
How well that’ll integrate with the arcade action of the rest of the game is something I’ll have to wait for the full release to see, but it sounds incredibly promising. My time with Rogue City proved that it has the chops to be a satisfying RoboCop-themed shooter, but it’s the bits𓆉 that I wasn’t expecting like the massive skill tree and dialogue options that jumped it up my list as yet another big game to look out for later this year.