Robocop: Rogue City demo wants you to come quietly
Somewhere there is a crime happening
Teyon and Nacon's forthcoming 80s sci-fi FPS Robocop: Rogue City has a demo, allowing those who wouldn't even buy it for a dollar to spend an hour or two in the game's crime-ridden Old Detroit, fighting crime.
Created by the team behind the not-much-enjoyed Terminator: Resistance, Rogue City is set between the events of Robocops 2 and 3, with "iconic locations" and "familiar faces" from the movies, including OG Robocop actor Peter Weller. You can catch a glimpse of some of that in the latest trailer, below.
As Kaan wrote back in June, Robocop's ponderous stride and reliance on heavy chest armour don't appear to be the basis for Shootybang Fun Times, but perhaps those tank controls will feel exotic, in this day-and-age of FPS characters sliding into cover or chaining wallruns to get the drop on each other.
As for what you'll be packing, the game features Robocop's burst-fire Auto-9 handgun (which sockets into his thigh when not in use - I've always wondered whether he stores a coffee thermos in the other thigh) plus 20 other guns. It looks like we'll have to fight at least one of those big two-legged walkers from the movies. They used to run on stop motion, and I'm slightly unsettled by the relative smoothness of their animation in the game.
The Steam blurb promises to let you "explore open areas and complete your objectives according to your own sense of justice". Are no-kill playthroughs an option? Somehow I can't picture Robocop wielding a taser or using Persuasion and Deception to complete his objectives. But according to the press materials, you will at least have to worry about the impact of an open firefight on civilians.
The blurb adds that "finding evidence, interrogation and maintaining public order" - aka, use scanner on glowing object, talk to NPC, murder roomful of screechy chaps in denim vests - "are just some of your daily tasks as a police officer". I would quite like to direct traffic now and then and perhaps rescue a cat from a tree.
One note on the demo: it apparently suffers from performance issues, which Teyon are even now trying to fix. "We want to address the performance issues you've been having in the last hours on the RoboCop: Rogue City demo," reads a statement. "While this was unforeseen, please rest assured the teams over at Teyon are working on fixes as we write these lines, and we'll hopefully be able to stabilize the situation in the upcoming days. It would seem the source of the problem comes from shader compilation."