RoboCop: Rogue City Reviews
Robocop: Rogue City's fantastic shootouts are held back by a dull narrative and bloated pacing.
RoboCop: Rogue City is a pitch-perfect throwback to the action movies of the ‘80s. It’s over-the-top violence with charm, largely well put together but rough on the edges. Most importantly, it's a fun way to spend time in a beloved fictional universe that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Blasting at goons as an unstoppable walking machine remains as extremely entertaining as it seemed on the big screen, thanks in part to an impressive commitment to capturing the look and feel of the original film. Mixing in elements like routine police work and side quests does a great job changing the pace, too. Even if it’s not the best example of visual fidelity, and prone to some bugs along the way, that love of RoboCop shines through. This is a solid B movie of a video game, which is exactly what the source material demands.
Teyon blends bloody linear shootouts with light open world action for an entertaining, if unadventurous, RoboCop experience.
Even if Rogue City had started to rust a little towards the end of its lengthy campaign, its surprisingly in-depth shooting and roleplaying mechanics, love of the source material, and keen understanding of what makes RoboCop so great in the first place has made it one of the biggest surprises of 2023 for me. In a year full of absolute bangers, make sure you spend some time in Detroit.
Robocop: Rogue City reflects its protagonist's qualities. It's well-built and robust, a few glitches aside, and capable of triggering explosive action. Yet it's also mechanical in its design, its dialogue slow and plodding, and limited in its forms of interaction. Short on engaging mission design and the film's punchy satire, Detroit's finest needs better backup to enliven this drawn out adventure.
Hopefully, updates will stamp out these issues because RoboCop: Rogue City provides a respectable adventure that feels like a long-lost shooter of the early 2010s in mostly good ways. Admittedly, the license carries the game through its rougher patches; if you’re not a RoboCop fan, the adventure may feel dated or buggy compared to other shooters. But as a B-tier love letter to the tin man in blue, Rogue City is a nice return to the limelight for Alex Murphy.
RoboCop: Rogue City is a methodical shooter that makes you feel like Old Detroit's greatest crime fighter, but it errs when its devotion to authenticity wanes.
The only thing malfunctioning around here is the economics of game production. And from that struggle, under circumstances that echo those of the original movie’s troubled production, a brilliant piece of work emerges, that somehow nails every part of the brief and finally proves that Robocop can inspire worthy sequels. And if it didn't look a bit ropey sometimes, I doubt it would feel like Robocop: a stop-motion ED-209 falling down some stairs is goofy as hell, after all, but none of the CGI perfect ED-209s in the 2014 remake ever did anything goofy, and it was crap. So. Y'know.
RoboCop: Rogue City is easily the best RoboCop game to date.
A first-person shooter that is clunky by design.
Bloody and crass, but also occasionally very human, Robocop: Rogue City is the most faithful adaptation of the movie universe we've ever had.
RoboCop: Rogue City is a game dripping with love and appreciation of the source material, made by RoboCop fans, for RoboCop fans. But frustrating late game combat and clumsily resolved story beats raise questions of whether it's for everyone else, too.
Robocop: Rogue City is an argument that not only can licensing IP work well in smaller-scale games, but given the right combination of creativity and focus a more dormant IP can be especially effective. A property like Robocop does not have a clear position in pop culture right now, beyond the obvious late-80’s movie nostalgia. But the team at Teyon, with a combination of awareness and sincerity, definitely found one. I had so much fun blasting through waves of jabronis and laughing at Robocop’s earnest policing antics. In a crowded year like 2023, Rogue City is an unexpected gem.
It's a far cry from being the shooter of the year, but it has a nostalgic "I don't know what" that makes you want to play, especially if you freaked out with the uninhibited action of the movies.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
RoboCop: Rogue City is an old school shooter that aims primarily to entertain fans of the franchise, who will have the chance to fight crime in the role of the robotic vigilante. Teyon's new project is good enough to provide more than a dozen hours of fun, between gunfights and investigations to solve. Despite the use of Unreal Engine 5, the visual experience of RoboCop: Rogue City is not the best although the direct involvement of Peter Weller.
Review in Italian | Read full review
I feel like RoboCop: Rogue City is a terrific game. To use the obvious reference: I’d buy that for a dollar. I can see myself playing through its 15-20 hours again, not necessarily to check out things I may have missed, but simply to re-experience the world it presents. I know that it almost looks like something that belongs in the scrap heap, but if you’re able to look past its rough exterior and exposed seams, you might see the heart that beats underneath. Teyon did a fantastic job with the resources they had, but they’re only human.
Robocop: Rogue City certainly looks the part, but beware of this gleaming, shiny, polished graphical exterior; it hides mechanical insides that are rust-riddled and broken. Dead or alive, this game definitely shouldn't be coming with you.
RoboCop: Rogue City may not boast the high production quality of a top level “AAA” videogame, but it’s more fun and shows more sincerity than most of them put together. What it lacks in polish it more than makes up for in its provision of fuss-free action with immensely satisfying weaponry alongside the occasional glimmer of witty writing. It’s nowhere near as beautifully satirical as the film from which it sprung, but it’s still made with clear love for the original, as well as a ton of sincerity.
Despite a few things that might feel off, Robocop: Rogue City is likely the closest we'll ever get to the original movie. Like Robocop, the game has a few issues but ultimately gets the job done.