Robocop: Unfinished Business review

    ROBOCOP: UNFINISHED BUSINESS is not quite DLC and not quite a true sequel to the excellent ROBOCOP: ROGUE CITY game by Teyon. I really love Robocop and he remains one of my all-time favorite cyberpunk works of fiction. OCP, Ed-209, the black humor, and a surprisingly nuanced jab at the idea of police to save us (where only Alex Murphy and Lewis do any good) stick in my mind decades later. Rogue City managed to capture a lot of what made the original movie (and to a lesser extent its sequel) great. Part of this had to do with getting Peter Weller back for the role and much like Robert Englund as Freddy, accept no substitutes.

    Unfinished Business is transparently an homage to the 2012 Dredd film, which was itself an homage to The Raid. Alex Murphy's home of Metro West is hit by a bunch of mercenaries that proceed to kill cops as well as steal his chair for their plan to create a device called the OCP Hijacker. This means that Robocop has to fight his way from the bottom of the massive facility to the top, going through a variety of mercenaries and drones until you can confront ex-cop, Cassius Graves. Along the way, you'll have some flashbacks to Alex Murphy's past as well as get to play a few other characters.

    Really, the best part of the game is the OmniTower itself. A massive arcology that is very different from what we've normally seen from the Robocop franchise, it is meant to be a place for all of Detroit's residents to be moved for Delta City. However, OCP didn't bother to finish the tower and massive numbers of people were doubled up in apartments that may not even have plumbing or living in unfinished levels. The environmental storytelling is fantastic and probably the thing to recommend most about the game.

    The gameplay is, unfortunately, just wave after wave of enemies in a huge number of arenas where you must blow away as many mercenaries as possible. The lack of gangs to fight is an issue because Robocop is one of the original colorful punk opponents. The Nuka gangs and bikers were some of my favorite part of Rogue City after all. Worse, there's no bosses and that is unfortunate since I really enjoyed fighting ED-209 and Robocop 2. Here, they could have made a tank or something but you don't even fight turrets--you just run around them.

    I feel like the villain is a bit bland as Cassius Graves being a ex-cop who somehow became a mercenary that thinks OCP isn't harsh enough on criminals (despite them wanting to exterminate the poor) doesn't really work as an enemy. It's extra weird given that Robocop 3 is next in the game world's timeline when they actively become Nazis. Still, I like the fact that the game deals with the fact that the criminals of Old Detroit have moved from being predators like Boddiker and becoming just the desperate that needs to resist.

    In conclusion, Robocop: Unfinished Business is an excellent game with a lot of value for your dollar. I'd buy that for thirty dollars, if I suppose. Still, it feels pretty undercooked for a sequel even if it's awesome for DLC. I'd say it has about eight to ten hours of content to play through if you want.

 7.5/10