RoboCop: Rogue City - Unfinished Business takes the core of Teyon's extremely solid effort at recreating Paul Verhoeven's violent classic and merely provides players with more. It's a standalone experience that should scratch the itch of players who want more RoboCop.
As I wrapped up my review of RoboCop: Rogue City back in 2023 I wrote the following:
“Rogue City deserves a sequel. I’ll go ahead and say it. Teyon has proved their knowledge and skill at replicating the world and feeling of RoboCop. A few times, I felt like I was playing a spin-off of Deus Ex with its small hub areas full of side missions and things to discover. The game feels like this successful experiment or jumping off point that could evolve in brilliant ways with enough iteration. Maybe in a sequel we would get vehicle chases or, god help us, a jetpack section. Suffice it to say, there’s something to this.”
RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business is not that sequel. Developer Teyon has emphasized that Unfinished Business is also not DLC but a standalone product.
To me, that distinction was an interesting way to frame what this “side story” of Rogue City was. Any player interested in Unfinished Business isn’t required to have finished Rogue City. Hell, no knowledge of RoboCop at all would get players through the door.
But Rogue City‘s strength wasn’t necessarily its gory, sticky shooting or somewhat engaging crime-solving elements. Those were enjoyable buffers to the mythical “power fantasy” so often sought out by players in games of any ilk. Rogue City allowed players to be RoboCop, the hulking mass of OCP metal from the 1987 Paul Verhoeven film.
One of my main points of praise for Rogue City was that it shirked traditional standards laid forth by other shooters. RoboCop in the game was emblematic of the one in the film. Former human police offer Alex Murphy died in a hail of bullets and was reborn as the cyborg RoboCop.
Verhoeven’s Detroit dystopia was full of cheek and commentary. Murphy’s transformation did not make him invincible and, at times, barely practical. Across the franchise, the cyborg officer has been dismantled, destroyed, and questioned its own humanity.
Teyon wanted to evoke similar tones. In Rogue City, RoboCop couldn’t jump–a feature I’m almost certain was not in the films. In fact, RoboCop only took air when being assaulted or using a jetpack. His slow gait was emphasized with each pneumatic step, the game hammering that constant sound into players’ ears. Instead, Rogue City let players walk into an open lobby and soak up dozens of bullets, timing up shots to make heads explode like melons with the classic Auto-9 pistol.
But here’s the thing… Virtually everything I praised and critiqued Rogue City for applies to Unfinished Business.
Unfinished Business is certainly a standalone product but it could not exist without building off the back of Rogue City. However, the most disappointing part is that its more straightforward design and static setting erase some of the charm of the original.
During my playthrough of Unfinished Business, I kept a relatively open mind. I was instantly transported back to my time with Rogue City, acknowledging the shortcomings but still having a great time with what felt like a retro-adjacent corridor shooter. Then the cracks started to form.
Because Unfinished Business is not a full-fledged sequel, the largest thing it has to offer are a few new tricks up its sleeve, a new setting, and a new story.
When I expressed hope at a follow-up to Rogue City, it was for another RoboCop game that kept the established core but presented new tricks and writing to become something more. Unfinished Business is more a half-step. Certainly it’s possible that Teyon is in the process of making a true sequel to a franchise they obviously love and have skill working on. But if that is the case, Unfinished Business‘s copying and pasting is hopefully not entirely indicative of what’s to come.
Still taking place before RoboCop 3 and after the events of Rogue City, Unfinished Business sees RoboCop returning to his police station riddled with the corpses of fellow officers. OCP technology has been stolen and the perpetrators are a group of mercenaries housed up in a vast, monolithic housing structure reminiscent of 2012’s Dredd.
RoboCop will climb the floors dispatching criminal scum and possibly helping out the innocent bystanders, slowly unfurling the rationale behind the assault on the precinct.
While Unfinished Business attempts to explore the humanity of RoboCop expressed through Alex Murphy’s memories and interactions with others, this well-tread ground begins to lose its luster across the 15-hour journey. Teyon allows players to relive memories from the flesh-and-blood Murphy before he was essentially killed. Yet the story does not take that many risks.
