Tag: Teyon

  • Review: Robocop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business (Xbox Series)

    Review: Robocop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business (Xbox Series)

    Robocop: Rogue City slowly grew on me even though it felt too inconsistent and unpolished towards the end. It was another RPG-shooter hybrid from Teyon that I’d add to a list of great “7/10” games – the type I’d sooner replay than many objectively better “AAA” blockbusters when weighing up fun vs. time investment required.

    Like Terminator: Resistance before it, Rogue City nailed the look, sound, and tone of the original Robocop film – even if the gameplay structure and storytelling was a generation behind. Fittingly, Unfinished Business feels like the chunky expansions you would see on PC or consoles during the 2000s. It offers a new story in a fresh setting, but it has clearly been built using the same template, it repurposes many assets, and it retreads a few set-pieces.

    Robocop: Rogue City - Unfinished Business Prologue

    Dead or dead, you’re coming with me!

    As a standalone expansion, you don’t need to play Rogue City, but it gives the opening sequence more impact and provides a shared trauma that links Murphy to the new antagonist – a relationship that’s fleshed out in the first exciting flashback mission. There’s an attempt to connect new characters to the original Robocop program that I don’t have a problem with, but Teyon has taken the lazy route of killing off most of the officers you got to know in Rogue City to avoid continuity issues with the films.

    I thought the opening would be used to generate a degree of sympathy for the antagonist and their motivation, but as they’re clearly responsible for attack on the station and go on to commit more atrocities against civilians, there are no grey areas that leave the player questioning Robocop’s trust in established law. The scientist working alongside him fares slightly better, but her redemption arc feels rushed.

    Robocop: Rogue City - Unfinished Business Flashback Mission

    Once again, Unfinished Business does an incredible job using the environment design, audio, and soundtrack to recreate Paul Verhoeven’s vision of the future, but the voice work is inconsistent (including some of Peter Weller’s lines), many NPCs look dated, and the lip-syncing is terrible throughout. It also feels like Teyon rushed the ending again, relying on increasingly short and badly edited cutscenes.

    There is world-building banter, environmental storytelling, and a handful of side missions that highlight how morally bankrupt and corrupt the OCP is, but the delivery feels disjointed as you shift between narrative-heavy sequences and the sensation of being locked into room after room full of enemies. There are a handful of recurring NPCs that they can die or offer slightly altered conversations based on your choices, but the lack of an evolving Detroit district or Metro West hub strips out one of the best elements of Rogue City. Despite a strong start, the story begins to feel like an afterthought that was hurriedly pieced together for the ending.

    Robocop: Rogue City - Unfinished Business Auto-9 Combat

    Putting the corridor back into corridor-shooter

    As with Rogue City, it was easy enough to forgive the storytelling flaws given how much enthusiasm Teyon shows for the IP, but how much you enjoy the gameplay loop will depend on how much you enjoyed the gunfights. If you tackle everything on offer, aim for a high rank in each mission, and play on harder difficulties, Unfinished Business is maybe 10 hours long – a little over half the length of the base game at half the price.

    That sounds fair, but 80% of the gameplay is a succession of shooting galleries, with the role-playing elements like investigations, dialogue choices, and character build often inconsequential. Even the walk, talk, and investigate sequences – which includes two dull flashbacks from the perspective of other characters – are paired back in complexity. They felt like padding that added little to the overall narrative that couldn’t have been covered in a brief cutscene.

    Robocop: Rogue City - Unfinished Business Drone Battles

    Part of the problem is that Unfinished Business is oppressively linear and, by virtue of the OmniTower setting, a literal corridor shooter with limited diversity and few memorable locations. You infrequently get the chance to pick one of two corridors; you can unlock a handful of shortcuts to briefly backtrack; and you encounter small hubs with simple sidequests that usually fall along the critical path. Even when you receive two or more objectives in different areas, you can’t progress until you’ve cleared them all, and the order in which you tackle them changes nothing.

