Review | Rogue Warrior
Format: Xbox360/PS3/PC | Genre: FPS | Publisher: Bethesda | Developer: Rebellion | Release date: 01/12/09 | RRP: £39.99
By Mark Brown
“Goddamn cock breath commie motherfuckers”, a typical Rogue Warrior line, growled from a gravel chewing Mickey Rourke, almost deserves a review in itself. In fact, Rourke’s ludicrous catchphrases and expletive-filled speeches, which run the gamut from goat sodomy to genital sizes, are the only tolerable part of this insipid first-person shooter.
In the interim from the game’s 2006 announcement to its silent late-2009 release, the game has gone through more wardrobe changes than Lady Gaga. All promises of a tactical squad game, a “personality shooter” and a tongue-in-cheek 80s B-movie have drained away to reveal this, a proud statue dedicated to wasted time and money.
Rogue Warrior is a first person-shooter that follows the inflated memoirs of true-life Navy SEAL Richard ‘Demo Dick’ Marcinko. According to Rebellion’s biographical take on the man, Dick can run at lightning speed, brings a knife to a gun fight and is impervious to bullet fire during close-quarters combat. Their penchant for flawed reproduction extends to landscape as well, painting Korea and Russian as a series of anaemic corridor crawls and identical monochromatic warehouses.
Despite employing much of the modern FPS handbook, including close-up melee kills, a cover system and light stealth mechanics, its fire fights rarely extend beyond listless shooting ranges. The proprietary engine it’s built upon (after tossing out Unreal Engine 3) is fragile, and details like consistent accuracy, reliable hitboxes and believable A.I., which top-tier developers fret over endlessly, are barley acknowledged.
It’s obvious that Rebellion have had some interaction with an FPS in the past five years, considering the game’s modern cover system, yet it still plays and looks like a low rate Xbox or PS2 shooter. Corridors, warehouses and other ambiguous spaces make up the play field, different enemies are indistinguishable and the concept of using a secondary play style to alter the pace is lost on this monotonous non-stop shooter.
//”I’ve got bad guys to send to commie heaven”
Mickey Rourke isn’t the only surprising source for audio in this game. How about the putter of a broken moped engine used for gunfire, the peas on cardboard used for bullet ricochet and the limp fart used for grenade explosion? The washed out graphics and low poly characters are straight out of the last generation, and the constant dips in frame rate will make you sure your console is about to expire.
But perhaps Rogue Warrior’s biggest grievance, an even bigger middle finger than generic presentation and dreary shootouts, is its two-hour runtime. Before you’ve even got properly started, the credits (accompanied by a rap-remix of Rourke’s best lines) start to roll. No challenge modes, no useless trinkets to find, few interesting achievements to hunt and, with a campaign this dry, no reason to ever brave it again.
There is a multiplayer mode, albeit it with nothing more than lone wolf and team deathmatch game types, but finding anyone else who actually owns the game is nigh on impossible.
The game’s only unique features, according to the marketing spiel, are ‘Golden Globe winner and Oscar nominee’ Mickey Rourke’s voiceover lines and 25 different instant-kill moves that involve jabbing a giant blade into the jugular, forehead, ribcage or 22 other body parts of identikit enemies. Elsewhere, Rogue Warrior is just lacking in original or exciting content: no more than ten weapons, one type of grenade and no real sophistication to the stealth or melee combat make for a drab, joyless experience.
//”Lights out motherfuckers”
After Shellshock 2, a similarly abysmal shooter, you have to wonder if the developers at Rebellion even know they’re making awful games, devoid of merit and ambition in equal measure. What kind of atmosphere lingers around the halls of a development studio that offers little but total and complete contempt for the eventual owners of their games?
This isn’t a game with lofty concepts ruined by an inexperienced team, or a project with unrivalled ambition marred by nuisance bugs. This is a lazy, dreary and appallingly uninteresting game – and Rebellion, somehow, in their infinite wisdom, still managed to mess it up.
2/10
