Another dodgy Robocop shooter
The legendary movie hero that is Robocop has received the videogame treatment several times over the years and with varying degrees of success (Robocop 3 anyone?). Unfortunately, this version falls firmly into the camp of games to be avoided, thanks to its generic and largely unexciting gameplay and disjointed narrative. The story revolves around another designer drug that is proving popular in Robocop's stamping ground of Neo-Detroit and of course it's up to the ultimate law enforcement officer to take down the drug baron who's peddling the stuff on the streets. Robo's dodgy and corrupt creators, OCP, are involved in things somehow while there's also a mayoral race heating up and which may also have an impact on proceedings. All these various aspects of the story are translated into nine levels of largely ordinary first-person shooting action, each with their own objectives and with a few neat Robo-style twists. You have a sophisticated HUD which highlights targets and allows to you lock on to multiple enemies, while thermal vision and a raft of weapons are also available. On paper, Robocop sounds promising but in practice it proves largely unrewarding. While levels are large and the shooting action is reasonably fun initially, the lack of originality and bland, uninteresting design soon become apparent and boredom sets in. The visuals are equally dull, with generic sci-fi environments that are lacking in style or appeal so when you combine all this, you are left with a simple and fairly tedious shooter that is only worth playing for die-hard Robocop fans.
