I Don’t Know How I Feel About Robocop: Rogue City

This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #187. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.

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Here’s the Thing is where Rob dumps his random thoughts and strong opinions on all manner of nerdy subjects – from videogames and movies to board games and toys.

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I’ve been curious about Robocop: Rogue City for quite a while. Like most people who’ve seen it, I have a lot of fondness for the Verhoeven-directed original film because of the obvious stuff (kickass action and semi-futuristic robot stuff) and the . . . “less” obvious stuff (anti-capitalist messaging, political satire, etc.). A handful of social media posts, reviews and even videos made the game sound more in line with what Robocop was intended to be, rather than what it became, so cool! Then life got in the way and I didn’t touch it until 2025 after grabbing it on sale for $10.

But here’s the thing: For as much as Rogue City is mechanically my jam, I’m still having a tough time deciding how I feel about it thematically.

Initial impressions based on early announcements and whatnot had me thinking this was basically a first-person shooter and not much else, which I was kind of meh on. But then I found out the game has more in common with the first-person adventure – even, dare I say, my beloved immersive sim genre – than expected. Something I’d kind of forgotten before eventually thudding my way into the iconic OCP-controlled version of Detroit.

To be clear, the shooting gameplay is nice. It’s appropriately impactful and messy (I unironically love that they devoted time to making dick shots a thing), and the combination of that classic score and the practically perfect depiction of Murphy’s lock-on visuals had me grinning ear-to-ear in the opening minutes.

What really grabbed me, though, was what came after that introductory mission. When Murph gets back to the station and you just, like, get to walk around. You can explore the station from the movie and get a feel for what might have been the layout of this fictitious place. You can stumble onto side missions like helping out at the front desk or escorting a drunken homeless person to a holding cell. It’s not exactly heart-warming and wholesome, but it made me so happy to be able to do things as Robocop other than shooting bad guys (usually in the dick).

On top of that, finding miscellaneous items and completing tasks earns experience, which can then be used to upgrade a surprising variety of skills, which in-turn can open up entirely new gameplay features as well as offer new options when approaching certain missions – kind of how Fallout: New Vegas gives you distinct, game-affecting dialogue options for certain skills. To put it mildly, I want shit like this hooked into my veins.

And yet.

Okay, look, I’m not a big fan of law enforcement as an institution these days. So, playing as a cop – even a robotic one – does kinda give me The Ick.

To Rogue City’s credit, so far it seems to be keeping itself rooted in the fictional ideal of the 1987 movie. Where a lot of people on the force want to do the right thing and make a difference, but can’t because OCP (Omni Consumer Products) literally owns the Detroit PD.

And yet.

Despite the “good guys just trying their best” framing, a somewhat surprising amount of what I’d consider true-to-life elements have bled through. Small, subtle things like an officer refusing to touch a drunk homeless man because, basically, he’s “gross” and “smells bad” to some questionable methods being considered when attempting to address the city’s ever-growing drug problem. All things that I, as the person in control of the protagonist in the videogame, don’t have much control over. Which kinda makes me complicit?

In fairness, there are moments where Murphy is given a choice in how to respond to or approach certain scenarios. To stiffly (robotically, even) follow the letter of the law, or uphold the intention of it and show a bit more compassion (or humanity). I do like being able to act as more of the ideal than the reality, but that’s also where a lot of my internal conflict comes in.

I, as RoboCop, can be “a good cop” and actually help people. And unlike the real world, I’m too valuable an asset (or too essential as a videogame protagonist) to get fired or manipulated into compliance. That’s . . . kinda cool? But it also doesn’t sit well because it sort of feels like I’m being guided into this idea that there are good cops who are trying their best, and it’s only “a few bad apples” (an excuse that’s been used far too often, without acknowledging the full proverb).

RoboRob can also only do so much. Even a cybernetically-enhanced, altruistic hero type can only be in one place at a time. And while the game does let you tackle main and secondary missions at your own pace, this point comes through in another way.

The first area outside of the intro and the precinct is a fairly dilapidated part of town with a few criminals of various severities hanging around, some civilians just trying to get through their day and vagrants. So many vagrants. I could probably write a mini-article about how off-putting the games depiction of homelessness is (though it might be intended to be over-the-top like the source material), but outside of that, you just can’t do anything for these people.

Alex Murphy is basically a near-invincible robotic superhero cop, but even when I’m piloting his actions, he still won’t do a thing to help unless it’s relevant to a specific task. I can issue tickets for parking violations, resolve public disputes, chase down leads and so on, but I can’t do so much as offer some kind words to a guy who just dropped his sandwich into a trash fire while trying to keep warm.

I know this isn’t some clever or insidious subtext that was intentionally woven into the game by the developers or anything like that, and I don’t mean to imply the team at Teyon have done anything wrong (if anything, they should be exceedingly proud of what they’ve made). But it’s all stuff I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since I first set virtual foot in that familiar foyer. And I still can’t quite decide what to think.

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Rob Rich is a guy who’s loved nerdy stuff since the 80s, from videogames to Anime to Godzilla to Power Rangers toys to Transformers, and has had the good fortune of being able to write about them all. He’s also editor for the Games section of Exploits! You can still find him on Bluesky and Mastodon.