This review contains spoilers
As a huge Robocop fan, I was really hoping to like this game and I think it does succeed on several levels as a "AA" title. But the whole package feels pretty undercooked. A lot of this came down to the story and characters. The part where the game needed to succeed the most - Robocop - it succeeds with, which is great. They got Peter Weller back, they were true to the character, he has a lot of good lines.
It's in literally every other character in the game where it falls short. No offense to the devs, but they needed someone better to either write or translate this game, or both. It's clear from playing this for five minutes that this was not written natively in English, but even if it was, a lot of the dialogue and situations would still be dumb, and not in a funny way. The story of this game is aggressively simple and has interesting elements but doesn't bring anything together in a satisfying way. It does nothing that the original movie didn't already do. Maybe they wanted to play it safe, which I can respect, especially working with Peter Weller who seems very protective of the character, aside from apparently just being sort of a jerk. He contributed lines and ideas to the script of the movie, and I'm sure he did to this game as well and that might be why Robocop as a character is still so good in this. But playing it safe makes the game very unmemorable. All the new characters are one-note and lame. The most interesting one, Bob Morton's replacement whose attempt to kill Robocop with an army of crappy drones later in the game is treated as just a corporate move that didn't work out, and nobody gives him any grief for it (very fitting for this franchise), dies.
Ulysses sucks, Pickles sucks (at least we get to hear Weller say his name), the journalist sucks, Dr. Blanche doesn't totally suck but should have had way more focus, and the game does you the disservice of making you feel like you have some real impact on these characters' stories through your dialogue choices. What you have impact on - surprise surprise - is a series of jpegs with voiceover that play over the game's ending. Just don't put the dumb dialogue choices and "Dr. Blanche appreciated that" popups in the game at all. People laud this game for not playing at being something bigger than it is when it has a huge example of doing exactly that.
It feels like there were about 5 voice actors in this game. They got a good impersonator for Lewis (Nancy Allen still sounds exactly like that so I dunno if they weren't willing to pay her or something), but most of the other characters sound awful, especially the ones from the movies - Robert DoQui's police chief, and Dan O'Herlihy's "Old Man". Dan had a unique voice, and his character is pretty important to the plot of this game, which, quite admirably, attempts to bridge Robocop 2 and 3, so one of the key things it needs to explain is why the Old Man isn't in 3. Yet they totally flubbed it, he sounds awful. There are multiple NPCs whose voices don't match their faces at all. The line delivery is wooden which doesn't help when the lines weren't written by a native English speaker. It's not the fault of the writers and I'm sure they tried their best, but it doesn't make a great product.
The game does have a few funny moments - notably, when you get a triumphant "Mission Complete" popup after informing a woman her son has died - but it also has a lot of jokes that fall flat.
(to be continued)
It's in literally every other character in the game where it falls short. No offense to the devs, but they needed someone better to either write or translate this game, or both. It's clear from playing this for five minutes that this was not written natively in English, but even if it was, a lot of the dialogue and situations would still be dumb, and not in a funny way. The story of this game is aggressively simple and has interesting elements but doesn't bring anything together in a satisfying way. It does nothing that the original movie didn't already do. Maybe they wanted to play it safe, which I can respect, especially working with Peter Weller who seems very protective of the character, aside from apparently just being sort of a jerk. He contributed lines and ideas to the script of the movie, and I'm sure he did to this game as well and that might be why Robocop as a character is still so good in this. But playing it safe makes the game very unmemorable. All the new characters are one-note and lame. The most interesting one, Bob Morton's replacement whose attempt to kill Robocop with an army of crappy drones later in the game is treated as just a corporate move that didn't work out, and nobody gives him any grief for it (very fitting for this franchise), dies.
Ulysses sucks, Pickles sucks (at least we get to hear Weller say his name), the journalist sucks, Dr. Blanche doesn't totally suck but should have had way more focus, and the game does you the disservice of making you feel like you have some real impact on these characters' stories through your dialogue choices. What you have impact on - surprise surprise - is a series of jpegs with voiceover that play over the game's ending. Just don't put the dumb dialogue choices and "Dr. Blanche appreciated that" popups in the game at all. People laud this game for not playing at being something bigger than it is when it has a huge example of doing exactly that.
It feels like there were about 5 voice actors in this game. They got a good impersonator for Lewis (Nancy Allen still sounds exactly like that so I dunno if they weren't willing to pay her or something), but most of the other characters sound awful, especially the ones from the movies - Robert DoQui's police chief, and Dan O'Herlihy's "Old Man". Dan had a unique voice, and his character is pretty important to the plot of this game, which, quite admirably, attempts to bridge Robocop 2 and 3, so one of the key things it needs to explain is why the Old Man isn't in 3. Yet they totally flubbed it, he sounds awful. There are multiple NPCs whose voices don't match their faces at all. The line delivery is wooden which doesn't help when the lines weren't written by a native English speaker. It's not the fault of the writers and I'm sure they tried their best, but it doesn't make a great product.
The game does have a few funny moments - notably, when you get a triumphant "Mission Complete" popup after informing a woman her son has died - but it also has a lot of jokes that fall flat.
(to be continued)
Ta wapo
New Game Plus is basically the "True Robocop Experience". With the new PCBs they give you at the beginning of the game plus having the full skill tree you can mow down creeps like it's nobody's business. Perfect for clearing the story again if you just want to choose different options or just missed an achivement.