RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business

PS5 Review

Unfinished Business is a first-person shooter game that serves as the standalone expansion to RoboCop: Rogue City main game.

Players do not need to of played Rogue City to play this game since it is its own game either on disc or digital download since it cannot be launched from within Rogue City.

Pro:

Same great action.

Unfinished Business sees the player return to taking control of Alex Murphy aka RoboCop from Rogue City now in a new adventure to siege the new OCP Omnitower.

The player still feels like a walking tank slowly walking into the line of fire as they dismember the various criminals who get between RoboCop and the leader of the mercenaries who had stolen technology to control all OCP products like the ED-209 battle droid in the world along with other military droids.

All the players abilities from Rogue City that players had to unlock are now unlocked at the start of this game with Slowdown, Shockwave, Shield and Dash abilities.

These help the players during the early game since this game is more difficult due to the sheer volume of enemies who can quickly kill the player due to the low starting health. So players are encouraged to use these abilities to stay alive.

New enemy types.

While Rogue City had a decent variety of enemies it did become very repetitive facing the same common street criminals with pistols or shotguns, compared to Unfinished Business that introduced a lot of new enemy types due to the well-financed mercenaries as the villains.

Due to working round the globe for various factions these mercenaries are able to use new and more devastating weaponry compared to criminals of old Detroit. This is most easily seen with the game’s stand out new weapon the Cryo Cannon.

The Cryo Cannon not only shoots a devastating projectile that freezes enemies on the spot, but also freezes the surrounding area generating huge ice crystals that shatter when struck with melee attacks and also beautiful looking and dangerous jagged shards of ice from the floor to the ceiling.

Apart from that the game throws enemies in heavy armour from the start of the game up the level of difficulty for this expansion so players have to be more tactical with their aim to take them down.

These heavy armoured enemies use the new Cryo Cannon but also the minigun that can quickly chip down the player’s health if they are standing in the open, but players can now pick up the minigun and mow down waves of enemies after a quick warm up period before firing.

One of the fun new enemy type is the new jetpack mercenaries who only appear in the final couple of missions. They are fun to fight since they force the players to pay attention to the ceilings and skies since usually players just need to look at eye level for all the other mercenaries.

They can also attack the players from a variety of angles that the player isn’t expecting to make them more engaging and if players are a good enough shot, they can snipe the fuel tanks on their backs for an instant kill. So it rewards players who can either snipe the fuel tank or use the slow down ability for an easier shot.

The big fan service enemy in this game are the prototype versions of the Otomo Androids from RoboCop 3 making an appearance in this game who rush down the players with katana, so if players aren’t able to react fast enough, they can be overwhelmed and stabbed to death.

New Auto-9 boards.

The returning mechanic of being able to modify Murphy’s trusty Auto-9 sidearm with additional chip board that the player can unlock tiles on with chips they find in the environment in OCP chests hidden within the Omnitower.

In the later missions the player is able to find hidden chip boards that allow the player to upgrade the Auto-9 to the point where it can enable unlimited ammunition and not need to reload.

At this point it becomes the most powerful weapon in the game since the player literally points and shoots until the enemy turns into a red mist from the hail of bullets. When the player reaches this level of power through side quests and exploration all the secondary weapons become worthless and not necessary to pick up since they have very limited ammunition and deal less damage unless using the Cryo Cannon.

New environments.

After the tutorial sees the player go through the remains of the besieged police station the player is deployed to the new OCP to recover the stolen technology and take out the band of mercenaries responsible for the deaths of so many fellow officers including the injuring of RoboCop’s partner and station chief.

The OCP Omnitower takes clear inspiration from the 2011 Indonesian film “The Raid” and Peach Trees Omnitower from the 2012 Judge Dredd reboot film “Dredd”. However even with this clear inspiration Unfinished Business does not feel stale due to the wide variety of locations across the various missions.

Some of my personal favourite locations were the cinema set up for an 80’s era Disco aesthetic with neon lights everywhere to tie into the era of when the original film released. Another location that stands out is the early visit to the trash compactor that the player is dumped into in mission 3 where players have to escape in under 40 seconds for a trophy.

