RoboCop: Rogue City - Unfinished Business (Review)
- James Stephanie Sterling
- Jul 25
- 5 min read
RoboCop: Rogue City - Unfinished Business
Released: July 17th, 2025 (PC)
Developer: Teyon
Publisher: Nacon
Systems: PC, PS5 (reviewed), Xbox X/S
Teyon’s formula of turning 80s movies into store brand versions of popular games has so far led to pleasant little nostalgia trips. Terminator: Resistance did well as a discount Fallout, and RoboCop: Rogue City adapted the structure of Deus Ex in a simplified but fun way. I'd love to see them tackle another movie series, but until then they've added to RoboCop with a new standalone expansion, Unfinished Business.
In all honesty, it isn't business that really needed finishing. Rogue City wrapped up nicely enough, and this is a side story of no major consequence despite some cute lore additions. That said, it’s not bad at all, and for something selling itself as an add-on, it boasts a longer runtime than games charging over twice as much. As far as unnecessary offerings go, it offers plenty of fun with a few creative flaws.
RoboCop takes on Those Mercenaries this time around, and I’m going to assume their outfit is literally called Those Mercenaries because that’s all they’re ever called. Much of the action is the same as it ever was - RoboCop stomps around shooting lots of people with his Auto-9 and secondary weapons that aren’t as good as his Auto-9, offering some big dumb action for players who want exactly that.
Those Mercenaries are an immediately greater threat than Rogue City’s army of street thugs, with heavily armed soldiers increasing the challenge. Deploying with them are minnigunners, drones, and katana-wielding robot guys with genuinely creepy faces. I wish more of the enemies were like the katana guys, as Those Mercs are pretty generic otherwise.
Quite a ways into the adventure, RoboCop can get his cursed metal hands on a brand new backup gun that’s still not as good as the Auto-9 but is worth using on occasion - the Cryo Gun. It’s exactly what you think it is, a big icy bastard that freezes enemies caught in its blast radius.
It’s slow and unwieldy but it has utility against grouped enemies and the ice effects are really nice - environmental surfaces are instantly covered in large frosty shards with the whole area making that cool squeaky noise you get from loads of ice. While Rogue City is far from a graphical powerhouse, I like the Cryo’s visual effects a lot. Everything it touches looks proper cold.
We get some non-RoboCop gameplay at various points, which I’ll talk about in a little bit. Before that, I must say I love the concept behind Unfinished Business’ setting, even if the setting itself doesn’t always deliver.
Most of the action takes place inside OmniTower, a giant housing complex built for those who ceded their homes when OmniCorp gentrified Old Detroit. While sold as a luxurious upgrade, it is in fact a dilapidated hellhole of crowded accommodations and unfinished facilities.
The potential of this environment is seen when visiting Notown. OmniTower is so vast and shitty that people made an entire town inside it, using shipping containers for homes and sustaining their own ramshackle economy because it’s miles better than anything OCP provided. That’s a bloody great idea!
Moments like this are not as prevalent as they should be. Much of the campaign relegates itself to areas more befitting a large brutalist apartment building - it’s okay, but it does mean a lot of time is spent in grey corridors where there’s not much to see.
The singular setting means Rogue City’s whole Deus Ex vibe is missing, lacking those moments where you can explore Detroit and find fun side content. Locations like Notown and the shopping mall floor provide some of that flavor, but not often and not extensively. It’s a shame, since those exploratory sections were my favorite part and I really dug what little of it is found here.
To keep players getting too tired of OmniTower, a few missions are thrown in that provide background story from the perspectives of other characters. One such character is Alex Murphy himself, back before Bodicker and his cronies shot him to all fuck. Despite the marketing, Murphy’s gameplay is only a very small part of things and isn’t particularly important.
I suppose it’s a decent change of pace. Murphy lacks RoboCop’s visual enhancements and only has a standard issue handgun, but he can run and crouch like a real boy. He also has immediate access to health regen rather than healing items, though he can barely take a few shots in exchange. Stripped of sci-fi trappings, Murphy’s portion ultimately amounts to some mediocre first-person shooter fare. I’m glad it’s brief.
Ironically, the other character chapters are better despite the complete lack of any action.
There’s RoboCop’s tenuous ally within OmniTower, Miranda, whose chapter kicks off with her trying to evade threatening men in a dark alley. This alley segment is slow and linear but there’s something remarkably scary about it. The confidently lazy pace of her potential attackers is creepier and more real than if they were frantically chasing her. It’s very short, being a flashback within a flashback, but I’m struck by how well done it is.
This section, and another where you play as one of Those Mercenaries with his own agenda, offer little more than walking and progressing the narrative, but they’re interesting and have a great atmosphere, proving effective at their job of breaking up RoboCop’s campaign.
A final playable character goes the other way, providing nothing but pure combat. ED-209 is awesome, one of gaming’s precious few mech segments that are actually cool instead of giving you a massive hitbox with shitty firepower. It’s such an over-the-top sequence, chewing up hordes of enemies with rockets and autocannons. Oh, and they make a point of its inability to use stairs, because Treyon knows what’s up.
Yet, like Murphy’s chapter, the hype is all for a sliver of gameplay. I love ED-209 as a concept, one of the most perfectly stupid robots in media, and I’d hoped for a fun series of missions focused on it. Instead, you get a brief sequence where one is hijacked by RoboCop. Great while it lasts, but more of a cameo than a real part of things.
A few glitches can pop up, which is par for the course. More than once I was stuck due to NPCs boxing me in or, in one case, Robo failing to breach a wall because I got to it before some dialogue had finished. Jetpack enemies show up late in the game and their AI can’t deal with it, causing them to get stuck or confused by their own flight. It’s quite funny.
For the most part though, you’ve got a solid shooter, the exact kind you’d expect by now. You shoot, you throw stuff, you smash heads into vending machines, and there’s blood everywhere. It’s more of the same to a lesser degree.
Unfinished Business is pretty much a full game in an expansion’s clothing, likely not billed as one due to the single location and lack of story relevance. The premise and new toys are cool, but the brevity of touted additions like ED-209 is disappointing and OmniTower can get too samey. Lovers of Rogue City will get good mileage out of it though, even if it won’t blow anyone away.
7/10