    Robocop starts with the basic abilities of each skill tree unlocked this time, but character progression only affects the combat difficulty and never offers an alternate path or quest outcome. The same holds true for the dialogue choices and there are no ending variations. Now Rogue City’s narrative was never as divergent as it seemed, but you could shape Murphy’s personality. Unfinished Business feels too linear and too rigid in comparison.

    Robocop: Rogue City - Unfinished Business Grenade Launcher

    On the upside, the gunplay still feels immensely satisfying and treats Robocop like a walking tank. He shrugs off small calibre fire while picking out priority targets among common gangs and armoured mercenary forces, while he wades through waves of drones and Otomo androids proving part-man is better than all-machine.

    Aiming highlights enemies and hazards in a glorious, pixelated, retro-green; each pull of the trigger looks, sounds, and feels impactful; and there is plenty of exaggerated gore and meaty sound effects befitting the source material. Secondary weapons still feel redundant or too situational – including the new Cryo Cannon – when you have Robocop’s iconic Auto-9 Pistol that can be upgraded to annihilate almost everything. During the final hour, after a brief stint controlling an ED-209, I simply walked forward with my finger on the trigger, watching hundreds of enemies’ crumple or explode as the iconic theme played in the background.

    Robocop: Rogue City - Unfinished Business Headshots

    There will be trouble…

    Before wrapping up, there are two technical issues that need addressing. You might think linearity would make checkpointing a non-issue, but the autosave system is frustrating for the wrong reasons. The tiny and short-lived icon is easy to miss, and I often spent 10-15 minutes shooting through waves of enemies, rescuing an NPC, and completing objectives, only to exit and continue my game later and find myself back the beginning of the combat sequence. The other issue is that the Cryo Cannon – visually spectacular as it might be – tanks the framerate on even the premium consoles, to the point it affects input responsiveness.

    Those technical gripes aside, I ultimately enjoyed my time with Robocop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business despite flaws it shares with its predecessor. If more Robocop power-fantasy is what you’re after, Unfinished Business delivers with its satisfying gunplay and creative combat scenarios that spice up an otherwise repetitive gauntlet. On the other hand, if you enjoyed Rogue City’s downtime on the streets of Detroit or in the Metro West precinct, defining Murphy’s personality and relationships, Unfinished Business might struggle to hold your attention during long sessions spent plodding through corridors and shooting things.

    Pros:

    • The expansion once again captures the look, sound, and tone of Robocop’s dystopian future
    • The shooting is still immensely satisfying and lets you feel over-powered
    • The soundtrack is still incredible and elevates every scenario

    Cons:

    • The narrative quality and pacing are inconsistent
    • Non-combat gameplay mechanics have been paired back
    • Your dialogue choices and character build mean little

    Score: 7/10

    This review was originally published on Nexushub.

    Robocop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business was reviewed on PS5 using a code provided by the publisher. It is also available on PC and Xbox Series S|X.

  • Review: Robocop: Rogue City (Xbox Series)

    Review: Robocop: Rogue City (Xbox Series)

    Robocop: Rogue City is quality 7-out-of-10 fare – one of those games that lack the production values of an “objectively” higher-scoring “AAA” title but are often way more fun to play. As such, how much you enjoy it will depend on what you’re willing to forgive to finally play a good game based on an underutilised IP. It shares many of the same highs and lows as Terminator: Resistance, demonstrating a lot of passion and an obvious love of the IP. However, some great character interactions, solid shooting, an authentic sense of style, and a flashy new engine can’t obscure the disjointed campaign flow, limited mechanical depth, dated character models, and awful cutscenes.

    If you’ve watched the 1987 film recently, it’s easy to argue Robocop: Rogue City retreads too many themes. What makes us human and who gets to decide? Is the rigid application of laws truly just? Is there no end to corporate greed and the collateral damage it causes? Repetition, sure, but these themes make for some of the best interactions between Robocop and the supporting cast and they tie into a narrative role-playing mechanic that influences the fate of several characters and Old Detroit. That said, it’s no subversive masterpiece. Robocop guns down hundreds of gang members with no consideration for the socio-economic manipulation that pushed them into that life, and there’s no shortage of real-world examples that demonstrate trying to resolve violence with violence begets more violence.

