In the absence of genuine AAA titles, I’ve tried squeezing some form of light relief into my stressful daily grind amidst stacks of graphics cards and other power-hungry gadgets. “RoboCop: Rogue City”, the latest endeavor meant to overshadow the golden days of PC gaming, turns out to be more shadow than entertaining enlightenment itself. Or to put it bluntly: here’s another failed attempt to cast any significant shadow at all. As a die-hard PC gamer, of course, I couldn’t miss out on this gem, hoping against hope to find something not directly lifted from the wildest dreams of a retro aficionado. Fat chance and endless yawning!
Let’s start with the graphics, which are (whether indoors or out) so breathtaking they almost hark back to the visual splendor of a game from the early 2010s. Unfortunately, it’s as if the developers decided, with a smirk, that the 80s aesthetic deserved a revival not just in the story but in the graphical presentation as well. A bold step back to the future, or rather, into the past? After all, the textures are even flatter than the plot and the wooden dialogues of a metallic trash can in a plasticky 2D world. This propels us (along with the obligatory voice of Peter Weller) into a static freeze, almost making us forget we’re in a world stuck graphically somewhere between nostalgic glorification and an urgent need for a hardware upgrade.
The gameplay is hardly gameplay at all, and we shouldn’t even exaggerate by calling it that. The shootouts, favoring quantity over quality, are so trivial it makes one wonder if the developers might have accidentally unearthed a time capsule from an era when “Duck and Cover” was considered the pinnacle of tactics. The whole thing is unsurpassed in banality and booze-soaked shooting gallery charm. And what’s the prize for today? The mix of endless ammunition and the ability to fling enemies and countless objects across the room with the childlike finesse of an aging Terminator adds a nuance found only in the deepest dreams of arcade nostalgia. You’d have to force yourself to see the beauty in it or better yet, not bother at all.
But wait, there’s more than just mindless bang bang! There’s the so-called detective work – a supposedly engaging aspect of the game so captivating it almost makes one wish to play an old “Point-and-Click” adventure classic instead. Sometimes you get to search for a yellow towel in the police shower (how thrilling) or go around collecting signatures. Or, you might actually get to go outside. Hooray! The investigations then lead you, with clouded senses, through the dystopian city of Detroit, where you can solve crimes with the precision of a digital Sherlock in his final stage, or not. Discovering that all it takes is pressing a button to scan the entire scene fills every hardcore gamer with a sense of achievement only surpassed by successfully installing a Creative audio driver.
This walking tin can on steroids, with its clumsy hopping, elegantly disguises the fact that you might not have as many FPS as you’d like. The robot is the embodiment of being’s deceleration, where the occasionally clunky graphics can be elegantly hidden. And so we arrive at performance. A true delight for anyone who cherishes the days when “optimization” was but a distant dream in the minds of software developers. On a PlayStation, it might run “mostly well,” but we PC gamers know there’s nothing better than taming the settings so the game doesn’t turn into a slideshow while nostalgically remembering the times when games were delivered on CDs and one was proud if one’s computer exceeded the minimum requirements.
In short and not so sweet: “RoboCop: Rogue City” is a game that reminds us how far we’ve (fallen) come – and sometimes, how much we miss the simplicity of the past. It’s a shameful tribute to a time when games were just games and didn’t try to be cinematic experiences. It seems to be an absolute must for anyone longing to roam the streets of Detroit with an Auto-9 in hand, wondering if it wouldn’t have been better to invest that money in a new graphics card. Or to shoot oneself, for squandering money so senselessly. Recommendation to buy? Probably not.
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