RoboCop's Latest Adventure Changes The Game In One Significant Way
“My friends call me Murphy.”
RoboCop: Rogue City was one of the sleeper hits of 2023 and a near-flawless adaptation of its highly regarded source material. It perfectly captured the satirical cheesiness of the 1987 sci-fi classic, while crafting a tanky first-person shooter adventure game that was as fun as it was gleefully violent. Two years later, Polish developer Teyon is running it back with Unfinished Business, Rogue City’s first expansion that will make some big changes to the action game’s winning formula based on the film’s most emotional moments.
Unfinished Business is a standalone story sequel to the main game. Players won’t be required to finish or even play Rogue City to start it. The expansion follows RoboCop as pursues a group of mercenaries who’ve stolen critical tech from his precinct. The mercenaries end up being cornered in a building known as the OmniTower, an enormous housing project where evicted residents of Old Detroit were relocated to make way for the development of Delta City.
On top of these mercenaries taking over this residential building, the OmniTower also has a power source that, when combined with the stolen tech RoboCop is tracking down, will give these criminals total autonomy over OCP’s technology. That of course includes our technology-riddled titular hero.
If the plot details don’t give it away, Unfinished Business is a riff on a classic action movie formula. RoboCop will enter the OmniTower at the bottom floor and blast his way to the top. It’s essentially The Raid (or the very underrated 2012 Judge Dredd) done in the over-the-top alternate future Detroit. The trailer showers RoboCop saving citizens and smashing the heads of the bad guys in equal measure.
“As you ascend the tower, ghosts from Alex Murphy’s past will come back to haunt him,” Nacon Community Manager Cryss Leonhart writes on the PlayStation Blog. “The leader of the mercenaries is a former colleague of Murphy. These two have the same goal, protecting Old Detroit, but their motives differ.”
It’s a compelling hook that fits Rogue City’s methodical brand of shooting action. Robocop will even have a “gal in a chair,” a former OCP scientist, helping him through the labyrinthian tower and its many security measures.
The most interesting wrinkle that this expansion will add is flashback sequences. Players will get to control Officer Alex Murphy during his days as a beat cop long before his brutal murder at the start of the first RoboCop. Nacon promises that playing as Murphy before he’s turned into the metallic automaton will change enemy encounters significantly. You’ll have to use their environment to gain an advantage against the bad guys, as gunfire can make quick work of them.
These sections are a cool nod to the films, which feature scenes of RoboCop’s human memories getting triggered by familiar sights and places. Coming face to face with an old friend gone rogue will surely set off these flashback sequences, giving us more background into the relationship between Murphy and the expansion’s main villain.
It’s a great time to jump into this gem if you missed it the first time around. RoboCop: Rogue City is one of April’s PlayStation Plus freebies, and it's definitely worth checking out if you haven’t already. The game is also on sale on Steam (and is Steam Deck Verified) for as low as $10.