    The events of Robocop: Rogue City take place after the second film, with resurgent gangs, an ongoing Nuke drug problem, and the OCP still looking for any excuse to replace the police force with robots and level Old Detroit to make way for their Delta City project. Robocop experiences more glitches during an attack on the Channel 9 building, so OCP inserts a chip to monitor his performance (tying into the progression mechanics) and assigns him mandatory therapy sessions (used to define, question, and reinforce your role-playing choices). He’s then let off the leash to investigate “the new guy in town”, a mysterious villain whom several gangs and mercenaries are vying to work for.

    This kicks off an interesting but poorly paced story that revolves around Robocop in more ways than one. A good chunk of the opening half is spent shooting through several gangs to interrogate their leaders; destroying more dysfunctional ED-209s; dealing with OCP’s ongoing efforts to undermine the existing police force; avoiding or engaging with mayoral election campaigns intent on using him for political goals; and uncovering an even deeper conspiracy within OCP that leads into a drawn out finale and a bizarre final boss that, I guess, is was somewhat foreshadowed. I know this is both a video game and Robocop is satirical sci-fi, but the plot is still full of contrivances, inconsistent logic, and sudden deviations that make it feel as though the script was written on the fly.

    That said, if you focus instead on optional missions and smaller moments between Robocop and Lewis, his fellow officers, the citizens of Old Detroit, and even the antagonists, you’ll find much better writing, unexpectedly touching moments, and get the chance to explore lovingly recreated spaces like the Metro West Police Station. Peter Weller’s voice and delivery add instant authenticity and, with the notable exception of OCP’s CEO “the Old Man”, the rest of the voice cast give it their all – even if most performances aren’t going to win any awards. During many of these moments, you choose Robocop’s response or actions, which don’t drastically alter the events you experience, but they do change how he perceives himself and how the cast interacts with him down the line.

    The problem is no matter how good Robocop: Rogue City looks – with incredibly detailed environments, destruction physics, realistic lighting, and exaggerated gore – the vast majority of character models look dated and stiffly animated, lip-syncing is all over the place, and the cutscene direction feels crude: think simplistic framing, awkward cuts, poor dialogue delivery, and shifting sound levels. Robocop’s model looks great, Weller’s delivery is perfect, and the soundtrack variations of the original theme are brilliant – but all that can’t stop many cutscenes robbing the game of the emotional impact the writers clearly intended.

    Now I’ve got this far without discussing the gameplay in-depth, and I’d argue that’s because there’s not a lot of depth – well, at least not enough when tackling all the primary and secondary missions takes almost 20 hours, alternating between corridor shooting galleries and repeat visits to a hub-like Old Detroit that evolves over time. Mechanically, Robocop: Rogue City is another RPG-shooter hybrid like Terminator: Resistance – albeit with less looting, crafting, and upgrading gear and a greater focus on satisfying gunplay based around Robocop’s iconic Auto-9 and his incredible resilience. There are simple dialogue and scanning-based investigations, but while some larger chapters and the Old Detroit hub often reminded me of Eidos Montreal’s Deus Ex games, Robocop is no Adam Jenson. Even if a mission starts off peaceful, it’s guaranteed to end in a gunfight.

    Thankfully, the shooting is solid, and Robocop: Rogue City nails the sensation of being half-man and half-machine, with the durability and manoeuvrability of a tank. I’d always laugh when yet another gang member or mercenary threatened Robocop and pulled out a handgun or rifle, as only high calibre rounds and explosives pose a significant threat. From the moment Robocop thuds into the Channel 9 building, draws his iconic Auto-9, and the classic theme kicks in, you’ll spend most of your time shooting enemies in the head, in the groin if they’re armoured, or in weak points if they’re robotic. Although you can carry another weapon in reserve, the customisable Auto-9 with unlimited ammo is your workhorse tool and clearly received the most attention.

    Firefights are dynamic and evolve to a degree, just not enough to sustain a campaign twice the length of the classic FPS that inspired it. Enemies with more armour, bigger guns, or special abilities are slowly introduced; environments are full of hazards you can throw at enemies, or throw enemies into; most secondary weapons are useful in specific situations; there are offensive and defensive skills you can put points into for incremental buffs and perks; and you can upgrade the Auto-9 using “PCB” omni boards and chips that feels like a less-intuitive variation of what we got in Terminator: Resistance.

