This was a game I had seen good things about and it was firmly on my list to acquire at one point or another. So when it became one of the games included in the monthly line up from PS plus I was pleasantly surprised. As more often then not I either already own or have no interest in what is available.
Now I won’t say I’m a massive RoboCop fan I have seen the original films years and years back but I can’t recall a lot of what happens. So to some degree this is very much all new to me again. I know there is general complaint of how the series went from the second film as to why I’m not sure. This game looks to rectify those issues and then some.
For me this game was a real treat for several reasons. The biggest is the overall aesthetic and world design. The game highlights the use of the unreal 5 engine, showcasing some particular highs of its capabilities. Thus allowing for some real crisp looking graphics. It’s a generally a decent looking game but not across the whole board. The eponymous robocop himself looks incredible and I do believe it’s the original actor who voices him as well for that added level of nostalgia, if not highlighting nuanced authentic details. The environments looks great from the reflections in the glum puddle laden streets of old Detroit or the dull 80’s styled offices of the police precinct that acts as the central mini hub of game. Now it could be that Cyberpunk takes some visual nods or acts as homage to the original films as I often thought how the vibes of the game made me think of Night City. Which is no bad thing considering how immense Cyberpunk 2077 is.
There are some graphical drawbacks such as how the NPC’s look janky as fuck and their dreadful clunky movement or facial animations in cutscenes. When you’ve got some decent voice acting going on and the face of the character moves like a robotic poundland sex doll it’s a tad off putting.
The game took me around 15 hours to fully complete and pick up the platinum trophy. All of which are easily obtained via just playing the game. Well three are tied to a highscore on the shooting range and one is clearling a warehouse of enemies under 10 mins.
Both of those extra trophies are easily obtained late in game with the upgrade system and the interchangeable PCB boards for ol’ Robo’s gun. The upgrading system is a slightly lacking but does the standard of upgraded health, damage, armour etc. Then every couple notches you get an extra boon like focus where you can slow time down for a bit or extra health replenishment slots. The gun upgrade system is a bit convoluted and as far as I’m aware, unless I’m being thick as shit, the game doesn’t really explain how it works. Which in itself is a weird choice, as you plod along and I say plod as you walk like you’re scraping dog shit of you shoe and the run option doesn’t increase speed all that much. Even if it’s for immersion a bit of a faster pace wouldn’t hurt the game any. Now back to the PCB upgrades you have an option to find different boards that come with specific tailored builds as it were and as you, ‘plod’ around you find crates with chips that are used to upgrade fixed stat percentages. As you plop these chips in you can then get say fully auto fire, no reload which is a god tier build may I add, board 5.3 look out for it. Helps with the highscore trophies as well. You can however activate the red nodes which add a minus valuation. They are useful but I think it could’ve been implemented better. As these don’t help for any weapon you can pick up along the way they have set damage, clip capacity and fire rates.
There isn’t a whole lot to the story it’s pretty much the standard bad guy trying to stop Robocop for revenge reasons whilst ruining it for everyone else along the way. The missions are linear and have no deviation. A couple of side objective will pop up but ultimately it always falls to go here shoot the ever living shit out of everyone, move on. It does enough to get the game form point A to B you can trudge through Detroit three times in between a couple of main missions. Where you can do a couple of side missions or hand out fines to the citizens. This is an aspect of the game I think could’ve been fleshed out more as if you got rid of it outside of maybe some easy XP it doesn’t do anything for the game. I’d argue that it’s a shame as it really could’ve made the game slightly longer for the better. There’s a couple of open dialogue options that appear and can attribute to the ending you unlock but again the developers could easily just have a set ending if it wasn’t there.
The shooting in this game is gloriously gorey in the best ways. The violence reminds me of Fallout where you just exploded everything leaving blood and viscera everywhere. There’s even a nod to the first film where you get a trophy for shooting someone square in their johnson. What’s not to love about that. You can pick up a plethora of extra guns from pistols, rifles, grenade launchers even explosive round snipers. You can only carry one extra gun which can’t be held permanently either, again a separate upgrade branch would’ve made sense here as some of these weapons are straight up trash. You have to basically act as a sponge in all shootouts as there’s minimal cover and now way to crouch or hide around corners for covers which is a bit detrimental late game with how many enemies start appearing. The second to last mission really started to lag causing some very noticeable dips in frame rates as a direct result.
Overall I’d rate this a hefty 7/10, Positively Tasty.
From all accounts this is a very faithful representation of the original films and as such I think some of the niggling points may come from the developers not wanting to ruin that. The shooting is fun and responsive but lacking in depth, the game is probably near perfect length for what it is. It looks good to great most of the time. A bit more side content along with better versions of the two upgrade trees available would help really cement this game if there is plans for an official sequel. This isn’t to say this game is bad or lacking in enjoyment. I had a really good time with it in 1 to 2 hour chunks. Nothing overstays its welcome and delivering justice in an uber violent shower of blood and guts is immensely satisfying as it is disturbing.
Released 2nd November 2023 on Sony Playstation 5.
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