YMMV / RoboCop: Rogue City

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Is the Old Man a Well-Intentioned Extremist who sees Delta City as a chance to clean up Detroit and build a new home or an out of touch Upper-Class Twit who doesn't realize just how much the poor are going to be devastated by his actions? Is he neither and his whole folksy friendly demeanor just a facade? Plus, how good of a businessman is he really and is Delta City a massive money sink that has ruined his company or a high risk/high reward scenario that has just not panned out?
  • Is the Old Man fighting for Murphy (and by extension all cyborgs) to be granted human rights because of some altruistic sense of justice? Or because he was planning to become one?
  • Did OCP send SWAT and three ED-209s plus Robocop to stop the OCP bank robbery because it was their corporate property or to cover up the fact that the bank has no cash reserves left, and they've invested everything in Delta City?
  • Did the ED-209 malfunction at the quarry, or was it doing what it was programmed to because Becker was hoping it would kill RoboCop.
  • Is anything out of the New Guy's mouth sincere? We know his claims about wanting to avenge his brother before changing his mind are insincere because he's not even related to Emil. What about his "freeing" Robocop of human attachments? His offer to restore Alex's memories? How about his later statement they should stop OCP together? It's all probably an attempt to manipulate Alex Murphy but maybe not. As an agent of OCP, he probably does have access to Alex Murphy's memories—if anyone bothered to store them when they were erased.
• Anticlimax Boss:
  • In the event that you have absolutely no upgrades at all (no Auto-9 upgrades and a weird build where you did no sidequests/dumped any upgrade points into Psychology, Scanning, and Deduction), the Final Boss, Robocop 2, will most likely crush you due to the absence of healing items for the majority of the fight. However, if you have even a halfway decently upgraded Robocop, the fight is quite easy; with either the 5.3 or 6.0 Auto-9 PCB ^note Both boards unlock the Full-Auto, Bottomless Magazines, and no recoil perks for the Auto-9 and can be gather from the "Who Killed Simon Page?" side-quest and Detroity Arms Expo level, respectively, double crit damage from level 6 Focus, and just a handful of points in Armor and Vitality, you can essentially hold your ground and out-DPS the boss by unloading into his weak spot, blowing him away in just over a minute without even needing to heal.
  • It's possible to stunlock the final boss as well by simply rushing it and using melee, to such an extent that it will never be able to execute most of its attacks (if not outright skipping phases of the fight).
• Awesome Music:
  • The main menu is set to a mournful piano version of the main Robocop theme.
  • Soot's in-universe song "Need it Fluk? Take it Nuke!" is far catchier than it has any right to be for a deliberately dumb and shallow song about how Drugs Are Good for you.
• Best Level Ever: The penultimate mission, "No Way Out", is typically cited as one of the strongest moments in the game, proving just what the character is all about. After the extent of Wendell's machinations become clear, it's up to Robo and a skeleton crew to restore order to the chaos. Cue Robo taking on waves of gang members and mercenaries who are trying to destroy the city, while simultaneously solving hostage situations, saving several residents from a burning building, and defusing a bomb set by the Street Vultures to take down the Detroit Bridge. Afterwards, Robo pursues Wendell's trail through the abandoned Afterlife Labs — and heads into the still-unfinished OCP Tower, where he fights his way to the top to stop Wendell once and for all while taking out more waves of mercenaries and UED troops, all while the former can be heard increasingly panicking at their failure to impede Robo. There's also Theme Music Power-Up moment where Robocop also gets to use the Cobra Cannon against the mercenaries to the sound of the classic Robocop theme, signifying Alex is not going to be stopped.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Despite the presence of a large assortment of exotic weapons (up to and including the Cobra Assault Cannon), there's really nothing stopping the player from exclusively relying on the classic Auto-9 — an attitude the game even encourages by having it be the only weapon that can be upgraded throughout the game, via the acquisition and usage of specific circuit boards that integrate into the gun. By the end of the game, you could have a death-dealing machine that never needs to be reloaded and has an assortment of boosts to various stats.