    The problem is it takes hours to get impactful perks if you don’t take a min-max approach – think deadly ricochet shots, bullet-deflecting armour, and bursts of slow-motion actually long enough to be useful – while there’s a steady increase in the number of tank-ish enemies that offset their impact and drag out firefights. As I was blasting through an end-game gauntlet, about 18 hours in, I realised I was just going through the same motions on autopilot: pull the left trigger, smile as the CRT effect and targeting outlines appeared, pull the right trigger, watch heads or groins explode. Considered in isolation, most scripted firefights are entertaining, but there are a lot of them, and they all blur together over time.

    Now despite ending on a low note, Teyon still deserves plenty of praise for creating the best Robocop video game available, just as they did for the Terminator IP, and that makes this a must-play for fans of Terminator: Resistance. For those not part of that crowd, Robocop: Rogue City can still be a lot of fun if you’re heavily invested in the IP and can look past inconsistent production values or underdeveloped systems. It somewhat outstays its welcome but provides a unique opportunity to role-play a conflicted Robocop, violently prosecuting justice through a CRT filter, to a fantastic soundtrack. If nothing else, it might also convince you the IP could work in a dedicated narrative-adventure game.

    Pros:

    • Great interactions between Robocop and the secondary cast that revisit themes from the 1987 film
    • Recreated locations from the films and classic Robocop lines delivered by Peter Weller himself
    • A customisable and immensely satisfying Auto-9 that explodes heads, hands, and groins alike
    • A progression system that (eventually) unlocks some overpowered perks

    Cons:

    • Weird campaign pacing and contrivances
    • The emotional impact of many encounters is undermined by crude cutscenes and character models
    • Not enough mechanical depth to sustain a 15-20 hour campaign
    • No permanent CRT filter option and no New Game Plus

    Score: 7/10

    Robocop: Rogue City was reviewed on Xbox Series S|X using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC and PS5.

  • Retrospective: Terminator: Resistance

    Retrospective: Terminator: Resistance

    Initial reviews for Terminator: Resistance from traditional media were broadly negative but, within a few hours of launch, positive user reviews emerged. It didn’t take long before comment sections, Reddit threads, and several YouTube channels were full of positive sentiment – ranging from outright praise to cautious recommendations. As someone with a fondness for janky, mid-tier games that would never score higher than a seven, this piqued my interest.

    Perhaps as a testament to its underdog popularity, it took a long time for Terminator: Resistance to hit a price point I deemed suitable for a low-risk purchase. I eventually picked up the Xbox One version to play on an Xbox Series S – the release day experience, I guess? – and while I don’t begrudge my purchase, I found it a staggeringly middling experience elevated by one standout element.

    The storytelling is dated but it adheres to the canon

    Although the storytelling feels last, last-gen, one of Terminator: Resistance’s unexpected strengths is its strict adherence to the canon of the original timeline from the first two Terminator films. The date Skynet acquired sentience; Judgement Day; the formation of the human resistance; the emergence of Terminator Infiltrator models; the Time Displacement Equipment; the endless cycle of diverging futures – all these plot threads are accounted for a worked into its narrative.

    I had assumed Terminator: Resistance was going to avoid messing with canon by telling a stand-alone story set during the Future War but, by the midpoint of a 13-hour casual playthrough, it became clear Teyon developed it as a prologue to the films. John Conner makes an appearance (and Kyle Reese in the Annihilation Line expansion), there are references to other important figures in dialogue, and the protagonist – Jacob Rivers – participates in significant events that lead into the opening of both 1984’s The Terminator and 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

    The story itself is fine, with a few highlights whenever the game ditches the open-zone approach for more linear set-piece-style sequences, but the entire middle portion drags – especially if you’re tackling side missions. The tightly controlled opening sees Rivers saved from a Skynet ambush by a suspiciously knowledgeable stranger, who guides him towards a ragtag group of survivors that – after a few hours of hunting for clues – finally put him in contact with the local resistance. If you can tolerate the assortment of clichéd character archetypes, the opening provides several tense set pieces and some rapid relationship-building.

