Part sequel and part standalone expansion, RoboCop: Rogue City - Unfinished Business is a near-perfect value proposition. Whether you've played the base game of RoboCop: Rogue City or not, Unfinished Business is a budget-friendly, eight-hour title that's laser-focused on the best parts of its 2023 predecessor to deliver a short and incredibly sweet campaign. The trade-off is that RoboCop: Rogue City - Unfinished Business is, admittedly, a little lighter on story elements than the base game and more reliant on a combat model that, depending on your tastes, may start to wear thin as you reach the back half of the experience. But even for those who are well-versed in the excellent RoboCop simulator that Teyon has crafted with Rogue City, Unfinished Business brings enough new to the table to be an exciting prospect.
There are new weapons to toy around with, new enemy types, a brand-new implementation of Rogue City's skill trees and Auto-9 upgrade circuits, and a series of standalone missions that immediately stick out as some of the best content to ever come from the RoboCop IP. The main story of Unfinished Business is a fairly trite revenge tale that has a predictable conclusion, but getting there, and getting to see RoboCop/Alex Murphy's past with the antagonist, is the silver lining that makes the game's otherwise weaker story and character development forgivable. And that's without mentioning the ultimate power fantasy that Unfinished Business delivers by letting players step into the shoes of RoboCop's OCP predecessor, ED-209.
RoboCop: Rogue City Unfinished Business - Story Trailer
RoboCop: Rogue City shares some story beats for its Unfinished Business standalone experience, which is coming to PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.
RoboCop: Rogue City - Unfinished Business Wastes No Time Getting to the Action
In my preview of RoboCop: Rogue City - Unfinished Business, I made the analogy that if Rogue City is the stand-in for RoboCop 3, then Unfinished Business is what you might get if RoboCop and Alex Garland's Dredd became one movie. Following a short and to-the-point story setup in which RoboCop's Metro West precinct falls under attack by a group of mercenaries, the game dumps players right into the action by cutting them loose within the confines of the game's setting: the OmniTower. OmniTower is a massive OCP-built skyscraper in the heart of New Detroit that falls outside of normal police jurisdiction. But since RoboCop is technically an OCP asset, he has a little wiggle room to go on a one-man/machine mission of vengeance. To make matters more interesting, the target of the attack on Metro West was the equipment for monitoring and controlling RoboCop, adding a wrinkle of mystery to who the mercenaries might be and raising questions about what they plan to do with RoboCop under their thumb.
Answers to those questions come in due time, but not before you're able to get to the real draw of what RoboCop: Rogue City - Unfinished Business is all about — stepping back into RoboCop's armor-plated shoes and laying waste to rooms full of criminals. Teyon had previously nailed the feeling of what it would be like to be RoboCop in Rogue City, and it wisely did not tamper too much with that formula in Unfinished Business. Quite the opposite, actually. If anything, Unfinished Business puts combat front and center as the main draw of the experience, and it starts with its foot firmly on the pedal and rarely ever lets up.
There are a small handful of new weapons that RoboCop can pick up from downed enemies, but like in RoboCop: Rogue City, none of them compare to the power and precision of the Auto-9. Teyon has once again done an excellent job representing one of the most iconic weapons in science fiction, and it's so fun to use that it's almost hard to justify picking up anything else except in very specific scenarios where ripping off a mounted heavy machine gun or stealing an enemy's minigun calls for it. Once you reach the halfway point of Unfinished Business' campaign, you've basically seen just about everything new it brings to the table over its predecessor, but the strength of that core gameplay loop, combined with Unfinished Business' shorter length, results in the experience never really wearing out its welcome.
The New Alex Murphy and ED-209 Missions Are Some of Unfinished Business' Greatest Highlights
One trick up Unfinished Business' sleeve that prevents things from ever getting stale, just as you feel like you've seen everything the game has to offer, are the new missions focusing on Alex Murphy and ED-209. RoboCop shares a history with Unfinished Business' antagonist that sees us getting to play through flashback sequences as Murphy when he was just a regular cop on the Detroit police force, and if these missions do anything, it's prove that Teyon absolutely needs to craft a tense, slower-paced tactical shooter. Murphy doesn't have the targeting computer or armor plating of his future self, but through clever use of a regenerating health mechanic and restricting players to a standard-issue police firearm, those limitations are actually to the benefit of the FPS gameplay during these segments. It significantly changes up the general flow of Unfinished Business without feeling out of place, and I was generally left wanting more chances to play as Alex Murphy.
The same can be said of the ED-209 missions, which are an even more absurd and over-the-top power fantasy than getting to play as RoboCop. ED-209 is basically invincible (unless you count staircases) and has unlimited ammo in each of his weapons: a missile launcher and Vulcan cannon. As long as players strategically juggle the cooldowns for each of them, they're bound to never run out of ordinance, continually carving a path through a section of the OmniTower that gets torn up by ED-209 as if it were made of tissue paper. ED can also heal itself (also on a cooldown), and it's a nice twist on the lore to get to control the hulking bipedal tank as a force for justice instead of facing it as an enemy, though there's a bit of that, too.
Unfinished Business is a Worthy Follow-Up to RoboCop: Rogue City That's Short but Sweet
Rogue City's inclusion of RPG-style questing, branching dialogue, and skill trees was a surprising twist to what initially seemed like a simplistic FPS. And while those elements remain in Unfinished Business, they are toned down a good bit to get out of the way of the game's combat. Unfortunately, the trade-off there is that, in comparison to Rogue City, Unfinished Business' story is somewhat lacking. Teyon did a commendable job tapping into the greater philosophical quandaries posed by the first two RoboCop films in Rogue City, tackling some heady sci-fi concepts like the ability for consciousness and memory to transcend the corporeal form, life after death, and the moral and ethical dilemmas of cybernetic augmentation, all while also refusing to shy away from the social commentary on unchecked corporate greed, urban decay, and the dangers of a police state.
Unfinished Business ultimately swaps most of the big swings that Rogue City took, for better or for worse, replacing them with smaller, more character-driven moments that don't do much to contribute to the grander narrative. So while Unfinished Business is a mile-a-minute FPS thrill ride that delivers some of the most satisfying and visceral combat in the genre, it does so at the cost of losing some of the more unique elements of its predecessor. Whether that's to its benefit or detriment really depends on your opinion of Rogue City's inclusion of those elements and whether they served to add to the experience. If you're into a new Teyon-helmed RoboCop game just for the combat, then Unfinished Business will not disappoint.
At just over 8 hours, Unfinished Business earns its billing as a "semi-sequel" and standalone experience, offering much more than what you'd find in a typical DLC while also coming in at about a third of the runtime of Rogue City. That shorter length, combined with the new additions it makes to the already excellent combat sandbox, make RoboCop: Rogue City - Unfinished Business an easy recommendation to both newcomers and series veterans alike. Whether you've played RoboCop: Rogue City or not, you can come into Unfinished Business and expect to have an absolute blast with the moment-to-moment gameplay, cementing it as a worthy follow-up to one of the most surprising FPS titles of the last few years.
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- FPS, Action, Science Fiction
- A compelling quasi-sequel that improves upon an already excellent combat sandbox
- New Alex Murphy and ED-209 missions add gameplay variety at critical junctures
- Tightly-paced and action-packed campaign that doesn't overstay its welcome
- Emphasis on combat comes at the expense of some of Rogue City's more interesting story elements
- All the weight placed on the action sees it start to stretch thin close to the conclusion