Rogue Trooper (PC DVD)

Feeling a bit flush, I rushed out and bought this title on it's day of release. I'll admit I'm a 2000AD reader, so I'm more than familiar with the character, and I reckon that gives me the right to be even more critical in my opinion of the game.

The good news is that I think Rebellion have done a bang up job of bringing Rogue and his bio-chipped buddies to the

computer screen.

For anyone not familiar with the title, you take on the role of Rogue - a vat grown super soldier, bred for combat in

the warzone of Nu Earth. Immune to all the toxins in the air, with heightened strength, senses and highly skilled in all

methods of combat, Rogue (and all his pals) are the (bright blue) weapon of choice for the Souther forces battling the

evil Norts for control of the planet. Just point your G.I (Genetic Infantry) soldier in the direction of the bad guys

and he'll wipe the floor with them. That is until the Quartz Zone massacre - which is where the game begins.

Betrayed by a General on their own side relaying their strike information to the Norts, the G.I's are all shot down, with

only Rogue escaping. Fortunately Rogue manages to be on scene for the deaths of three of his colleagues - Helm, Bagman

and Gunnar. Cutting out their bio-chips (storing all their memories and personalities), he installs them in his gun,

backpack and helmet, giving them a second chance of life and being able to assist you with their talents as you

progress through the game, hunting down the traitor General.

But enough of the back story, what's the game like? It's a third person shooter, which you can play stealthily, all-out

guns blazing, or however you want. The controls are very intuitive, taking on the usual WASD system, right clicking

to activate the scope on your rifle, and other well established key presses/controls as found in other games. So you

can pick it up and play without any need for a tutorial (although the first mission will guide you through controlling

Rogue and his functions). Taking advantage of your bio-chipped kit's talents is a matter of two simple clicks. These

talents include setting up Gunnar as a sentry gun, so he'll distract/kill any enemies whilst you do other stuff, using

Helm to project a hologram of yourself to distract/lure out enemies, and using Bagman to manufacture items/ammo from the

salvaged bodies of the folks you kill. Bagman's talents allow you to add additional firepower to Gunnar as he'll

produce shotgun shells, sammy rockets, beam lasers and all kinds of stuff which add a bit of flavour to the game.

At various points you're able to take control of vehicles/cannons which provide a refreshing break to the running around. Chasing the traitor General in his helicopter on one level and another defending a train against Nort attacks turns the game into something more like a Virtual Cop style rail shooter, which is also a welcome change.

Dispatching enemies is fun, you can go the stealth route, sneaking up and stabbing them, the straight forward

headshot/gunning down, lob a grenade or two, place micro-mines to booby trap areas, set them on fire by blowing up

nearby fuel tanks/vehicles, or rupture their chem-suits airtanks with a bullet and watch them panic before the tank

explodes taking them with it.

The enemy AI is also impressive. You won't find Norts running into your bullets in wave after wave like lemmings,

they'll take cover, react to noise and generally try to keep themselves alive.

Graphically it's nice, starting off with basic wartorn desert type affairs (plenty of rocks, bunkers and the like),

moving on to military complexes, cities, a huge crashed spaceship (which is very well done, lots of nice lighting

effects and a real sense of scale) and other locales. The characters/machinery are all nicely crafted, and really

reference the original source material - fanboys will love it! Rogue's movement is also well animated, from leaping

over barriers to poking his head round corners, and there's an occassional cut scene which progresses the story.

Sound is good, plenty of budda-budda's and booms!, with the voice actors for the characters doing their job without

getting too repetitive (Gunnar shouting comments like "You want some?!?" when in sentry mode are quite amusing).

I've read comments that moan about clipping problems and things like that but I've not encoutered anything too

distracting myself. I've seen Rogue's arm disappear inside a wall when he's playing out a standard animation

(e.g screwing a silencer onto his rifle), but not had any problems with being shot through walls, falling through

objects or anything as severe as that. The camera views are good, not at all getting lost in walls/scenery and Rogue

fades to transparent if he's too much "in your face". There's also a lot of reviews that reference the Judge Dredd

game, but I think it's wrong to compare the two. The only connection is the fact they're both based on 2000AD characters and were both produced by Rebellion. Dredd had it's faults, and was quite roughly treated on the review front I thought -

I've got it, and quite like it - but don't let your opinion of it prejudice you against trying out Rogue Trooper.

Rebellion seem to have learnt a lot in the 3 or more years since Dredd hit the shelves and it shows.

It's very faithful to the source material (you'll be hearing the Norts shouting "Stak!" and Rogue telling his bio-chips

to "Synth out" - and you get a cameo by Venus!), an entertaining play that keeps you wanting to progress and I thoroughly recommend it.

It still could have been so much better. Cut scenes, graphics and the thought that has gone into the game are excellent and clearly evident, but it is far too short, too console and definitely not hard enough. Dredd vs Death suffered from all three of these and whilst if you play that again it isn't as bad as everyone said, RT is a vast improvement.

The biggest change is the FPS perspective has been dropped in favour of a Tomb Raider third person view and this works very well, the addition of a climb ability allows you to move around the landscape much more freely than in a FPS game.

The difficulty levels are very disappointing, I gave up on normal early on and went to hard, completed that with no trouble and then massacre seems the same as hard but with half the life bar available. I want a challenge, not a one man army walk over. Having Bagman manufacture all of your ammo from salvage is also a great game mechanic but you never really have a supply problem because of this, adding further to the ease of the game.

Innovations like Gunnar on autofire and a hologram decoy from Helm just don't seem to work, if you do use them it just slows the flow of the game down. The extra weapons of a shotgun, mortar and beam weapon just seem to have been added to pad out the weapons available, but I managed quite well enough with just the standard rifle, grenades and sammies, not even considering using anything else. The beam waepon is in all truth embarrassing and doesn't belong at all.

The multiplay will go the way of DvsD, 'withdrawn at request of vendor' on Gamespy, as Rebellion have gone for the same repetitive and short lived niche mission type play again instead of all out war as with BF2, FarCry, etc. It's also only 4 player co-op vs bots, another console ported limitation and it compares badly with a 64 player BF2 map. GI's vs Norts or Southers vs Norts would have been so much better, especially with driveable vehicles. Halo did it years ago, why not RT?

If like me you've grown up with Rogue for the last 25 years then it's a 4 star game, Rogue lives and hopefully he'll be back in a better game in the future which sorely needs to be aimed at a more discerning and sophisticated PC market rather than the joypad brigade. If not, it's a 3 star. Get it it's good, but it won't mean as much to you as it does to those who first read the stories of the Quartz Zone massacre back in 1981.

With a story developed by Rogue Trooper's current writer and long-time 2000ad contributor Gordon Rennie, and vehicles, costumes, uniforms and weaponry taken directly from the strip itself, this game's visual and storytelling pedigree are beyond reproach. Utilising a third-person view, the play mechanics are more akin to Tomb Raider: Legend than the first-person Dredd vs Death (which was universally decried as decidedly average by the gaming press, and required too much concentration for casual gamers more used to Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball, or Halo). More of an arcade experience than DvsD, but if you've played the game based on Marvel's The Punisher, you'll have a good idea what to expect.
A shame more games based on comics weren't given the same development and care as applied here, as the likes of Daredevil or Hulk could learn a thing or two.