Game Review: RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business (Xbox Series X)

A standalone piece of additional content that doesn’t require players to have played the original Rogue City, RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business puts players back in the metal shoes of Alex Murphy. Except this time developer Teyon has you assaulting the OmniTower, a massive housing unit that is filled with criminals, and everyday people just trying to survive under the watchful eye of OCP.

RoboCop hasn’t just taken it upon himself to go there though, instead he has followed a trail that leads from a massacre at his police station to the OmniTower. There, he discovers well-armed mercenaries are responsible and have taken over the tower. Led by someone from Alex Murphy’s past and with the goal to get control of Omni Consumer Products’ military wares.

It’s up to RoboCop to blast his way through legions of goons, help residents with their problems, confront his past, and put a stop to the mercenaries plan. All with the same satisfying gunplay of Rogue City.

Yes, once again, the best thing about Teyon’s RoboCop is the action, and Unfinished Business has a lot of action. To say that OmniTower is massive, is an understatement and to say that it is full of baddies, isn’t conveying just how many fools there are for RoboCop to gun down. All using a variety of weapons, including a new Cryo Cannon, which instantly freezes enemies. A varied item that is needed to deal with heavily armoured enemies, as players will have to vary their attacks in the face of different types of enemies. Heck, we even get katana-wielding cyborg ninjas, which RoboCop 3 fans will recognise (for better or worse).

I can’t fault the action, and the further the game goes on it, the tougher it gets. It really does start to feel like it is RoboCop against the world and, once again, Teyon do an incredible job of making the player feel like a near-unbeatable machine. Although on harder difficulties, it’s a lot more challenging and different tactics are needed, even though it remains constantly tempting to just stride through halls shooting at everything that moves.

It will all be very familiar to those who played Rogue City, as will be the levelling up/upgrade system and customisable motherboards. It worked well for the previous game, and it ain’t broke, so no fixing required. Remember, this isn’t a full sequel, nor is it DLC (it’s too big for that), so the borrowing of elements makes sense.

Yet that doesn’t mean there haven’t been improvements, least of all the much more compelling story, the different missions that have players causing gleeful carnage as ED-209 and trying to survive as pre-RoboCop Alex Murphy, and the better-defined characters. It’s good to see Teyon acknowledge the weak points of Rogue City and improve upon them.

Unfortunately, other weak points are exacerbated by the limitations of the game, namely the tower and what you must do. Side quests are very dull, and sre almost always just a form of ‘fetch quest’, the game starts to feel quite padded out as you spend large portions of it getting codes to unlock doors, the locations are drab (mostly), and it has some performance issues. Notably lag, but also with textures and character models, and in one case, a side quest couldn’t be continued without a checkpoint being reloaded. Nothing game breaking, but issues that stop this being a great game, rather than just a good game.

Which it is, it really is, and one that is well worth playing, no matter if you’re new to RoboCop or a returning fan. Dead or alive, we’re all going with him.