Instead, Unfinished Business becomes another tale of RoboCop taking on a corrupt entity wishing to enact their own idea of power and justice. Along the way he helps the bizarre and hapless inhabitants of the tower. There’s some funny stuff here that gave me a handful of chuckles… but not as much as Rogue City. I thought Unfinished Business would be more straightforward in narrative and while it was, the pace seems slower.
Honestly, the narrative may have been stronger by stripping a bulk of the side quests out. One early foray has players assisting an old man in finding his wife because he has new “youth pills” and they were placed in separate apartments. The quest takes less than five minutes as player merely walk a few steps away, speak to two NPCs, scan for clues, and return to the old man. There’s a slight payoff later on if players discover a note about the negative effects of the pills but it’s still content that merely offers a nice XP reward and not much else.
Rather than a harrowing climb up increasingly deadly floors, players will encounter long hallways, a makeshift town, an arcade, and a handful of other locales. And when Unfinished Business‘ central villain shows their face I recognized one of the major problems of the experience.
This residential area is a concrete prison players are trapped in throughout the game. In Rogue City, players explored the streets of Detroit, standalone locations, and the police precinct–all bustling with potential life. Unfinished Business‘s OCP housing building just lacks a lot of personality. Grandiose empty spaces with ventilation and deadly drops should feel intimidating. But they are merely set dressing. Wide hallways and jail-like housing areas are cold as soon as the gunfire ends. Most humans seemingly are contained to a few key areas.
Rogue City wasn’t a paragon of interactivity and there were certainly constraints as players explored the same handful of streets. But that was to the benefit of the game’s pace. Shooting sections would be split up by detective work and casual exploration. Here players can explore but there’s simply not a lot to see.
And it’s a shame because I wanted the sensation of RoboCop scaling increasingly hostile sections of this environment. He may not be fast-moving but any opportunities to have setpieces are few and far between. Instead of being a powder keg, Unfinished Business stretches out its fights and its narrative over these protracted rooms where enemies burst from sealed doors acting as monster closets.
Thankfully the shooting is still a thrill, just as it was in Rogue City, caveats and all. Players can still buffer RoboCop’s skills by investing points in upgrades, even though they are recycled. Shooting enemies by reflecting bullets off ricochet points, slowing down time, emitting a blinding flash… it’s all simple and easy to use. But Teyon still has trouble balancing out how good RoboCop’s Auto-9 pistol feels in comparison to everything else. From the jump I used the returning circuit board and node system to make the Auto-9 the hardest-hitting weapon in the game, better than a grenade launcher. It never needed to reload, was deadly accurate, and fired fast.
Despite introducing armored enemies and deadly drones, players can mow down the onslaught or tuck themselves in a doorway and pick off baddies. As much as I love the aggressive squelch of a head being shot, there came a point where the action was taking place in another hallway or congested arena and it all became rote. Getting an ice gun or controlling ED-209 is novel, but these are small parts of a more consistent whole.
And with Unfinished Business being a pseudo-sequel of sorts, I certainly expected more polish. Rogue City had a few layers of jank but here the charm is dulled. Lip-syncing is pretty bad and it doesn’t help that some of the voice acting is bog standard. Glitches pop up a lot that were both funny and weird. Sometimes guns won’t aim correctly. Other times it doesn’t feel like animations trigger properly. Goons will still get stuck in walls when thrown. And assets will either be non-existent or bug out. Teyon flexed their muscles back in 2023 so I’m not sure why Unfinished Business is releasing in a state that feels a few patches behind.
Though I hate to hedge most of my experience on disappointment, I didn’t actively have a bad time playing Unfinished Business. In fact, my enthusiasm for Teyon’s interpretation of RoboCop remains and was still in place during this “standalone” experiment.
The core experience of Rogue City was still there and even that game wasn’t impressive by any means. But what made that maiden voyage so noteworthy was its dedication to the RoboCop universe and creating a thesis on how it could act as a game. Now Teyon needs to prove how far it can take the formula. And again, I wait for that true sequel.
RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business won’t disappoint fans of the 2023 shooter simply wanting more pulpy shootouts in a dystopian Detroit. And perhaps as a standalone experience and not a true sequel, Unfinished Business is passable. But a lack of fresh ideas and a safe setting lack the humanity found within the cold confines of RoboCop’s hardened steel.