  • There's little point upgrading anything besides Deduction to max level in the early game (particularly if the player is skilled enough to complete all the bonus objectives and achieve an A Rank in the first two missions), due to the fact that the final upgrade unlocks a flat 30% boost to experience points. Taken early enough, this adds up significantly over the long run, allowing the player to unlock more skills and boosts by the endgame if they've been collecting the various pieces of evidence throughout the stages.
• Complete Monster: "Wendell Antonowsky", "the New Guy in town", is a crime boss who takes a special interest in RoboCop. Supposedly the brother of Emil Antonowsky seeking to have RoboCop give up his humanity to improve his life by forcing him to witness nightmarish hallucinations, Wendell is revealed to be a nameless OCP executive placed in charge of the Afterlife program, having dozens of cops killed and their brains harvested to perform illegal experiments on. Allowing the Torch Heads and Street Vultures to commit crimes throughout the city, Wendell will kill any of his men for failing him, while simultaneously refusing to pay them. Arrested for his crimes, Wendell stages a violent prison break that leaves many dead; has a hospital massacred in an attempt to kill a recovering Officer Lewis; and endangers a demonstration conference by hijacking Max Becker's UED robots to cause mayhem. Growing frustrated with OCP's control over him, Wendell starts a massive riot in an attempt to burn all of Old Detroit down and rule the new Delta City as a haven for criminals.
• Difficulty Spike: The fight with ED-209 can be this depending on build. Most enemies up to this point represent little threat, and the game encourages the player to pick up Deduction early as it's a skill that pays off the sooner you have it. So a player who focused on Deduction and Psychology can come into this fight and find it immensely crushing. While a player who developed Robocop's combat skills (especially getting either the shield power, or going all in on Focus to unlock the double Crit damage) will find ED-209 to be a pushover.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Soot is only a Starter Villain, but a lot of fans preferred him to the New Guy as a whole, being Laughably Evil and insanely over-the-top.
  • Pickles is a surprisingly good dramatic character, serving as a grounded introduction to a victim of Detroit's corruption while still trying to do good.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • When Wendell first uses his lighter, Lewis realizes that he's causing Robocop to malfunction, even if she doesn't know how. Wendell picks up on this and takes her out to keep her from derailing his plans. Even if shooting her was part of said plan, she became a legitimate threat. The only reason Wendell didn't kill her, aside from plot armor, was to keep Robocop emotional, not focused in an Unstoppable Rage.
  • Regarding why the final boss is the Old Man using the Robocop 2 body: it's a sign of OCP's financial problems that Project Afterlife used an existing cyborg body instead of making a copy of Robocop's own body. It also speaks to the Old Man's ego that he'd use the strongest body available, instead of a copy body or even a UED body.^note There's also the fact the latter are based on a failed Robocop 2 prototype so frail Robocop is still superior.
  • As noted on the main page, the final boss fight shouldn't have destroyed the OCP tower. But during the stage, you can hear sounds of metal straining and rocks crumbling, and even come across a freight elevator on the top floor. The Old Man, in his crazed state, went straight for this elevator, somehow damaging the foundations of the OCP tower in the process.
• Good Bad Bugs: Switching PCBs on the Auto-9 does not automatically check whether the firing mode you currently have the gun set to is still valid on the new PCB or reset it to burst fire. This allows you to use full auto or single shot with any PCB, as long as you do not try to change the firing mode.
• Love to Hate:
  • Max Becker is such an asshole that he becomes weirdly endearing by the end of the game, even celebrating the death of The Old Man by inviting six hookers into his office to have a party with while a funeral is held down in the lobby.
  • The New Guy is a Smug Snake Sharp-Dressed Man who really does play all of the Eighties Action Movie cliches of overconfidence, psychotic behavior, Kick the Dog cruelty, and psychological torment. He also makes a few We Can Rule Together offers that are (probably) insincere. Yet, that all makes him a great genre throwback. The fact he looks like Hans Gruber doesn't hurt.
