Rogue Trooper (review)

Rogue Trooper is a third person shooter released by Eidos Interactive in 2006. It is based on the character from the pages of the 2000 AD comics, and its campy style is therefor indicative of its source material. In the game you play as a buffed up blue super soldier, possibly distant cousin of the "I'm Blue" singer, (or shared ancestor of the smurfs). And your enemies are the less blue and ultra cheesy Norts, an inaccurate parody of so called "fascist" Europe. The game is divided into main levels where you traverse different areas, gunning, sniping and blowing your way through hordes of enemies. Most of the time you'll be fighting the boys in gas masks, but occasionally you'll be able to fight mech suits, drones and even a mega chopper every now and then. The levels are for the most part the same, besides from two vehicle levels.

Collectables are spread across each level minus the introduction and vehicle levels, and are in the form of "salvage". A quantifiable collectable which can be used as a currency to purchase upgrades and as a meter to unlock encyclopedia entries. When I first started the game, I missed some of these collectables until I realized they're visible on the mini map. From that point on, gathering them was quite easy, and only a couple required any kind of problem solving.

I would say the difficulty is spot on, and taking out Nords is satisfying, especially as a sniper. Headshots gain you instant kills, even on the hardest difficulty, and the ragdoll physics make watching these guys blow up from leaked jetpacks a cool sight to see. Playing on massacre difficulty was basically perfect, but was only able to be unlocked after beating the game. I thought that I would keep the salvage I had collected up to this point if I entered massacre difficulty, but it reset my progress, which was sort of disappointing. Massacre requires you to really focus to win, but if you do you can certainly make it. It is possible to cheese the difficulty by repeatedly buying med packs, but the decision not to is rewarding if you can make it through a mission without relying on any meds.

Sometimes you have to use equipment together, like static grenades to stun mechs so you can dive in and disequip it. With that said, I found grenades very difficult to throw correctly, and this made precision throws frustrating, especially around corners.

The last boss battle was epic and intense, designed in a way that required you to use every skill you've gained along the way. It was basically the only boss battle, besides from a brief firefight with the sniper just before. This is one of the best final bosses I've encountered when it comes to you having to put together all of your learned abilities.

The plot is ultra basic, and is not a strongpoint of the game's focus. The game starts with you and the boys going on this all out advance on Nort Territory, until unfortunately everyone except you is defeated in the attack. As the sole survivor, you go on alone, with your buddies concsiousness computed in your helm and gun. One of the coolest details. Eventually you find out the reason the attack was a failure was because of treachery from the inside. This traitor general, who is literally called traitor general, and the mission to take him out.This guy is ultra ugly and looks like the grotesque orc captain from Return of the King. There's a couple other characters too, like a sniper assassin, my favorite, and a professor like agent. Your ally general is a bit suspicious, and I spent the whole game suspecting this guy to pull some kind of betrayal, but in the end he didn't.

The graphics are decent and non distracting, and probably my favorite kind of graphics from the era. The sky is beautiful to look at it, with its monstrous black hole staring down at you at all times. The setting is generally pretty boring to look at for the most part, but the city levels are fun and ruined buildings are interesting to explore.

I didn't encounter many glitches, I tried to boundary break a couple times but was not able to.

Online play consisted of cooperative rather than competitive gameplay, and required you to survive with others through series of trials. I wasn't able to really test it out, but the offline play of it was pretty fun.

Difficulty: 5

Design: 5

Gameplay: 7

Graphics: 5

Story: 2

Worldbuilding: 3

17/50