Hands-on | Rogue Warrior

Format: Xbox360/PS3/PC | Genre: Tactical FPS | Publisher: Bethesda | Developer: Rebellion | ETA: 27/11/09

By Greg Giddens

Sometimes, the best characters come from truth rather than fiction.

This is certainly true of Rouge Warrior, a tactical shooter developed by Rebellion, set in the eighties in the USSR and North Korea. You play as real life American Navy Seal Richard Marcinko, partaking in missions based on his military experiences, pulling off signature moves the man himself used to perform back in the day.

He’s an irrefutably cool character, and the concept is solid.  But it’s ultimately unoriginal, and unfortunately this unoriginality threatens to plague the entire game.

//Déjà vu
Rouge Warrior struggles to do anything new. It sticks rigidly to the typical stealth-action formula, which will result in inevitable comparisons that, in its current state, could well reduce the game to sub-par fare. It’s a bit of a shame, as the aggressive and brutal style works, with the prolific melee instant kills standing out. In the end, though, the good ideas risk being far out weighed by the apparent abundance of recycled concepts from other similar titles, ones which are neither surpassed nor even matched. Unless something strong can blanket these flaws, there’s a chance Rouge Warrior could slip by into obscurity when it’s released near the end of November this year.

We played a short night mission at this week’s Eurogamer Expo, and it turned out not to be the most ideal setup to showcase the game, as the night-time setting unfortunately failed to show off the visual presentation. The dark exterior and building interiors are hugely lacking in detail, muzzle flashes look quite frankly awful, and the animation for enemies is a little stiff. Add to that weapon balancing issues, with pistols and submachine guns sometimes failing to cause any noticeable damage to enemies, and screaming enemies failing to alert nearby guards… well, it’s safe to say the questionable quality of the current build, both mechanically and visually, raises some concerns.

//Stripped down to the gears
The mechanics aren’t completely broken, but still fail to shine. The controls feel somewhat slow and heavy at times, but this could have been due to the setup rather than the game itself, and it will be interesting to see how this translates to the final build. The variety of different melee instant kills, which can be triggered with a button press when in close quarters, are admittedly impressive, mainly due to the brutality and clever use of the environment. These executions seemed to be Rouge Warrior’s saving grace, until it become apparent that they could be used in every encounter, regardless of whether you’ve been spotted or not, encouraging a charge mentality that entirely eliminates any form of tactical play.

Across the occasions on which you can use weapons, a few different tactical options become available. A cover system can be used during firefights, and shooting lights out allows you to sneak up on enemies in a fashion almost identical to Splinter Cell, but justifying the effort is tricky when a charge and instant melee kill proves just as effective. Once again, it’s a system that feels unoriginal, a sort of hybridised version of Rainbow 6 and Gears of War, but it works well enough, and the main character’s detailing and animations are shown off by the switch to third-person view. If only the enemies’ presentation were as well taken care of as Marcinko’s.

While it would be unfair to draw a concrete conclusion based on such as short play session, nothing yet stands out as at all special. And while everything is certainly functional on all accounts, there’s a chance that the abundance of older, similar and seemingly better titles will mean Rouge Warrior fails to impress. Although the possibility remains that the narrative may be strong enough to redeem the experience, Rouge Warrior is looking too dated and lacking in individuality to compete against the stronger titles due for release in the near future.