    The primary missions see you search through abandoned resistance outposts, sneak through a Skynet-controlled hospital to free some captured resistance soldiers, come face to face with the Terminator Infiltrator that has been tracking Rivers, take down an HK-Tank, and storm the central core. The more open zones offer no shortage of rudimentary fetch quests to raise the trust level of the civilian survivors that, in turn, reveal more of their backstory and the current state of the world.

    It’s a dated but familiar structure, however, the dialogue- and choice-driven role-playing elements feel half-baked. Regardless of the choices you make, or whether you complete or ignore side missions, 90% of the experience plays out in exactly the same way. There’s always an easy alternative as to why events can still occur as the central narrative and ending sequence is beholden to the first two Terminator movies.

    The longer you play, the more obvious it is that the civilian survivors are irrelevant to the overarching plot – yet account for the bulk of the role-playing moments. Any significant changes to their fate are mostly relegated to a narrated montage, while the system feels so transparent that it’s easy to get the “best” ending. When in doubt, be nice and always follow the stranger’s advice.

    Ultimately, they felt like an excuse to add “depth” to an incredibly basic choice-and-consequence system and the in-game impact is minimal. Two optional survivors you can save during the prologue just hang around in corners doing nothing. Completing a mission to find a puppy or chalk for the young survivor Patrick leads to a few visual changes in the shelter, but primarily serves to notch up the trust meter of his sister Jennifer. The same logic applies to the doctor, Erin, and mechanic, Ryan – with higher trust levels from completing side missions making it easier to influence their fate leading into the finale.

    Of course, no RPG is complete without romance options and both Jessica and resistance leader Baron fall neatly into the “damaged woman looking for a strong man” archetype. Your trust meter is also your ticket to potential romance – with one or both of them, Terminator: Resistance doesn’t judge. If you’re foolish enough to select the dialogue options with a heart next to it, you’ll be treated to some spectacularly bad first-person sex scenes – featuring music and moaning straight out of vintage pornography – serving as a reminder that fade-to-black is always the right choice in video games.

    A bit of this, a bit of that, all of it average

    So I’ve had a dig at the storytelling and limited choice-driven outcomes, but it’s the traditional gameplay mechanics that make and eventually break Terminator: Resistance. The best way to describe it is a scaled-back Fallout 4 set in the Terminator universe.

    It’s no open world but you explore smaller open zones sequentially as the story plays out and the situation evolves. You’ll interact with minor characters and even fight alongside small groups of resistance soldiers – typically impervious to harm until the plot decides otherwise. It features similarly janky shooting that never feels as responsive or precise as a dedicated FPS, at odds with the ability to hit weak spots to inflict critical damage. It’s competent enough – and maybe better when using a mouse and keyboard – but the focus is clearly on upgrading Rivers’ abilities and arsenal to produce bigger damage numbers.

    I feel part of that initial post-launch positivity has a lot to do with the opening hours. You’re stuck with an assortment of conventional human firearms that are fine for spider scouts and drones, but larger robots force you to get an angle on their weakspots to do significant damage. Although encounters are rare and heavily scripted at first, the hulking Series-800 Terminators are invulnerable to standard firearms and need to be stealthed past or, if you’re flush with crafting resources, pipe-bombed.

    If you up the default difficulty a notch to make all mistakes potentially fatal, the opening hours force you to explore the semi-open environments carefully, use the rudimentary stealth system to get a good angle before attacking, engage in hit-and-run tactics against groups of foes, and scavenge continuously to craft explosives and healing items. It feels like the kind battle resistance fighter would be waging and the Terminators prove a particularly terrifying enemy that, as a bonus, requires no complex AI. Once detected, they march doggedly towards you at a brisk yet unhurried pace, their red eyes and plasma shots emerging from the distant gloom.

