RoboCop (2003)

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RoboCop The final nail in the coffin for Titus Interactive. Genre(s): First-person shooter Platform(s): Microsoft Windows Nintendo GameCube PlayStation 2 Xbox Release: Microsoft Windows DE: April 25, 2003 EU: May 2003 FR: 2004 RU: July 23, 2004 PlayStation 2 JP: July 3, 2003 EU: December 5, 2003 Xbox NA: July 24, 2003 EU: December 12, 2003 Nintendo GameCube JP: March 4, 2004 Engine: RenderWare Developer(s): Titus Interactive Studio Publisher(s): Titus Interactive MGM Interactive Country: France Series: RoboCop

RoboCop is a 2003 first-person shooter video game developed by Titus Interactive Studio and published by Titus Interactive for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and Xbox. It is based on the movie franchise of the same name.

Why It Should Be Taken Dead or Alive

1. Uninteresting and paper-thin story. It's just RoboCop taking on OCP and criminals.
2. Troubled development cycle: It was announced back in 1999, and was being developed by Xatrix Entertainment for the PlayStation 2, set for a late 2000 release, but it kept getting delayed multiple times, which means that this took four years to make.
3. The game is incredibly short with the campaign mode only having nine missions.
4. The levels have no checkpoints, so if you die you must restart the entire mission.
5. 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, it's also really insulting because Robocop at least died saving the city, have some respect people.
6. The levels themselves are drab and have confusing maze-like layouts. It is very easy to get lost in these levels.
7. The missions are challenging, but only because the later 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.
8. The enemy A.I can range from idiotic (standing in one place to shooting at walls) to mind-bogglingly godlike (shooting at you from beyond the draw distance with pinpoint accuracy).
9. If RoboCop is anywhere near an explosion, he instantly dies, regardless of his shield and energy meters.
10. 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 stuff instead of above it, leaving the zoom-in ability being the only helpful one.
11. As mentioned before, the enemies are bullet sponges and they take lots of damage regardless of what weapon you use, unless you headshot them.
12. There are only six weapons in the game, and only two of them are particularly effective (the rocket launcher and plasma pistol).
13. On-screen objectives will constantly be repeated during missions. While it is nice to hear them once, it, unfortunately, plays every couple of minutes.
14. It suffers from horrendous controls. For example, reticule aiming is slow and often gets you killed in later levels because of how slow RoboCop aims.
15. The graphics are atrocious for 2003 standards, and it doesn't help that it uses the RenderWare engine which is laughable because another FPS game that uses this engine Cold Winter looks miles better than this.
    • It also suffers from terrible visuals and blurry textures. The water effects look very cheaply made, which makes it look more like milk than water.
    • Poor draw distance. It is hard to see enemies from far away unless you zoom in on them.
    • It also suffers from an awful frame rate with constant stuttering, especially on the PlayStation 2 version.
16. 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.
17. Bad sound effects. For example, the robotic walking sound effect is heard every time RoboCop moves. Another example would be the chain gun sound effect being poorly done.
18. Bland, forgettable soundtrack (the RoboCop theme song isn't even in the game).
19. Poor voice-acting. For example, RoboCop doesn't even sound remotely like Peter Weller. While he 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.
20. Terrible collision detection; enemies frequently clip through walls and bullets bounce off what should be holes.
21. Many bugs and glitches: you can rescue/arrest people by walking up to the wall opposite of their position and pressing 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 at which you see them. They'll spin around and around until you move an inch to the left or right.
22. The final boss is cheaply done: not only is it annoying to wait for its weak point to open up, but it moves around a lot too. So if you're having problems with aiming, this boss fight could be problematic before long.
23. 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.
24. It cost full-retail price when it was new ($50).
25. It suffered from a 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 US PS2 and GameCube versions were canceled, alongside a Game Boy Advance version).
26. 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" the 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, rather than paying the full retail price for a shoddy product like Robocop for the Xbox."

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