Rogue Warrior Review

I never thought I would play this game again of all things but the fact that it was on Playstation Premium and this is one of the streamable PS3 games on the service made me really want to come back to it since I never played this game's PS3 version. How this of all games made on to the service at all is what I don't get but I welcome playing it again.

Rogue Warrior in a lot of ways is the "best" bad game ever made, there are some others I would list but nothing ever really tops this particular game. A lot of other "bad" games I played and I don't mean disappointing games in popular franchises, usually tends to make me angry for a few hours and then I forgot I played them but Rogue Warrior is such a memorable title.

This can be due to the short length, the hilariously bad over the top dialogue and voice acting particularly by the main character and how the story is nothing more than a vague excuse plot to show off how "awesome" he is. The gameplay itself while can be functional at times has lousy gunplay and dumb AI. The brutal takedowns only add to the hilarity since it once again shows off how much of a "badass" Dick Marcinko love to view himself as. There is nothing more funny than going up close and constantly sprinting up to enemies for a takedown to happen. Where games like Deus Ex Human Revolution often needs resources for takedowns to be done, in Rogue Warrior, you can just keep using it.

As easy as it is to tear apart Rogue Warrior, there are *some* things it kind of does geniunely well. First of all, while you have a mini map, the game does a decent enough job at guiding the player using lights particularly green lights on where to go every door and switch is colored in green so if it's that color, you can interact with it.

Grenades get more use than they do in the CoD games since the health pool is pretty small and it's often encouraged to try to get in a good grenade throw to kill 2 or even 3 enemies.

The aforementioned takedowns are pretty satisfying to look out and has that Tenchu feel of getting a nicely detailed death animation rewarding the player for being sneaky.

The game also checkpoints pretty well and you don't have to do an overwhelming amounts of content upon death.

With all that said, Rogue Warrior isn't close to the realm of geniunely good. Weapons don't sound that great and if you aren't using the LMG and AK while using ADS and aim assist is a game of luck since most of the weapons feel very inaccurate to use. Trying to get a kill with an SMG or shotgun without getting gunned downed seconds after firing feels like a game of luck especially since the health pool on normal difficulty is really small.

The cover system is useless and is almost never needed where a game like Rainbow 6 Vegas gives you open areas with lots of cover and cover helps you getting hit from long range, Rogue Warrior's cover system is gives you a limited feel of view when aiming from cover and you can't use iron sights. Killzone 2 and 3 with it's first person cover at least lets you use ADS. As a result, it's just easier to ADS, shoot, get hit, wait for health to regen rinse repeat.

Stealth is borderline non existent since it's often easier to get takedown while everyone's backs are turned, if you want to reliably sneak past enemies using a third person cover system Deus Ex Human Revolution this is not.

The pistol is also has too slow of a fire rate to even use.

There are hardly any set pieces, any major shakeups to gameplay and most if not all the game is either half baked stealth and cover shootouts.

Sure all this is bad game design but when combine all this together with the dialogue, voice acting and just the dumb ridiculously stupid straight to DVD action thriller vibe the game seemingly is going for, and this makes Rogue Warrior a game that is hard to put down. It's a trainwreck in video game form.

Overall, if you want to have a quick exploration into a "bad game" without needing a time sync and realize how much you take good game design for granted, Rogue Warrior is worth taking a look. There's not many geniunely bad games that are as charming as this one.