RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business Review — I’d Buy That For a Dollar, Too

RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business is a standalone expansion to 2023’s RoboCop: Rogue City, a game built upon true nostalgia for the RoboCop franchise that captures a uniquely RoboCop-feeling take on the FPS genre. Not quite a sequel and not exactly DLC, RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business feels like a more compartmentalized version of Rogue City. While that may sound bad to some, it was precisely why I enjoyed this expansion more than the original. It doubles down on the aspects of the first game I felt were executed best and ignores some of the game’s problems—but not all—and some may feel their favorite aspects of Rogue City aren’t present in Unfinished Business.

RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business begins as Murphy responds to an attack on Detroit’s OCPD, with all evidence pointing towards a deadly mercenary group taking refuge in OmniTower, a failed OCP housing project turned criminal stronghold. As the titular RoboCop, you must fight your way up the tower’s many floors to confront the mercenaries and stop their plans before it’s too late.

Right off the bat, there’s a noticeable shift in the tone and presentation of RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business compared to the original game.

I’m a huge RoboCop fan. I’d go as far as to say the original is one of the best movies ever made. Unfortunately, I’m not quite as big a fan as the developers of Rogue City appeared to be, as I felt the game tried too hard to be a fan tribute more than a standalone story. The entire game felt like a big string of callbacks and references, reused story beats, and underwhelming writing and characters.

RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business seems to have learned its lesson and shifted away from callbacks and references from the first game. In fact, this game felt like you needed to know what RoboCop was to understand it, rather than something that tried to teach you all about the series while constantly referencing quotes and moments to make fans clap and point at the screen in joy.

In fact, RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business takes a big step back from narrative as a whole compared to the original. That isn’t to say the game lacks storytelling, but much exposition and dialogue have been cut in exchange for environmental storytelling, which the team seems to have improved at for this expansion. This is a huge relief, as the game still doesn’t have the best dialogue, so I was happy to interact with the story more indirectly. I still skipped a lot of non-essential cutscenes because the dialogue was pretty campy and simply took me out of it.

This expansion’s story is also far more direct and compartmentalized, focusing on RoboCop’s adventure through a single tower. Intrigue and story come in small but manageable bursts, interspersed with action segments, creating a narrative that felt a lot like watching Die Hard, staying true to the game’s ’80s action movie roots.

Choosing to step away from much of the first game’s “open world” or “side content” areas was a big plus not only for the story but also for the gameplay.

The gameplay of RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business is much like the first game’s: a heavy-feeling, arcade-style shoot-’em-up where you stomp through levels as this tough tank of a character and execute enemies with the superb RoboCop soundtrack playing. It is not a cover-to-cover shooter but instead captures the indestructible feeling of RoboCop incredibly well without making the game too easy. Players must kill enemies fast and efficiently, using headshots, explosive terrain, and ricochets to make up for their slow speed. It’s a great-feeling FPS system perfect for a RoboCop game.

The game’s level design only does wonders for this particular style of play. Gone are long, boring segments investigating crimes in the streets, breaking up the action with long “go here and press X”-style missions. Instead, OmniTower creates a constant, tight, corridor-style shooter that feels phenomenal with the style of gunplay that RoboCop: Rogue City has to offer.

In my opinion, cutting a lot of the story and side/worldbuilding content is exactly what RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business needed. For others, however, this may be a bit of a disappointment; if you’re such a RoboCop fan that you wanted more worldbuilding, story, and Murphy writing tickets for loitering, then this change from Rogue City might feel like a betrayal to you. I, however, feel as though the storytelling is still there, and the game works all the better for trimming the fat and focusing on what it does best.

RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business, if you ask me, is a direct improvement on the original, focusing on the game’s strengths and cutting many weaknesses. This standalone expansion should take about 9–10 hours to complete, and you’ll be engaged throughout, though the ending may feel a little rushed.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business is available on Steam and Xbox.