Titus have made the decision to make Robocop a first person shooter - we're not sure if that's the greatest decision because it's probably the most horribly clunky first person shooter we've had the pleasure of playing. Robocop has access to all his various scanning and targeting modes which highlight threats and so on, but you'll find that this interface gets cluttered due to the sheer amount of bad guys around, not to mention that the auto-aim mechanism seems to constantly malfunction. Enemies aren't particularly smart, but they come in numbers and are packed to the teeth. Unfortunately for Robocop, he's a sluggish old machine, and not really primed for combat against so many guys (in this game, anyway), so you'll find that you'll die relatively quickly. This is an odd turn, considering Robocop was pretty much indestructible via conventional means. Robocop has a variety of guns to use, including his trusty auto-pistol, an arm attached machine gun and a grenade launcher, but you'll find these are of little help thanks to some poor hit zones (shooting someone 9 times in the face usually results in death). We really hope that Titus have taken the time to tweak this for the full version.
Looking at Robocop's visuals may cause one to think that they've been sent back in time to 1998, thanks to rigid animation and rough and horribly low polygon player models. The game is presented from a first person perspective, so you don't really get any sort of idea of how well Robocop is animated outside of the game's cut scenes, but the enemies you encounter through the game are some of the poorest we've seen this year. The environments continue this "stuck in 1998" theme, with horribly bad textures and unimaginative design. Worst of all is the fact that the game slows down at the best of times. Even more ludicrous is the sound - no classic Robocop tunes and none of Robocop's famous one liners - just a bunch of horribly generic crap like "Prepare to meet your maker". Robocop is an emotionless machine, not a wisecracking yuppie.
In its current state, Robocop is a horrid mess - in contention for the worst game of 2003. With three months to go until the PAL release, there is enough time to tweak Robocop up to at least a mediocre title, but with the US release coming this month, we doubt this will happen. This is the greatest injustice to the license since Robocop 3 - in fact, that movie is more enjoyable than this game. Another waste of a great license.
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