Robocop: Rogue City was a little game I had been aware of for a while, and I finally decided to play it not long ago. It was a flawed but fun game that I thoroughly enjoyed. When I saw that there was another game of the same ilk with a premise that resembled one of my favorite action movies from the 2010s, I was immediately interested. My expectations were higher this time around, but I was still hopeful for something that would capture the fun of the original game with a familiar premise.

Since Unfinished Business is very similar to the original Rogue City, it will be referenced a lot in terms of how things operate. Therefore, I’d recommend reading my review of that before diving into this one.

The Short of It

What I’ve Played

13 Hours
Story campaign to completion
ver. 1.0.3.0

Pros

Gives fans of Dredd (2012) a chance to play a similar story from Robocop’s perspective
Gunplay and upgrade systems mostly work just as well in this version of the game
New environmental kill animations and weapons
ED-209 section is fun
Still lots of charm from Rogue City’s presentation

Cons

Some of the RPG depth of the upgrade system has been lost or removed
Same presentation issues as Rogue City
Story and motivations of the villain are a little odd
“Modern game design” segments interrupt the experience
Pacing issues
Less customization options
Buggy gun upgrade towards the end
Seems like a watered-down DLC add-on that does not do much new or different from the original game

The Rest of It

Story

The Detroit police precinct has been assaulted by a group of mercenaries who managed to nearly wipe out the police force. Their motivations are not entirely clear, but we know that their main objective was to steal the machine that Robocop hooks into at the station. Robocop chases the group to a megatower that is filled with apartments, stores, laboratories, and other structures before the building enters full lockdown. No one can get in or out. It’s up to Robocop to make his way through the hordes of merciless mercenaries, saving civilians where he can, to the top of the building where the big boss responsible for all the excessive deaths awaits.

If you have seen the 2012 Dredd movie with Karl Urban, you might notice some similarities to the plot of that film and this game. Being an avid enthusiast of that movie, when I read the synopsis for Unfinished Business on Steam, I knew I had to pick this up eventually. Considering how much I enjoyed the original Rogue City, I figured the experience of that game’s mechanics mixed with a Dredd storyline would be pretty satisfying. For the most part, I was right. However, the plot has its issues, namely with its villain and a certain side character.

It takes a while until you find out who is in charge of the mercenaries. When you finally meet him, there’s a flashback sequence that is surprisingly tense and fun as you play as the human Alex Murphy, which means you aren’t as tough or durable as you usually are in combat scenarios. The villain is someone from Murphy’s past whose philosophy is relatively clear in terms of what he intends to do, but it doesn’t really make sense when you consider their background. To go from being someone who believes in law and order and the value of an officer’s life to then being willing to slaughter countless police officers and civilians to complete your goals is a bit of a stretch. I understand the “if you want to make an omelet” argument, but “that’s a lot of eggshells for a heel turn of this magnitude” is all I’m saying.

Still, if you liked the premise of Dredd, you would likely be lured in by the premise of Unfinished Business as I was. As you make your way through the tower, you’ll encounter different civilians and side stories that continue to build upon the established Robocop world with stories of strife and hardship in an unforgiving universe. The narrative and world-building fit right into a Robocop story just as well as Rogue City did. That being said, there is another problem with the game that is tied to a certain side character, but we’ll get to that in the Gameplay section.

Gameplay

I won’t go into too much detail about the overall gameplay loop of Unfinished Business, as most of it is carried over from the original Rogue City. If you want to know the basics about how the game plays, like shooting and whatnot, I again recommend reading my original review. Unfinished Business mostly builds on the foundation of Rogue City but doesn’t add too much to the structure. In fact, some material is removed.

While you still can upgrade Robocop in the same way as before, certain upgrade paths have been removed, and the points that could have been allocated in it are redistributed across all the other upgrade paths at the very beginning of the game. I would have preferred being given the option to choose where to invest those points rather than having the game make that decision for me, but oh well.

You’re still rewarded for exploration with plenty of secrets and upgrades to find throughout the various zones of each level. Some involve minor side stories, while others are just little secrets for you to find. Most of it only really amounts to more experience points at the end of a level, but there’s at least a little motivation to investigate an area to make sure you got everything.

