Reviews
‘RoboCop: Rogue City’ Review – An Authentic RoboCop Experience
Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 film RoboCop has withstood the test of time. A whip-smart satire of the police industrial complex and capitalism, it has a unique and grimy flavor that’s rarely been replicated. And the premise of normal police officer Alex Murphy being turned into an unstoppable crime-stopping machine has an appeal that feels tailor made for video games. Years have passed and the RoboCop franchise has received numerous video game adaptations that range from arcade side scrollers to fighting games. Yet none have captured the feeling of the original film and the balance of style and substance it carried. None have ever made the player truly feel like a one-man war on crime in the streets of Detroit. None have ever really felt like RoboCop.
I’m wildly pleased to say that RoboCop: Rogue City changes all of that.
Developed by Teyon (known for their work on the underrated Terminator: Resistance), RoboCop: Rogue City seeks to fix the past. Not only by putting the players authentically into the role of Alex Murphy himself, but also by delivering an experience in line with the first two RoboCop films. At times, Rogue City even feels like playing a long lost film in the series.
Rogue City puts players in the shoes of Alex Murphy aka Robocop (voiced by a returning Peter Weller) in a story set not long after the events of Robocop 2. Working with his partner Anne Lewis, the tutorial has them storming a new station that’s been taken hostage. This is where Rogue City’s commitment to authenticity begins to shine. While most modern first-person shooter games may put an emphasis on high speed movement and agility, Rogue City sees players become a slow-moving tank. Robocop can’t even jump but that doesn’t take away from the absolute thrill of entering a shootout and taking on damage while delivering out pure violence. Gunfights are chaotic and gory and often feature enemies being turned into a bloody red mist and the environment looking like an absolute warzone after every encounter. RoboCop has a few tricks up his robotic sleeve in the form of “RoboCop vision,” which mimics his point of view from the original films but has tactical use in Rogue City. RoboCop’s Vision allows him to highlight enemies and points of interest in a chaotic environment. In gunfights, this is extremely helpful.
While players will be able to take loads of damage, Murphy is never invincible. You can carry up to 3 repair packs at any given time but to use these you have to be stationary and hold down a button. Even then they only heal a partial amount until you make some focused upgrades. Combat uses basic firearms from pistols to assault rifles and heavy machine guns. Though most have limited ammo, players will always have access to Murphy’s auto pistol that has unlimited ammo and is just as destructive as it is in the movies, able to blow off limbs into a bloody pulp with ease. Murphy is also able to pick up various items and even enemies and is able to throw them with such force that explosions of fire and flesh easily fill the screen before you know it.
Soon after the opening mission is where Rogue City shows its true colors and where I was fully sold on the idea of a RoboCop game. After a brief visit to a wonderfully recreated police station from the films, Murphy is assigned to his first case that takes him to a seedy district in old Detroit. The district is fully explorable and tasks players with patrolling the streets in their own way. In these smaller environments I was able to explore and find other crimes to solve, ranging from murder investigations to stolen car retrievals and random crimes. Make no mistake, Rogue City is not a massive open world with tons to do but Teyon has gone the extra mile to help flesh out their rendition of RoboCop’s world in loving detail.
Investigations are fairly simple and straightforward but their writing stays true to the original films. Player choice also plays a factor into some of these missions. RoboCop has the decision to either issue a warning or arrest someone and that factors into his prime directives of servicing the public trust and delivering justice. Sometimes it feels good to maybe not write that ticket or make an arrest in the name of gaining public trust and seeing how civilians interact with you. I never felt like it made a huge impact on the overall experience but it’s a nice touch nevertheless, and allows for exploration of themes such as gentrification, drug addiction, police brutality and the cult of celebrity.
There’s an upgrade tree as well. Almost out of necessity to mix up the gameplay. It has basic features like increased health but also some interesting additions like an engineering tree that will allow Murphy to get into safes and other lockboxes or a decipher skill that will allow him to notice more in his environment or crime scenes. There’s a good amount of player freedom in the type of build you want but when most situations boil down to a violent and slow gunfight, there’s little incentive to make choices off the beaten path.
