RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business Review: It’s Great to Be Back in Business

The bar for RoboCop games was so low that it was buried deep beneath the crime-ridden streets of near-future Detroit, a subterranean standard developer Teyon crushed with 2023’s RoboCop: Rogue City. The team demonstrated a deep understanding of the violence and satire that underpins the franchise while delivering a uniquely tanky single-player shooter. RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business is a standalone expansion that capitalizes on that winning framework and proves Teyon’s rendition of the cyborg cop is well-deserving of a second patrol. 

Much of that winning formula Rogue City established revolves around the gameplay that is rewarding in and of itself and the ways in which it matches RoboCop’s overall tone. Standard gunplay bucks the modern and boomer shooter trend of being blazing fast. Unfinished Business has its titular character plodding along with loud, thumping footsteps and forces players to pick off foes without bouncing off the walls and doing 360 no-scope headshots. 

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While it sounds potentially laborious, it’s not, and the presentation allows the game to more readily fulfill the fantasy of being RoboCop (sans the identity crisis and trauma of being brutally executed) in a way that makes it have its own special feel. It’s all about blowing away targets while moving forward at a steady pace, an intensely specific power trip that’s fueled by being able to fling criminals like ragdolls and blow off their limbs with just a bullet or two, many of which paint the nearby walls with a thick layer of blood. Levels are filled with lethal throwable items and a decent amount of environmental destruction evokes the chaos shootouts have. They often unfold like a playable version of the cocaine factory scene from the first film and are even accompanied by the same music track, too.

All of that was true in the original and has been faithfully translated to Unfinished Business — it’s still unique and also entirely fitting for a RoboCop game. Unfinished Business only adds to that formula with minor tweaks here and there. Cinematic executions — smashing someone’s head into a TV or tossing them head-first down a garbage chute — give players a silly way to dispose of goons and also feel loyal to the source material. The surprising amount of new enemy types, namely the flying drones and riot shield-wielding mercenaries, require different strategies but aren’t so different as to throw off the balance. Its new Cryo Cannon acts as an icy BFG, leaving a whole host of impressive icicle effects after each hefty blast. It adds a much-needed area-of-effect weapon that also happens to have a fitting narrative justification, too.

Playing as Alex Murphy in his pre-RoboCop days is only somewhat novel, though, since it’s a straightforward shooter where players aren’t a walking tank. These segments are only narratively competent but are brief enough to not be too bothersome. The ED-209 segment, however, is the polar opposite and an absolute blast because of how intensely it amps up the firepower (as long as players avoid the stairs). They’re all small tweaks, which is expected for a standalone expansion, but they mostly all support and expand upon what was already there.

Rogue City wasn’t just a corridor shooter, though, and excelled because of how it let players interact with Detroit’s inhabitants. Much of that is also preserved here and gives Unfinished Business more personality. RoboCop can solve small squabbles between citizens and while the performances and writing can be a bit strange — a notion undoubtedly aided by the atrocious lip syncing, stilted animations, and extremely unflattering camera angles — it’s charming in the same way a B-movie’s weird dialogue can be and fits the satirical tone. RoboCop dryly telling a child his drawing sucks is funny, as is him scolding a nerd for stealing a comic book, despite there not always being a grander purpose to these tinier tales. These action-free segments not only round out RoboCop’s character, but also build out the world and are the appropriate valleys to the explosive peaks.

These tertiary moments fill in the gaps between Unfinished Business’ larger narrative, which once again carries on the tradition set by Rogue City by being surprisingly strong. The satirical wit that has defined RoboCop is on full display here and ranges from goofy radio ads about sugarcoated steroids for kids to actual systemic injustice rooted in the boundless greed of OCP. The colossal housing complex at the center of the whole game, called the OmniTower, is a monument of corruption and lies that its denizens have to endure all so OCP can squeeze out a few extra dollars. Not only does Unfinished Business show players the copious piles of untreated garbage from this facility and other elements of physical neglect, but it also slowly explains the evil behind this project, what its true purpose is, and how it serves the powerful at the behest of the powerless. It’s not just a random setting and is instead a literal concrete manifestation of its narrative.

Its constant examination of power imbalances gives this game clear themes that are compelling in their own right and feel at home in the RoboCop world. Even the enemy faction — a group composed of bloodthirsty killers ready to enact war crimes for a buck — is not spared here, since the Unfinished Business has one special level about how they are also being exploited. It doesn’t do this to get players to sympathize with them; it’s just to add more complexities and wrinkles to its core themes. The plot relies too heavily on the tired trope of the antagonist claiming the protagonist doesn’t go far enough to stop criminals, but it’s still paced out well with enough interesting reveals that reinforce its themes while also adding more juicy context to the broader RoboCop lore.

Unfinished Business as a whole is a worthwhile addition to the RoboCop lore. Its thoughtful narrative and empowering gunplay are unique within the first-person shooter genre and loyally translate RoboCop’s core tenets into an interactive form. Some of Rogue City’s issues, like abysmal lip syncing and awkward dialogue camera, have carried over into this standalone expansion, but those are relatively small dents in this game’s shiny armor. Like most bullets, they bounce off RoboCop’s chassis and don’t impede his ability to serve and protect.

Rating: 4 out of 5

RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business releases on July 17th for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. A review copy was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.