REVIEW: ‘RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business’ Is An Entertaining Retread

RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business, developed by Teyon and published by Nacon, is a standalone follow-up to 2023’s first-person shooter. It is a slightly smaller experience disconnected from the story of its predecessor, allowing players to enjoy the new title without owning or knowing Rogue City. In Unfinished Business, RoboCop is called upon to enforce the law at OmniTower, a massive residential complex that has been overrun by mercenaries.

RoboCop doesn’t have permission to take on this mission, strictly speaking. But his programming and the shred of humanity that remains in him from Alex Murphy, the Delta City police officer who became RoboCop after being killed in the line of duty, bind Robocop to the pursuit of justice. As you climb the tower, a plot connected to RoboCop and Alex Murphy’s past unravels.

Upon entering the facility, RoboCop is met with extreme resistance, as well as a mysterious voice on his comms. It’s unclear whether she’s trying to help RoboCop or if she’s using him for some unknown personal gain. Either way, without her help, you cannot navigate the various locked doorways or get the leg up on squads of mercenaries.

RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business is a straightforward and linear game.

Unfinished Business is a linear game with several long missions that often feel like they should be broken down further. The missions serve as a sort of chapter structure for the game. At the end of each one, a rank is given based on how many side objectives were completed, whether all of the hidden stashes were found, and how much random junk you picked up as “evidence” along the way. Higher ranks mean more experience gained at the end of the mission.

There are no grades given for accuracy, time, damage taken, or anything of the sort. It’s a shame, because this type of element would make playing through the largely rote levels more compelling. The rewards for leveling up are worth fighting for, at least. A skill point is gained for every one thousand experience points, which are also earned every time you kill somebody.

Skill points are assigned permanently to one of seven categories. Every point increases certain stats, like more health points, damage reduction, and weapon damage. For every four points you add to a category, you also unlock a perk, like automatic reloading upon punching enemies or opening safes without knowing the combination.

The dedication to making you feel like RoboCop slows down Unfinished Business.

While the objectives may start to feel repetitive, at least the combat remains satisfying. Even if you only ever play with RoboCop’s Auto-9 pistol and don’t pick up weapons off the floor, scanning the surroundings for enemies and then honing in on them to shoot never grows old.

The audio simulation of slowly-moving mechanical legs puts you right into the metal officer’s shoes. However, the excruciatingly slow movement speed holds the game back. For an action-forward game, it sometimes takes too long to navigate between rooms, and thereby between combat areas.

Secondary objectives usually require some amount of backtracking to pick up an additional item for an NPC, or going through a brief dialogue tree with a civilian. Sometimes, the dialogue breaks can be a welcome respite from the action. A huge RoboCop fan challenges you to trivia questions about your character after being rescued from gunpoint. A child asks for help remembering what a police officer wears so they can draw you a picture of one.

Each secondary objective is fully missable, since the game is linear and offers no way to replay levels as you go. If you miss one, it’s missed. Generally, there doesn’t feel like much of a consequence for skipping past them. It only means less experience, which means fewer skill points. The rewards for skill points aren’t great enough to notice an immediate impact from gaining them.

Unfinished Business is largely a retread of Rogue City with a few minor additions.

Unfinished Business is largely a retread of Rogue City gameplay-wise, with a few minor additions. There are new enemy types and new weapons to encounter, particularly in the form of heavy weaponry. A new bullet ricochet mechanic allows you to shoot spots on the wall to hit enemies at an angle before fully seeing them, and a new takedown mechanic allows you to use the environment to quickly kill enemies at close range. And a few flashback levels put you in Alex Murphy’s shoes before he became RoboCop.

These levels are odd. In them, you can move more freely, including by crouching and jumping, which RoboCop cannot do normally. However, you have no mechanical armor, so it’s a big tradeoff. Often, these levels don’t even have shooting in them.

You may just be running from something terrible or exploring an environment for evidence and clues to progress the story. The interstitial nature of these flashback levels colors the characterization in the story, but often at the expense of the action you’ve come to the game for first and foremost.

Unfinished Business needs more polish, but it’s entertaining nonetheless.

Unfinished Business tends to have stuttering issues, where the game freezes and catches up with itself periodically. There are also frustrating invisible barriers around every entryway that you cannot shoot through, even though you can clearly see enemies ahead and should be able to shoot them. Small technical issues like these pile up quickly.

RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business is most satisfying in spurts. The gunfighting is satisfying, with enough challenge to it so as not to feel like you’re just an unstoppable machine marching through waves of enemies. But there is too much dead air between fights, making the slow movement annoying after a while. The game needs more polish, but it is still an entertaining follow-up to Rogue City.

RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business is available now on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC.