RoboCop (2003)
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RoboCop is a 2003 first-person shooter developed and published by Titus Interactive (who also made the Nintendo 64 Superman game) for the Microsoft Windows (only in Europe), Xbox (in North America and Europe), PlayStation 2 (in Europe and Japan) and Nintendo GameCube (only in Japan). It's based on the movie franchise of the same name. This is the last game developed by Titus, as the company went bankrupt in 2005.
Why It Sucks
- Uninteresting and paper-thin story.
- Campaign mode only has nine missions.
- The levels have no checkpoints, so if you die you must restart the entire mission.
- Every time you die, you are ridiculed by the police chief and booed at by an audience. The phrases used in this screen are the same every time, and it quickly becomes repetitive and annoying since you'll die a lot.
- The levels themselves are drab and have confusing maze-like layouts.
- The missions are challenging, but only because the bullet-sponge enemies have one-hit kill weapons, and RoboCop is incredibly easy to kill due to his inability to duck and vulnerability to gunfire.
- The enemy AI can range from idiotic (standing in one place to shooting at walls) to mindbogglingly godlike (shooting at you from beyond the draw distance with pinpoint accuracy).
- If RoboCop is anywhere near an explosion, he instantly dies.
- Most of RoboCop's special abilities are completely useless: his infrared vision creates a fog-like haze that obscures his viewing distance, and the multi-lock targeting system simply causes RoboCop to shoot at the enemies' cover instead of above it, leaving the zoom-in ability being the only helpful one.
- There are only six weapons in the game and only two of them are particularly effective (the rocket launcher and plasma pistol).
- Enemies can take dozens of bullets from most weapons unless you headshot them.
- Horrendous controls.
- Terrible visuals.
- Poor draw distance.
- Blurry, unfinished textures.
- Awful sound-mixing: the dialogue in the cutscenes is incredibly quiet but the gun sounds and quips from the enemies in gameplay are much louder.
- Bad sound effects.
- Bland, forgettable soundtrack (the RoboCop theme song isn't even in the game).
- Poor voice-acting.
- While RoboCop does occasionally say some of his most famous quotes, most of the time he simply says exclamations such as "Oh yeah!", "Time to meet your maker!", and "Bullseye!". He's supposedly emotionless, so for him to say such things doesn't make sense.
- Terrible collision detection; enemies frequently clip through walls and bullets bounce off what should be holes.
- Many bugs and glitches: you can rescue/arrest people by walking up to the wall opposite of their position and press the rescue/arrest button without having to walk into the room they're in and kill any enemies. Enemies also spazz out depending on how close you are to them and the angle you see them at. They'll spin around and around until you move an inch to the left or right.
- No replay value, as there's no multiplayer mode and no other single-player mode besides the campaign and the ability to replay previously completed levels.
- Costed full-retail price when it was new ($50).
- Puzzling/random release window: North America only received the Xbox version, treating the Xbox version as an exclusive in that region. Japan received the GameCube and PS2 versions and Europe got the PS2, Xbox, and PC versions (the GameCube version was cancelled in the region, much like another Titus game Barbarian).
- False advertising: the back of the game's box touts features such as "Adaptive AI, "Cinematic environments," and "Complex involving story and plotline" (?), neither of which it has. Many of the mentioned "modes" are simply amount to mechanics during gameplay rather than genuine game modes (when they say "Criminal arrest and interrogation mode", what they really mean is "press this button to arrest this fugitive". There's no way to even interrogate anyone). To further rub the salt into the wound, the ending of the game's final "making of" video proclaims RoboCop to be the greatest game ever made.
Reception
The Xbox version of RoboCop received a 30/100 on Metacritic, based on nine critic reviews. Alex Navarro of GameSpot gave the game a 2.2 out of 10, stating that everything about the game felt rushed, despite being in development for two years. He concluded that even RoboCop fans wouldn't get any enjoyment from this game, claiming "you'd be infinitely better off just watching any of the movies (yes, even RoboCop 3 AND RoboCop (2014), rather than paying the full retail price for a shoddy product like Robocop for the Xbox."
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