Don't judge me OK. Robocop is one of those movies I've watched over, and over, and over again purely because it's the sort of "Remove your brain, eat popcorn, enjoy" movie that works on so many levels, most of them 'sewer' level but hey, if it works, it works.
Paul Verhoeven's awesome movie (we shall not speak of anything that came afterwards, maybe a couple of moments of Robocop 2) has now received a videogame treatment from a studio (Teyon) that I'm unfamiliar with. Wrestling Unreal Engine 5 to the ground is no easy task but the developers have given it a good old college try - and (for what it's worth, EA / Codemasters) they've produced a tear-free smooth experience.
So the game opens in Detroit in a weird hybrid 'future' that feels like it's still the 1980s (seeing someone using a colossal brick phone as a mobile was a "WTF?" moment). People drive clapped out Vauxhall Carltons around (including the cops), and power-dress with shoulderpads and hairstyles that wouldn't look out of place in a Duran Duran video.
Slapped right in the middle of this is everyone's favourite cyborg law officer. Pallid impersonation of Judge Dredd he may be, but once again Peter Weller reprises his role as the gruff-voiced robotic alter-ego of Alex Murphy, a dead cop brought back to life by the insidious Omni Consumer Products (OCP).
For those of you expecting a fast-paced shooter, think again. Robo isn't Tracer from Overwatch, and he suitably lumbers around, his heavy footsteps punctuating each scene as he turns up, kicks ass, and shoots people in the balls.
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| That's going to leave a mark |
Straight off the bat, the visuals in this game are absolutely spot on. Wonky (at times) supporting characters and muppet mouths aside, Robocop looks the part and is beautifully animated in all his movie glory as is his trusty side weapon. Other characters from the original movie (such as Officer Lewis) also reprise their roles and provide adequate support for the walking tank that is Robo.
The plot is as paper-thin as the original movie. This time, a new guy (literally called "New Guy" at first) turns up in Detroit ready to make inroads into any criminal business he can invest his vast sums of cash in.
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| Detroit City is so pretty. Pretty but scummy! |
On the PS5 this is one of the few 'this gen' games that seems to pull out all the stops in terms of ray tracing and reflections, and all those gorgeous little incidental effects that go towards making Detroit entirely believable. Even internal environments are gorgeously modelled and once you've switched off motion blur, you're going to see a nice steady 30FPS with a stackload of detail. The only time the game breaks your immersion is in the 'cuts' between scenes, where you get a momentary glimpse of the UE5 geometry that makes up characters and scenes. Now and again you get a bit of texture pop-in as well, but even so, this team have still managed an excellent job of living up to the promised visuals we all saw in "The Matrix" demo (which feels like AGES ago now).
As a fan of the movie, I loved all the nods and references to the original (even down to the trophy / achievement names). The more you explore, the more you realise that for a relatively 'on rails' shooter, the developers really have stacked a lot of amazing detail in there.
But it's not perfect. Not by any means. The upgrades for Robo's abilities are relatively straightforward (the better you do solving each crime scene, the more experience you earn to spend on upgrades to your armour, health etc) but upgrading your sidearm involves a weird little 'minigame' that's not at all very well explained in the tutorials. Once you watch a couple of YouTube videos and work it out though, you'll quickly work out what's going on and start actually making your main weapon more effective. In the meantime you can scavenge weapons from fallen foes (and I highly recommend doing this as much as possible, pretty much every weapon you'll find other than the 9mm pistol is way more powerful than Robocop's pistol and boy you're gonna need some stopping power in this game).
One thing that REALLY annoyed me was the mechanism for picking up a gun (which, in fraught firefight situations felt REALLY clunky). You have to press the square button (on PS5) but you have to look directly at the weapon and keep the button pressed a little longer to actually pick up and arm yourself. So when you've got ED-209 playing a mexican rumba on your metallic bonce, it can mean the difference between life and death.
Like most shooters, the boss fights are the most annoying / weakest part of the game. I found that starting back from an autosave often resulted in success whereas starting from checkpoints meant I'd end up dying more often than not.
And about those checkpoints...
What's the number one rule about a checkpointing system in a game? Make 'em frequent but make them fall AFTER a piece of dialogue. No one wants to fail multiple times and have to replay a lengthy intro section or listen to the bad guy monologueing the same line over and over again.
For all of this, I was done and dusted with the game after about 6-7 hours gameplay on 'normal' mode. Some of the bigger fights are quite challenging and require some strategy and forethought. Others are just a gun-fest, hugely reliant on how quickly you can reload or pick up other weapons.
There are so many design elements in this game that feel really old-skool and old fashioned in modern shooter terms, but each location and crime scene feels like it's been ripped straight from the movie (as does the Police HQ itself).
When you get to the very last boss battle you'll smile a bit if you know the history of the games, and you could spend a lot of time in this spotting all those references and easter eggs. So we'll give it a pass on that basis. I am interested to see what the developers do next. So far they have done an excellent job of recapturing a movie that is beloved by so many geeks like me, so props for that, and props for making UE5 work really nicely for this.
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