Blue Man Group - Rogue Trooper FINISHED.

[xyzzysqrl]

Game: Rogue Trooper
Played Before Now: Yep, years ago on Gametap
Time played: 16 hours
Finished? Yes
Will I Go Back? Probably not
How Much is it Right Now? $10
Did I pay that? No, came in the Square-Enix Bundle
Recommended? Yes.

I can't credit the game Rogue Trooper for everything it does right. So much of this stuff is obviously a hold-over from the original comic. The storyline, for example, where one lone Genetic Infantryman crusades across Nu Earth, seeking the traitor general who got his entire company killed? Comic. The personalities of said dead company, put on SD-card-style memory chips and slotted into various bits of kit so they can be dead and never have to stop talking? Also the comic. Venus Bluegenes, the buff and awesome sniper GI who shows up for only a few minutes in the campaign but feels like she's the heroine of her own story? Comic. Even the enormous Blackmare tanks, with gunbarrels the size of other, smaller tanks and a chassis the size of our apartment building, were in the comic first.

Most of what makes Rogue Trooper -work- settingwise is from the comic. Nu Earth is aggressively horrible to live on, with orange toxic chemical oceans that waft fog that looks -really- bad for you. The only natural life we see is petrified trees and mutated spiders poisonous enough to make even Rogue wobble around and groan, and he's supposed to be immune to poison. The war between the "Norts" and the "Southers" evokes the American civil war, except you have places like Nu Atlanta and the Oxark Mountains paired against places like, oh, Nu Nuremberg. JUST IN CASE YOU WERE UNCLEAR WHO WERE THE BAD GUYS.

So what you have is some weird blend of civil war, WW2 and Vietnam. ... Sure, okay!

So what makes Rogue Trooper work as a game? Well. It's a third person cover shooter ... I can hear the screaming from here, guys ... and I think it really works because it encourages a very guerrilla-warfare style of play instead of a "charge, then stop, hide, and pop out to shoot" play (although there is a fair bit of that). Each of Rogue's dead, biochipped buddies can contribute something to the war effort. Helm (guess where he fits) can project holographic images or throw Rogue's voice across a room, which makes great distractions for snipers or for pulling watchmen from their post. Bagman in the backpack can refine metal harvested off dead soldiers into more ammo and exotic weapons (like the incredibly impractical but AWESOME beam rifle). Meanwhile, Gunnar controls sniping and helps stabilize your aim, or he can be put down to serve as a turret. Great for covering alternate entrances into a room, cover both sides of a doorway at once, or to help Rogue make a triangle of gunfire with some hapless jerk at one tip.

So yeah, Rogue Trooper -works-. It's weirdly goofy but still melodramatic. I have absolutely no idea how faithful it is to the actual comic. But I've played this game before, and this is THE game I think of when I think of a third-person cover shooter. I don't think of Gears of War, because those came later. I don't even think of Mass Effect or Killzone. I think of this game, because it plays being a cover shooter -smart- and does it well. Little touches like being able to see where your enemies are hiding by watching for the steam from their rebreathers, and being able to shoot their air tanks to cause squad-wiping explosions... well, those help too!

(I LOVE the little details. Stick a silencer on Gunnar, for example, and he gets all hurt-feelings. Then all your biochips whisper their normal status reports, until you take it off. Because you're being -stealthy-. It makes SENSE but so many other games would've neglected it.)

But yeah... look, if you're making a game based off something, DON'T IGNORE YOUR SOURCE MATERIAL. That's all I can say. Even if the gamers who play your thing aren't fans of it, we can TELL when affection goes into building a world.

Side note: After finishing the game you unlock a number of extras including "Low Gravity Ragdolls" and "EXTREME Ragdolls". I love this feature and want it in all games. Shooting dudes and watching them violently bounce off the landscape never really gets old to me.

All right, what's next?




See you next time ... AS NANCY DREW.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Huh! Interesting.. I hadn't even known there was a Rogue Trooper game, but another friend - long-time 2000AD reader - confirmed it, and thoroughly enjoyed it, speaking as quite a fan of the comic. The roles his not-dead chums play do sound like the kind of thing you might find there, yes - Gunnar can fire, but only in the direction the gun was left in.

Interestingly, the underlying politics do take a few twists along the way - I suppose they don't greatly affect whom we're meant to regard as Good and Bad, but they certainly add a rather grimly realistic layer of cynicism. (I'll refrain from specifics, both to avoid spoilers, and I'd probably completely mess up recounting the details anyway =:)

BTW, did you wind up joining the Kickstarter for République? Not really a FPS - more of a first person avoider.

[xyzzysqrl]

Indeed they do! I also didn't cover specifics because spoilers, but the ending is ... interesting that way.

It's a comic series I've wanted to read for quite some time. Maybe I'll get off my butt and actually order the collections from Amazon someday.

And no, m'afraid I don't do kickstarters to any capacity.

[(Anonymous)]

It's a great game. Played it through many times. So polished, so much fun.