So while there are plenty of grey concrete corridors during normal gameplay these are broken up with these special environments and also the flashback missions that take place outside the OCP Omnitower.

Controlling other characters.

Throughout the campaign of Unfinished Business the player will not only control RoboCop himself but also have flashback missions set to flesh out the characters backstories and lore of the story.

It’s a refreshing change of pace going from RoboCop voiced again amazingly by Peter Weller coming back for the role, to the original side characters from this game like Dr Miranda Hale who has a flashback mission that is more of a thriller compared to the usual tank and shoot gameplay fans know as RoboCop and Alex Murphy missions.

These missions didn’t slow down the pace of the game, as action was always happening during them and it was a necessary way to expand on these new characters considering they are introduced in this shorter game. This is compared to Rogue City that was over double the length of this sequel expansion.

Price.

The stand-alone expansion comes at a budget price tag like the original Rogue City game due to its AA status in the industry.

Now Unfinished Business costs under £25 in the United Kingdom at time of launch and for 10 hours of fast paced gameplay the price tag is great in a market saturated with £60+ games as the standard.

Con:

Glitches.

Unlike Rogue City which was mostly stable Unfinished Business had a lot more issues than just the frame rate drops.

Across the playthrough I encountered 2 soft locks that did not allow progression (One in the flashback mission as Alex Murphy and the other in the final mission of the game when another wave of enemies refuses to spawn).

On top of that I encountered 3 hard crashes during my playthrough usually after using the new Cryo Cannon in areas with a lot of explosive barrels crashing the game due to the heavy particle effects all triggering at once.

Other glitches were a common bizarre POV (Point of View) glitch where after zooming in on the Auto-9 sidearm or secondary weapon the camera would repeatedly zoom past the enemy before slingshotting behind RoboCop.

Then the final glitch category encountered were the physics for killed enemies going wrong after being gunned down. As enemies would have ragdoll physics of flying through the air at random angles or clip through the floor getting stuck.

Frame rate drops.

While Unfinished Business aims for 60ps in Performance and 30fps in Quality it rarely meets this level.

This is especially noticeable and seen during the shootouts or heavy particle effected areas with the new Cryo Cannon weapon being fired as the entire area freezes over including the enemies.

It is most prominent in the final missions of the game where the game throws hordes of enemies at the player with grenades, rockets and Cryo Cannons all blowing up the environment with explosions and ice crystals. As the final big obstacle enemy before the final confrontation tanks the FPS the most with the chase section due to how destructible the environment was in the apartment complex.

NPC Voice acting.

While the main cast are great in their role with the voice quality this is not the same for the side cast or the random NPCs.

This is due to a lot of these NPC’s voice lines sounding like they were only placeholder lines or with a temporary voice actor. This is because the quality varies wildly from poor audio quality to the lines

Replayability.

Unfortunately since the game is short at only 10 hours on average, it’s a shame that there’s no New Game+ after finishing the game just like with the original game at launch.

This also means that players cannot max out their skill tree as there isn’t enough experience points in the game, whereas with a New Game+ players could then replay the game and finish the skill tree and use their new skills against the early enemies.

Due to the lack of replayability it also means that players cannot replay earlier missions so if a player missed a side quest or trophy condition then they will need to reload a checkpoint. Otherwise start a new game from scratch and remember the specific condition they missed like getting out of the trash compactor in under 40 seconds.

Lack of tutorials.

Coming from Rogue City I was familiar with the controls but was surprised to see that players have access to all of their character abilities at the start of the game.

This is because the game does not tell you how to use them and expects the player to already know their usage unless they look into the skill tree menu when the game first starts.

As the game does explain some systems like how to use Night vision, but not that the player can slow down time for 5 seconds with a simple button press with that character skill or block 80% or damage with the shield.

Conclusion:

A shorter more action focused stand-alone expansion to the excellent Rogue City from the 2023 game.

I would highly recommend the game if players enjoyed the original game and aren’t turned off by the shorter runtime since it only took 10 hours to get the Platinum trophy on PS5.

Review: 7.6