Thoughts on: RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business

Several years ago Polish development studio Teyon have shown a lot of promise with Terminator: Resistance. It was a great showcase of using the “middle-budget” kinds of money to create a great experience within a game world built around a movie license and while not without flaws, it (and its later DLCs) was highly enjoyable experience. That was followed up by RoboCop: Rogue City a few years later – a game that played quite differently, yet still fit wonderfully within the established movie world and provided a fun FPS experience where you play as, essentially, a walking tank. This game now has also received an expansion, however this time it was, for whatever reason, released as a standalone game – RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business. And it’s not a good follow up at all.

Being a standalone expansion and not a full game, Unfinished Business is considerably smaller in scale and ambition. Yet, it does attempt to hit every single gameplay beat from the main game nonetheless. You get all of the mechanics and systems, side-quests still exist, as do the dialogues with skill checks, even if the majority of the game is now completely on-rails and even more open locations are much smaller than they were in the original game. In terms of pure FPS action there are no compromises at all, in fact the game gets some new elements and also an incredibly fun gun to use, that was the only reason I ever wanted to switch off the trusty automatic pistol RoboCop is known for. The gameplay is still less about avoiding confrontation, and more about just walking into the crossfire, eating the damage, while shooting and exploding everything around you in a wonderful spectacle, carefully using special abilities and healing items when needed.

Unfortunately, while the pure FPS elements are as good (and sometimes better) as they are in the main game, everything else about the game is considerably worse. Yes, all mechanics and elements still nominally exist, but there’s no real place for them. Skills and gun upgrades are here because the systems exist, not because they need to be here and even while some of the skill uses in non-combat situations were extremely rare in the main game, here they are almost never needed at all. I mean, there’s a skill allowing you to open safes without knowing the code, and there’s precisely one safe in the entire expansion (and the code is easily found in the room next door anyway). Side-quests are basically “short distractions” now, that rarely provide any interesting content and more often than not disrupt the flow of the game instead. And some of them are really poorly designed at that, as are some of the “puzzles” and interactions.

On top of that, the story is especially crap this time around with hilariously poorly written characters and story beats that exist for no apparent reason. Some of which also switch perspective to playing as other characters – another thing that seems unnecessary and is usually not fun. It has the vibes of the middle-budget FPS from early 2000s, except not one that you still remember because it was fun despite budget limitations, but one you might’ve found in a bargain bin, played and forgot about a day later because literally any other game was more interesting. Granted, the story wasn’t a particular strong point in the main game, but it was serviceable enough to keep you going between fun shootouts. While here, the shootouts is all there is.

Which doesn’t sound bad for an FPS – shootouts are the basis of the genre. And if Unfinished Business was the game instead of Rogue City, I would’ve said that it’s absolutely worth it to check it out. But it exists as an addition to a far superior game and I don’t see why you wouldn’t play that instead. Again – new gun is great and there are a couple of genuinely fun encounters in this game, but not enough to excuse spending additional money and time on playing something that isn’t as good as what you already have. And if you don’t have Rogue City – get that instead anyway. It is a better game, a far more stable and technologically competent game and is a far more varied game, while still having that fun and simple FPS action at its core. And then, if you absolutely must have more, you can get Unfinished Business for a dollar.