As you progress, new enemy and weapon types are introduced. Since everything is taking place inside a building, there isn’t much room for enemies on motorcycles like last time. Now, there are flying drones, small explosive drones, and heavy gunner mercenaries with big guns that do a lot of damage. The shooting experience is mostly the same, with you having to be smart about when and where you take cover while making sure that you’re hitting the enemies in the right spot or with the right gun. Towards the end of the game, I was shocked and horrified to see a new enemy type that was a direct reference to that abomination, Robocop 3, but the less said, the better.

The gameplay of Unfinished Business is pretty consistent with that of Rogue City, but it feels a little stripped down, with not enough new material making up for the ways in which the story and environment take away from the RPG elements of the original game. The new enemies and weapons don’t really add much to the experience, and it would have been nice for Robocop to have gotten some new abilities that were more meaningful. The most significant new thing you can do as Robocop is an instant kill animation if you are close enough to an environmental element, like a circuit board or a vending machine. If you punch or throw a guy near one of these things, an animation starts in which Robocop will just shove them into the object, and the foe is dispatched, regardless of how much armor they have on. You’ll be able to tell which pieces of the environment you can use for these situations because they all have something highlighted in yellow to catch your eye, in that “modern game design” way to which we’ve become accustomed. Speaking of…

While I am only mildly annoyed/amused by the fact that we have yet another instance of the use of yellow in a video game to make the player notice something they can interact with—as though that’s something on my “modern game design” bingo card that I need to mark—the real downturn in Unfinished Business’ experience for me was with a couple of sections late in the game that are hallmarks of the modern video game. At multiple points, there is a flashback sequence. The flashback where you play as Alex Murphy was entertaining because it mixed up the combat and made things more tense because you weren’t as durable. Unfortunately, there are flashbacks later where you play as certain side characters. I say “play,” but they’re really just segments in which you walk/run around an environment and press E on the keyboard. Much like how I disliked the mission in Rogue City in which the game suddenly became a walking simulator for an extended period of time, I was really annoyed with these segments as well, but it was worse because I wasn’t even Robocop anymore.

Up to this point in the game, I was feeling mostly positive. I thought that it was still pretty fun and hitting the right notes, despite feeling like more could have been added to make the combat interesting. I was pretty neutral towards one particular supporting character until I got to these segments. Suddenly, I hated her just because of how much her story was interrupting the experience. The actual story told during these scenes does her no favors either, as it tries to give her a sympathetic back story that you’re forced to “play” instead of just making it a short cutscene. Multiple flashbacks are 15- to 20-minute sequences that are made longer because you’re forced to follow NPCs around as they talk about irrelevant crap that doesn’t do anything to move the story along in a meaningful way. Considering these sequences, along with another detour mission, take place towards the end of the game when the momentum should be building towards the climax, it feels out of place and really drags the pacing. By the time the second flashback started, I just wanted things to end.

Presentation

All of my Presentation pros and cons that were present in my Rogue City review remain true in Unfinished Business. That’s not giving the developers a pass, as I would have liked to have seen fewer performance issues than last time, considering the maps are generally smaller and the developers have more experience than last time making a game. If you don’t like texture popping or frame drops, you'd better either stay away or have an amazing processor and graphics card to make up for it because Unfinished Business still has plenty of it.

The last thing I’ll mention in terms of presentation/bugs is that I ran into a weird experience towards the end with the pistol. After getting an upgrade, the pistol basically turned into a never-ending machine gun that just mowed everything down. It then turned back into a normal gun at some point, but then reverted to the machine gun experience later. I don’t know which was the intended behavior, but the inconsistency was pretty annoying. There were other sections in which the mouse sensitivity got screwed up as well. There were just weird pockets in the game that messed with the experience and kind of brought down my opinion more and more, unfortunatley.

TL;DR

Robocop: Rogue City Unfinished Business takes what was established in the original game and tweaks a few aspects of it to minimal effect. The combat and exploration are still fun as the titular hero makes his way through a Judge Dredd scenario. Unfortunately, there are not enough improvements added to make the experience feel much better or new in the way that would warrant an easy recommendation. The way the story interferes with the experience, especially late in the game, does not help either. While I would still say I had fun with it, overall, Unfinished Business was a little disappointing by its end.

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