Playing the PS5 version in performance mode I never noticed any performance issues that hindered gameplay. Sometimes the framerate would hitch up a tad when there was a lot going on on-screen (happens more often than you think) but it never lasted more than 1-2 seconds. Environments are surprisingly detailed and have reflective surfaces offering a level of detail that is impressive from such a small team. Character models also look fairly well done, especially those that recreate actors and characters from the films in loving detail. It’s just a shame that sometimes the animation and cinematic angles don’t put them in the best light, and at times they look to be puppets on strings in their movement and expression.
So RoboCop: Rogue City isn’t perfect. Far from it. The slow and repetitive combat, and basic investigation work have their novelty wear off after a while. The basic open-hub is nothing you haven’t seen done better in other games and the writing isn’t always the greatest. But I can’t help but be charmed by RoboCop: Rogue City. Teyon set out to deliver an authentic RoboCop experience and with all odds stacked against them, they delivered on everything they set out to do. It’s rare that you even come across a good licensed RoboCop game but it’s even better when you get one that treats the IP with the respect and care that it deserves. For all its faults, RoboCop: Rogue City is very obviously a labor of love. In a gaming sphere where lifeless video games are commonplace, I have to give RoboCop: Rogue City credit for being an outlier that finally delivers on the premise of properly adapting the classic films to the world of gaming.
Review code provided by the publisher.
Reviews
‘Cape Fear’ Redefines A Cutthroat Classic & Turns The American Dream Into A Psychological Nightmare [Review]
Hollywood has been stuck in a trend where a recognizable property — any recognizable property — holds more value than an original idea. This has led to a trend where a slew of acclaimed films have transitioned over to television and become limited series, because why not?
Which has led to a very mixed bag of results that’s usually viewed as a hollow exercise in IP renewal that’s become a growing cliche that’s something to mock. Dead Ringers, Fatal Attraction, Presumed Innocent, and even The Birds are just some of the most recent titles in the movie-to-limited series pipeline. Admittedly, this formula can still work. It just needs to actually have not only a point of view, but a point, otherwise it’s destined to disappear into the vast streaming abyss.
Cape Fear definitely has a point of view and is well aware that it’s the fourth proper adaptation of this story — fifth if The Simpsons’ masterful “Cape Feare” parody is included. It’s an adaptation that’s not only aware of its past’s baggage, but intentionally embraces it and uses it to its advantage. Nick Antosca’s Cape Fear is so exciting because it functions as a remix of every version of this story — the ’60s film, Martin Scorsese’s ’90s remake, and John D. MacDonald’s original novel, The Executioners — to create this glorious amalgamation of the narrative. It’s not unlike what was done with Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal series and how it remixed the breadth of Thomas Harris’ works and their cinematic adaptations.
This approach is most effective when certain iconic scenes from the ’90s film are recontextualized and given to different characters in order to make grander thematic statements. It’s a really striking approach that reflects the generational ripples and overlap between these adaptations, yet it’s never distracting or ostentatious to anyone who is experiencing this story for the first time. It helps this series feel different from the deluge of forgettable adaptations that are flooding the market.
On paper, Antosca is the perfect showrunner to tell this story. He has an impressive body of work to pull from that includes horror series like Channel Zero, Hannibal, and Brand New Cherry Flavor, but also lots of true-crime titles like The Act, A Friend of the Family, and Candy. This series falls squarely within these two extremes as it blurs the lines between these genres and styles of horror storytelling. It’s Big Little Lies on bath salts. Cape Fear perhaps doesn’t need to exist, but it’s still a hell of a terrifying experience that has something timely to say.
Horror is full of stories in which one bad day is all it takes to break someone and turn them into a completely different person. Cape Fear isn’t doing exactly this. It’s more of a psychological waterboarding until the target’s sense of self is eroded to rubble. However, it takes the kernel of this idea and expands it onto the pristine ideal of the picturesque American family. It plays with the self-aware realization that the stories we tell are not necessarily what we think they are.