    Of course, Terminator: Resistance has RPG-lite mechanics integrated into the gameplay too, so you’re constantly earning XP towards new levels and investing skill points into three branching but straightforward tech-trees (Combat, Science, and Survival). There are some powerful abilities at the end of each branch – think health regeneration or the ability to use Terminator weapons – but most are just incremental upgrades to damage done with weapons and explosives, increased toughness, more effective stealth, and improved efficiency when crafting, lockpicking, and hacking.

    In theory, this gives you some control over your character build but it doesn’t pan out that way. Firstly, skill upgrades are level-gated so you can’t super-specialise early on. Secondly, while you can prioritise your point distribution within these level brackets, there’s more than enough XP to unlock all but one or two skills by the finale. You become a powerful all-rounder irrespective of your preferences.

    Another unbalanced mechanic is the ability to upgrade plasma weapons by creating a sequence of three circuits, which offer buffs like increased damage, clip size, and fire rate. They come in different rarities, and the connector types you need to line up is randomised, but you can eventually loot or buy dozens of them, letting you tear through many Terminator types with ease by the mid-game.

    If I wanted to be harsh, I’d describe Terminator: Resistance’s mechanics as wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle. However, that relative simplicity in tandem with the short runtime work in its favour. Although the mid-game drags on for too long and returns you to the same regions too often, it remains a more-ish experience. Every outing means XP for new skills, access to new weapons, and a few new upgrades.

    The importance of looking the part

    So far, so six out of ten – but Terminator: Resistance has a trump card.

    Even accounting for the increased resolution and texture quality offered on PC, Terminator: Resistance is not a technically impressive or beautiful game – but it does have some style. I earlier compared it to a scaled-back Fallout 4 and that holds true for the visuals. The environments look dated and lack fine geometric details but the overblown volumetric lighting and depth-of-field are used to create an oppressive atmosphere and mask many limitations, like distant scenery.

    Although missions set during the day can look flat and washed out, most of your excursions are after nightfall when the world is drenched in shades of cold blue, lit by the harsh glare of fires, piercing spotlights, neon plasma colours, and glowing Terminator eyes.

    Character models are not particularly well-animated or expressive, but humans look suitably detailed and, most importantly, a lot of attention has been placed on recreating the iconic Series-800 Terminators, other recognisable machines like the HK-Aerial and HK-Tank, and the Resistance weapons.

    The soundtrack – unfortunately not available officially – is the true star of Terminator: Resistance. It feels like a diverse original score, not just a reworking of Brad Fiedel’s iconic themes, and could have been a perfect fit for the 1984 original or the sequel. It’s one part electronic rock, one part marching band drum beat, one part moody synthwave, and consistently incredible – well, aside from during the aforementioned sex scenes.

    It elevates almost every moment, regardless of whether you’re skulking through ruins hiding from the spotlight of an HK-Aerial; circling around the world’s least competent HK-Tank in an otherwise dull boss fight; or charging the defences around Skynet’s Time Displacement Equipment with a reprogrammed HK-Tank, dozens of resistance fighters, and neon plasma bursts crisscrossing overhead.

    Style over substance?

    Wrapping up, I can now appreciate how Terminator: Resistance has cultivated a modest but vocal fanbase, especially among fans of the original timeline movies. Hell, I’m even tempted to pick up the PC version at some point – though damn you Teyon for making that a requirement to play the Annihilation Line expansion.

    Terminator: Resistance reaffirmed my belief the audiovisual experience can’t carry a game, but it sure can elevate it. Sadly, in this case, it’s from a middling six-out-of-ten game to a mildly entertaining seven-out-of-ten – the sort of game that’ll always find an appreciative fanbase that might keep it popular enough to warrant a better sequel at some point.

    Between its adherence to events in the original timeline, neon-soaked colour palette, and satisfyingly authentic soundtrack, it’s by far the best Terminator game – or at least the best FPS Terminator game if you’ve got a soft spot for the 8- and 16-bit crossover titles. However, if you’ve got no nostalgic hook or limited playtime that you’d rather fill with only quality titles, you can easily give it a skip.

    Terminator: Resistance was played on Xbox Series S|X. It is also available on PC, Xbox One, and PS4/5 (and got an Enhanced edition for PC and current-gen consoles with a DLC campaign).