RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business Review – Prime Directives Ignored

RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business on PS5 Pro

The feeling of overwhelming power and adrenaline coursing through your veins as you take down bad guy after bad guy is one of the best experiences in video games, and it was pretty well realised with 2023’s RoboCop: Rogue City. Now, imagine going full-on into criminal-killing mode for about 8-10 hours, and you have yourself RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business, the standalone follow-up from Tayon and Nacon.

Instead of cleaning up Old Detroit, the game now places you on a rampage through the fortress that is OMNI Tower, challenging players to shoot first and ask questions later with nonstop action. On one hand, if you were a big fan of stepping into those metal boots previously and dispensing justice, that’s exactly what you are going to get here.

However, on the other hand, that means RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business is essentially one-note, as there isn’t enough variety here in terms of design, weapons, or enemies to keep the attention for long. It is always exhilarating to explode enemy heads and shoot bad guys in all the right places, but surely having more ways to do so would make for a more enjoyable romp?

One Pistol to Rule Them All in RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business

The Auto-9 pistol is the main culprit here, as it feels just too good not to wield. With unlimited ammo and different ways to upgrade it, just like in the main title, everything else just pales in comparison. There’s no need to bother with other types of firearms when RoboCop is right at home with this trusty firearm, ricocheting bullets off surfaces and sending the trash to meet their maker.

And the rogue’s gallery offers little resistance to such power, with only the mechanical foes standing a chance to go toe to toe with Peter Weller’s hulking justice cyborg. That’s where that slow-mo comes into play, turning dangerous situations into shooting galleries full of those neon green overlays synonymous with the series.

Aside from all of that, the way OMNI Tower is structured also has some issues, mainly in terms of plain, dull corridors that are aplenty throughout RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business. Sure, there are a few occasions where things are spiced up, such as dropping you into a retrolicious arcade or even a literal trash heap, but those are few and far between. It dampens the mood entirely when you are just stomping through bad guys in an uninspired environment.

It may cause you to miss perhaps the best part of the entire experience, where you are given the reins of an iconic foe and let loose among the delinquent population. Bullets and rockets go flying everywhere, and the sheer amount of destruction is certainly an affair to savour. It makes an impression, one that hopefully more fans would get to taste by sticking with the rest of the game.

Reliving Memories

I also appreciate the rare chance to step out of the corporate building and into the memories of Alex Murphy. Flashback missions give us more of a glimpse of his humanity before his transformation, and there are also nice tidbits here and there to flesh out the lore of the franchise that fans would undoubtedly appreciate. It will take some getting used to not being all-powerful, but it feels like enough is done to balance the combat for the narrative addition.

Speaking of the narrative, RoboCop himself shoulders much of the responsibility, with Weller once again stellar in his performance and delivery. Be it one-liners or comments about the current predicament, it is easy to feel like part of the universe when the hero is speaking. Unfortunately, for everyone else, the quality is just not the same, which means the sooner you get away from these characters or blow their heads off, the better.

In the same vein, our protagonist looks every bit the expensive product that he is. Still, even on the PlayStation 5 Pro, RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business struggles at times to handle the action on screen. There are dropped frames, audio issues, animation snafus, and even crashes that send you back to the console menus. Hopefully, these will be fixed in due time, but at this juncture, justice may just have to wait.

I’d Buy That For a Dollar

Comparing RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business to the original game, it does make sense that it is a separate entity altogether. After all, shooting is always fun, but it doesn’t help that everything else, like the supporting cast, the lacklustre level design, and the performance issues, are not of the same calibre. Stick around if you like wanton violence, but if you are looking for the soul of the franchise, you’d best stick to the game that started it all.

RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business is available now on PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X|S.