It’s a story about forgiveness, salvation, and revenge that blows up the Bowden family when a violent offender, Max Cady (Javier Bardem), is released from prison and systematically sets his sights on the people he holds accountable. Anna and Tom Bowden (Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson), the married couple who represented his case in court, receive a rude awakening when Cady’s psychological torture tour begins. Cape Fear, as a property, is most famously known for being the ultimate cat-and-mouse psychological thriller. This rendition culminates in such an explosive climax that’s right out of a slasher film.
Antosca was involved with an unproduced Friday the 13th reboot draft back in 2015, and there are certainly moments in which Max Cady moves with the hulking intensity of Jason Voorhees. So much of what makes all this work rests on Bardem’s complex performance. He’s very careful not to just copy Robert Mitchum or Robert De Niro’s versions of Cady, while he also taps into a terrifying intensity that feels completely different from what he brought forward with No Country for Old Men’s Anton Chigurh.
Apple TV’s new series also introduces a mental injury to Cady that adds psychological fractures that pull him between different versions of events as he struggles to grasp the truth. It’s an element that’s not exactly necessary and often feels like a convenient obstacle that can be activated whenever necessary. However, it allows for some creative visual flourishes and more opportunities for Bardem to get lost in Cady’s complexities.
Opposite Bardem’s Cady, Adams and Wilson do some of their best work as Anna and Tom. Anna is much more front and center than Tom, and Cape Fear is really Adams and Bardem’s time to shine. Wilson still does amazing, understated work, especially whenever the rug gets pulled out from under him regarding someone in his family. The visceral, brutal violence that Cady introduces to the Bowden family hits hard and highlights the anger and intensity that’s fundamental to this story.
What Cape Fear does best is its enlightening deconstruction of the ideal American family, how much work it takes to preserve such a pure thing, and the lengths that people go when they feel like the sanctity of this union is under fire. All it takes is for one of these foundational pillars to weaken before the whole unit becomes compromised. It moves the damage and pressure from one family member to the next as everyone struggles, and it’s unclear what will be left of this family when all is said and done.
This dynamic makes Cape Fear’s story so much more layered and interesting than if the series were just focused on Cady, Anna, and Tom, rather than making their children as much of a priority. Each member of the Bowden family experiences their own obstacles and arcs, although Natalie (Lily Collias) and Zack’s (Joe Anders) storylines are often the most grating. It all boils down to forgiveness, identity, and wanting to be perceived as the person we think we are, versus how we’re viewed by the public, and the dangerous dissonance that can exist between these separate selves.
These ideas are at their most potent when Cape Fear taps into the growing paranoia that bubbles up to the surface and becomes unbearable, so that even the littlest action is triggering. These moments are usually captured through a more erratic filming style that ramps up the tension for both the characters and the audience, unsure of what will strike and when.
Cape Fear never struggles to create uncomfortable setpieces where the anxiety just crescendos and hangs over the scene. On this note, the series’ musical score really captures the perfect aesthetic. It immediately evokes the suspenseful power of the previous Cape Fear films whenever Bernard Herrmann’s virtuosic original theme kicks in. It’s magic every single time.
Antosca delivers an exhilarating update to a classic thriller that pushes its source material to exciting, new places that justify its existence. It’s an exciting story that’s full of terrifying performances and cataclysmic consequences. Admittedly, Cape Fear could have been shortened to eight episodes rather than ten. There are a few plot threads that feel unnecessary and artificially expanded upon, but every episode is still an adrenaline-pumping experience.
If nothing else, it reminds audiences why Cape Fear is such an evergreen story that’s lasted the test of time and will continue to unnerve and get under the skin of whole new generations.
The 10-episode series will make its global debut on June 5 with a two-episode premiere on Apple TV, followed by new episodes every Friday through July 31, 2026.
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