The base game of Rogue City, I enjoyed for the most part but I did feel the game started to wear thin after a point. As far as being a game is concerned, it did fare far better than Teyon's previous effort with Terminator Resistance. With the latter game, you had to be a Terminator fan to really overlook it's shortcomings. Rogue City did have better combat and better moment to moment gameplay in spite of how unrefined it can be. There was some initial negativity I heard regarding this expansion. With stuff like glitches and crashes on PS5. I had virtually no issues with my playthrough of Unfinished Business despite what many reported.
What Unfinished Business esstentially is a video game version of movies like the 2012 Judge Dredd reboot and The Raid Redemption. The former movie and this expansion being inspired by each other being poetic since the first Robo movie was inspired by Dredd, the latter itself having similarties to video games and now there is a Robo game borrowing from Dredd.
The game is sort of like a movie or an episodic standalone of a TV show played out in game form. It seemingly sets up Robocop 3 since the base game already answered the question of what happened to the Old Man inbetween Robo 2 and the aforementioned third movie.
Story itself is decent stuff. It was nice to see Alex Murphy's past as a police officer before he got mutilated at the start of the first movie since as far as on screen versions of him are concerned, it was never shown that much. His brief sections also highlights the contrast between playing as a police officer who can only take 2-3 bullets and how much of a powerhouse tank Robocop can feel when the player controls the latter again.
Cassius Graves is one of the franchise's better villains. This isn't saying much since the only ones of note Clearence Boddicker and Dick Jones from the first movie. Maybe to some degree the Old Man even if he was retroactively written that way. Cassius is esstentially a cross between the Marvel Comics anti hero The Punisher and The Rock's General Hummel. I did wish he had a few more scenes before Robo kills him but the stuff with him and Miranda was good since it highlights how manipulative he can be. The part where he brutally kills the merc highlights how vicious he is.
Speaking of Miranda Hale, she does a decent enough job at motivating the Robo and the player by proxy to see the story through. At the very least you can say her backstory is interesting enough. I also like her weirdly introverted nature too.
On to the gameplay, this is where things get interesting. The game follows expansion pack difficulty logic to varying degrees. The mercs that appear a fair way into Rogue City's campaign are now who you fight at the start of Unfinished Business. As a result, all the abilities you had to unlock in the former are in the latter. You know have armor, flash grenade, dash, and slo mo right at the start.
Some could criticize how combat heavy this expansion can be but since you have all powers I just mentioned, this makes combat more fun than the base game. The game just throws so many enemies at you and you are given just enough tools at your disposal to make short work of them. Enemies can shred your health pretty fast on normal difficulty. This is where the fun lies since now, you can use the abilites from the Crysis series like maximum armor to tank more damage and grab enemies for a fast and quick kill. You have the slo mo from FEAR to get some quick kills and widdle down armor and robotic enemies on top of the how much the battlefield carnage can resemble that game itself with the destruction bullets can cause. Flash greandes are a quick way to stagger enemies so you can get some quick shots in.
It is a game where it's easy to be overwhelmed by how many enemies is thrown at the player especially early on but if you use all these abilties and remember to take cover and choose when to come out of cover and shoot everyone, it's easy to make short work out of everyone but it won't be a complete cakewalk either.
The detailed gore and blood splatter only adds to how visercal combat can feel. The secondary weapons like desert eagle and the spas 12 shotgun are also fun to use. The Auto 9 can be a little too easy to fall back on since the ammo is infinite and the first circuit board you get can make short work of a lot of the enemies in the game.
ED 209 gets some much needed Adaptation Badass.
This leads to my criticisms, the upgrade tree is pointless since most of the game is combat so no need for deductions or anything to help you during the investigations sequences since there is no need to choose between upholding the law or public trust.
Side missions add nothing since it just effects your end of chapter rank and slows down the pacing of Alex needing to stop the villain. This is no longer the, "day in the life of Robocop" that the base game was going for.
The cobra assault canon while awesome can trivialize much of the challenge late game since it rip through many enemies waves partnered with the Auto 9.
The pacing for some chapters like One in a Million and Ice and Steel can really slow things down due to how lengthy they can be to finish.
Overall, solid expansion considering how low my expectations were going in.
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