Rogue Trooper – XB – Review

Nu-Earth, an uninhabitable
burnt-out rock that’s near a strategically important worm hole (in space) in
the ongoing battle between the Norts and the Southers. The land is decimated
and the air a toxic poison. Here, soldiers do battle against one another in
environment suits that are bulky and because of the strategic importance and
hellish conditions, millions of lives have been lost. The Southers, in an
attempt to gain an upper hand, genetically create a super soldier that can
heal quickly, fight ferociously and breath the acrid air without any need for
an environment suit. But in an act of treason, the regiment of Genetic
Infantrymen are betrayed and only a handful survive. This is where you come in
– as the Rogue Trooper who manages to save only three of his comrades it’s
your turn to do some betraying. Because as far as you are concerned, anyone on
the other end of the barrel is the enemy, and you will make them pay.

"I learned this from the school of John
Woo movies."

Sounds cool huh? I should write
type for upcoming movies or something, just writing the above got me pumped to
go play some more. Well, that’s because Rogue Trooper is, in all, actuality a
pretty decent action game. You see since action titles have always been a
staple in the video-game library, it takes a little something extra to rise
above the other titles. And I think that where Rogue won’t reinvent the genre,
it does present some unique gameplay and a fairly rewarding experience. You
see, the thing that sets the game apart from other games is the fact that you
rescue three members of your fellow troopers by removing the bio-chip from the
back of their necks in the seconds after they died. The chip is basically the
soul and personality of the fallen trooper and can be placed into equipment.
For instance, Gunnar dies in front of you and in a cutscene you see Rogue cut
the chip out of the back of his neck and place it into his rifle. In doing so,
Gunnar now enables accuracy in your targeting, the ability to use other ammo
types for the rifle and in a strategic twist the ability to place the rifle on
the ground to act as a turret while you move elsewhere. The two other
characters you find are named Helm who goes in your helmet and Bagman who goes
into your backpack. Of course these placing these chips into the equipment
creates other options during combat like the ability to
manufacture ammo/health in your backpack and on-screen radar. But the real
question is; how convenient was it that these troopers be named so close to
the equipment they eventually are plugged into? I mean, what would have
happened if you had rescued a trooper named Micro? Would you be able to cook a
burrito in under 60 seconds? And suppose you would have been the one that was
killed and placed into a piece of hardware? What does the name Rogue tell us?
Hmmmm…

"Wait, wait, wait… I said get the BIG
gun!"

All kidding aside, Rogue turns out
to be the real deal when it comes to pulling off the whole "army of one" thing
that our own military likes to use as a recruitment tool. With his ability to
heal quickly and his intelligent equipment, Rogue does the things only 80’s
action heroes could have done. And with the ability to use Gunnar as a turret
you can set up crossfire-type attacks, or ambush-type scenarios, which really
does open up the gameplay. Sure you could just do the whole run and gun thing
but that would be ignoring an interesting dynamic that the folks at Eidos
created. I should mention at this point that you also have this nifty little
hologram projector that can be used to project your image, enabling you to
mess with the minds of your enemies; I like how this game works.

Please don’t be confused, this is
not a first-person shooter, rather it is a third-person adventure style game.
Yeah, there is a lot of shooting and yeah, you do find some rather large and
powerful weapons in which you can dispatch your enemies. But there is a
certain charm that the game seems to slowly wrap you up in. I found myself
embracing Rogue’s plight and the vengeance he feels he needs to exact upon,
well… everyone.

"The Blue Man group presents…
Explosions!"

Controlling all of this mayhem is
done very well. With the third-person perspective there is the traditional
chase cam that allows you to get a slightly higher point-of-view perspective,
it works really well in this game and if they had initially had thought
that this could have been a FPS (I don’t know, I’m just saying) they made the
right decision sticking with the third. Rogue moves pretty good and
fortunately has the ability to hop up onto platforms or objects that are
slightly higher then waist high, unlike other games of this type. He can also
blind fire, take cover and move rather stealthily. It’s a good mix of moves
for a game and the developers made them easy enough to execute so that if you
are in the middle of some crazy action sequence, you could do them without
fumbling.

You would think that a planet
named Nu-Earth that has been described as a war-torn uninhabitable wasteland
would have some interesting things to look at. And there are – buildings are
decidedly rubble strewn, the whole place looks like a dump and there is all
sorts of stuff left laying around. It looks good, but I think it needed to
look worse in a destroyed/messy way. I would have liked to seen more bodies
lying around including lots of skeletal remains. Supposedly there has been
millions of lives lost in this war, where are the corpses? If this place is as
bad as the game would like you to believe, then I think the joint really
needed to show that. As a fan of games and movies that show a blown out
apocalyptic future, Rogue should have been this to the nth degree. So while
the game doesn’t feature bad graphics, I think the implementation of the look
of the game, missed the boat a bit.

What surprised me probably the
most, was that Rogue and his comrades actually had personalities and
individuality. This was conveyed to me by the way they spoke with one another
and their witty banter. Voice acting was on-par and it surprised me because
the game does a good job of making you think (initially) that the squad is
made up of clones. And by my thinking I assumed that clones would be these
mindless, order-taking robots who didn’t crack jokes or poke fun at one
another. So good move on the developers part, by tricking me. Of course since
the game is a revenge-driven title, I shouldn’t have been surprised that Rogue
had other emotions, I already knew he possessed that vengeance gene.

Gameplay: 8.5
Smooth controls, lots of actions
for Rogue to perform and the ability to apply different methods of strategy
all throughout the game.

Graphics: 7.5
Again the game looks fine, and
Rogue and the enemy soldiers all look good, but I really wanted to see a
full-blown holocaust of destruction. The A.I. seems to be a bit spotty, but
the game makes up for it with cool looking explosive effects and big, nifty
guns. I can see traces of all sorts of different Sci-Fi influences in here.

Sound: 8.2
Boom! With in-game Dolby Digital,
I like all the sound effects and action noises that this title pumps out of
the speakers. The folks at Eidos have never really cut corners in their
in-game sounds and this one keeps the tradition alive. Decent voice work gives
the otherwise cloned troopers a bit more individuality.

Difficulty: Medium
The game was a little too short
for my liking. The A.I. was relatively easy to take on and the bad guys would
not even run if I tossed a grenade at them.

Concept: 7.9
Super soldiers taking on everyone
has been done to death. But the game scores points for having an original idea
with the bio chips of fallen comrades placed into the equipment. But the
ability to find scrap and have Bagman convert it to ammo makes that whole
difficulty thing that much easier.

Multiplayer: 7.0
With a game like this I half way
expected it to have a decent multiplayer experience. And while there is a
couple of nifty play options involving you defending your base from an
invasion of Nort soldiers called "Stronghold" I honestly don’t think this game
had enough multiplayer play for my liking.

Overall: 8.0
It’s a decent adventure game that has some really interesting ideas
on gameplay. It may be a tad too short, but there is some fun to be had while
playing.