• Narm Charm:
  • Peter Weller's performance, as is par for the character, leans into this, with lines delivered in a deliberately-stilted or flat tone in order to convey Robo's synthetic side. As such, it can make the obvious jokes Robo delivers much funnier due to the flat, disaffected way he says it. It can come across as hilariously insensitive, in keeping with the 80's aesthetic.
  • This is further invoked in certain in-game encounters, where Robo's deliberately-flat performance is used to support heartwarming moments, such as Robo consoling a confused young boy by awkwardly giving a thumbs-up gesture, or humoring another boy's request to "do the robot" (likely a reference to a finishing move from Mortal Kombat 11, where it was played up for all the goofiness such a move entails).
• No Problem with Licensed Games: Critical consensus is that the game, while having graphics that look like a generation behind and some bugs that are a result of Teyon operating with a modest budget, shows the same amount of love for Robocop that the earlier Terminator: Resistance showed for Terminator and those who like the franchise should buy it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Soot, despite being smart enough to Screw This, I'm Outta Here, is only the villain for a couple of episodes before switching to the New Guy and getting summarily executed. Many would have preferred him to have been the villain for the entire game.
  • Lewis is severely injured two missions into the game, and spends much of the remainder of the plot laid up in a hospital bed. When she returns, she spends most of the remaining runtime either protecting Dr. Blanche or staying as a supporting officer with the main DPD force that shows up to restore order to the city, and is not present during Robo's pursuit of Wendell. The most the audience gets is a heart-to-heart with Robo just before the final mission that is cut short when the situation at the OCP Building is revealed by another officer. This despite Lewis being one of the most beloved of Robocop's characters.
  • While OCP executive Donald Johnson is referenced in the game (you can pass by his desk in the OCP Bank, which has a dossier on Murphy sitting on it), he is not present during the handful of times you visit the OCP Building, despite being one of the few characters that appeared in all the films of the trilogy. Perhaps this was for the best, given how the entire OCP Board of Directors, save for him, is killed by Robocop 2 just prior to the final bossfight.
• Underused Game Mechanic: A common criticism of the game is that some mechanics barely show up at all by the time you can use them, implying the game likely had bigger ambitions that were pared down: ^note Since 01/23/2024, New Game Plus has been made available for the game, allowing these mechanics to see use.
  • The Level 6 rank of Engineering lets you brute force unlock safes, which is supposed to put more incentive towards investing in the skill. However, most (if not all) safes in the game have nearby signs or notes with the codes on them (almost always in the same building), and even the high skill check for the train that can be moved in the Steel Mill can be circumvented with a much lower Deduction skill check in a neighboring building. A number of reviewers noted that by the time they leveled the skill to this point, the game completely ceased to offer safes to crack.
  • Engineering also promises the ability to hack turrets, in a manner similar to Deus Ex and its prequels. Unlike the aforementioned, however, turrets aren't strategically placed throughout the game. Instead, the first turret doesn't even appear until the penultimate level (during the trip through the sewers near the Afterlife labs), and only a handful more are seen in the final stages. And even then, they rank alongside the Heavy Machine Guns in terms of annoyance, as they can be easily taken down with the Auto-9 if you've bothered to upgrade it.
  • Upgrading Psychology to Rank 10 offers the ability to highlight preferable phrases in dialogue trees, so as to get better "outcomes" in conversations. However, there is never really a need for it — most "good" dialogue checks are usually self-explanatory (i.e. completing side-quests, sticking to Robo's Prime Directives, protecting characters from OCP's influence), and there are only a couple of instances where an ending can change based on the outcome of a single conversation (Robo being confronted by journalists in the police station over who he supports for Mayor). The only thing it really gets you are some optional responses in the early game — and you can get those just by upgrading Psychology by a single point, making Psych 10 pointless except as a dump stat..
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • The game's model of Robocop himself has been highly praised, with the ray-tracing and lighting effects oftentimes making him look photo-realistic.
  • The environments also got a lot of praise (as opposed to the non-Robocop character models) for their high fidelity including the large amounts of walls and other surfaces that can take realistic damage from bullets, blowing up chunks of plaster or other finishing to reveal the structural concrete beneath.

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