Rebellion Games’ Rogue Warrior found itself lost among the fall lineup and unfortunately for me, Rogue Warrior should of stayed lost. With Mickey Rourke voicing the protagonist and Bethesda publishing this title, I was surprised at just how bad the game is. I scratched my head while playing asking myself, how could anyone make this game and price it at $60 dollars? In a time where there’s more than three games you should buy instantly. Rogue Warrior presents itself as one you should avoid at any cost, literally. Playing as a F-bomb dropping Navy SEAL during the Cold War killing terrorist has never been more boring. Like James of TheKoalition would say, “The S&!t is @$s!
Mickey Rourke voices the lead character, Richard “Dick” Marcinko. Dick is a insubordinate Navy SEAL, who is sent to North Korea to receive intel on some missile launchers. Upon the arrival, Dick’s team is killed and is now handed the task to stop a group of Russian terrorist and stop these missiles from being used. The plot seems easy enough to understand, but the heart of the story is lost in translation once Dick opens his mouth and talks. Nearly every word coming out of his mouth consist of one or two obscenities, which I’m sure was suppose to make him seem like a badass but it only makes him seem like a dick. Not only that, but the limited cutscenes and the mission briefings in between makes the story telling dull. You can play this game on mute and you’ll know what I know. The campaign can be completed withing three hours or less, so this bumpy ride is over quick.
Rogue Warrior’s gameplay mashes up some stealth elements with its first person shooter style. Except, the gameplay doesn’t really work out like it should have. The simple things like moving are just done wrong, it feels like the frame rate drops every time you move. The shooting is bad too, if your enemy isn’t literally standing next to you, then you have no chance of hitting him. Rogue Warrior does have a cover system, which for the most part is ok, but the hit detection during blind fire is worse than it should be. The stealth elements I mentioned are poor, you can pretty much run behind someone and they wont notice you. Stealth elements also add kill moves which can be performed with a tap of a button. If there’s anything interesting in this game, this is it. Watching Dick slice a guy’s throat and then blurt out a cheesy one liner, is ok at the most, although the kill moves will get repetitive.
Graphically, Rogue Warrior’s graphics are a little less than the standard of what a game should look like in this generation. The grenade explosions look horrible and the enemies look like the ones you just previously killed. The locations aren’t really detailed and the textures look poor. The animations also seem stiff and just plain weird, I’ve seen dead enemies twitching inside of a wall.
On the sound department, Rouge Warrior also lacks. The gun sounds aren’t really impressive, they sound like BB gun rounds. But like I said, the real annoyance here is the voice acting. Not so much how Mickey Rourke sounds when he’s reading the lines, but the material he was given to read is horrible. Nothing but F-bombs and such, I’ve even heard him tell an enemy something about putting his hairy balls in their mouth.
Rogue Warrior does offer some multiplayer modes. Only two actually, Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch but I don’t see that as a problem. The main problem is that it plays exactly like it does in the single player campaign. I for one cannot see myself playing this game when there’s way better online multiplayer games out there. Checking through the leaderboards only about eight hundred people have played online so I doubt you’ll even be able to find someone to go up against.
Rogue Warrior is a game you need to avoid this fall. The only thing this game would be good for is to give as a joke gift for Christmas, but note that you’ll lose a friend in the process. This mediocre game gets even worse when you see the $60 dollar price point that Bethesda gave the game. From publishing Fallout 3 to this game, it must be some kind of weird joke around the office to publish crappy games like Wet and now this. To wrap this review up; Don’t buy this game, Bethesda hire someone for quality control, and Mickey Rourke fire your agent.
This review is based on a review copy of Rogue Warrior for the Xbox 360.
