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RoboCop: Rogue City games preview – Punchy and faithful retro blast

Peter Weller returns as the heavily armoured rozzer in this mainly first-person affair

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RoboCop: Rogue City games preview – Punchy and faithful retro blast

Considering the huge cultural impact of Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 dystopian movie RoboCop, it’s somewhat surprising that this cybernetic sleuth has barely made a dent in the gaming landscape. Aside from a venerated 1988 arcade game (and its numerous successful 8-bit conversions), the only notable release since was a strange hybrid adaptation of the execrable RoboCop 3.

Set between the second and third films, RoboCop: Rogue City is a faithful recreation of the sights and sounds of Old Detroit. The titular character’s every footstep is accompanied by its trademark thud, while his pistol sounds are on point, and its game features are faithful recreations of the films’ famous settings, including a fully explorable facsimile of the police precinct. Although it’s played in first-person (which allows some neat HUD and cracked screen effects), cutscenes play out in third-person to show off RoboCop’s authentic modelling.

While its mid-budget limitations are sometimes obvious (particularly its script which is a world away from the part comedy/part searing anti-Reaganomics of the first film), it helps that they’ve coaxed Peter Weller back in the title role, even if his performance isn’t quite as nuanced as it once was. Combat is punchy, although it’ll need to scale up the difficulty to present a decent challenge. If fans temper their expectations then this should prove to be a nice retro blast. 

RoboCop: Rogue City is released on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, Thursday 2 November.

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