Unfinished Business is that rare game that’s neither a expansion nor is it a sequel.

Consider it a continuation of the great work that’s already been done with this IP and an enjoyable romp in a world we all know and love.

To clear things up right away, you don’t need to own RoboCop: Rogue City to play Unfinished Business – but you definitely should. This is a mostly self-contained story even though it’s set after the events of Tayon’s 2023 hit.

For the vast majority of Unfinished Business, you’ll once again step into the very heavy suit of RoboCop and work your way through an OmniTower that has become the unintended base for an Elite Military Operation. Their goals, motives and aspirations seem unclear at first but all RoboCop cares about is there are lives at stake and justice to be upheld.

Things take a turn when RoboCop suddenly hears a mysterious voice over his intercom, a person who challenges his directive. However, with many locked doors and lots of armed units to fight through, he feels no choice but to accept their help. But at what cost?

As you are working through a large tower block, Unfinished Business does retread a lot of familiar looking rooms, corridors and outdoor plexes, but there’s also a lot of variety to be found in this content. For one, there are missions which take RoboCop to a shopping mall and to an amusement arcade. He’ll spend a lot of time in housing complexes and then there are flashbacks.

As you’ve no doubt seen from the promotional material, you’ll be able to step into the shoes of Alex Murphy and experience his cop-life before he became RoboCop. This actually turns out to be a lovely change of pace for the game, giving more life and substance to Robo’s back-story.

It also gives the game a chance to feel differently as you go from being this indestructable beast that can take bullets for days, to suddenly being in a Call of Duty like experience where a few bullets can force you into cover.

And this flashback is important as it sets the tone for the game and helps move the plot forward, so it’s a nice way to allow the game to explore different environments, avenues and characters before taking you back to the tower. Plus it’s not the only sequence to do that but that starts venturing into spoiler territory.

You’ve also seen you get to be the epic ED-209 which really ramps up the feeling of being indestructable to eleven and just adds another notch of fun to this game.

And ultimately, just like Rogue City, Unfinished Business is fun. It’s humorous, with RoboCop deciding whether to issue warnings and tickets to people who deceive him, and his responses are often a wonderful one-liner dose of comedy which just absolutely nail the tone and essence of the franchise.

We already knew the team were capable of this with Rogue City but in Unfinished Business it feels like now the shackles and pressure are off, they’re just having even more fun and it shows.

Unfinished Business plays exactly as Rogue City did. RoboCop can scan environments for clues, evidence and to hunt out his enemies. He can also use his night vision to see through darkened areas to give him an edge, and breach through doors and even walls to get the drop on enemies in slow-mo, taking them out in quick succession.

There’s normal goons with guns, but eventually you’ll be fighting against fully armed guards with flakjackets, and even bad guys with riot gear. That, as well as flying drones that work in groups and exploding droids that spin right at you at high acceleration.

You’ll even be fighting robotic swordsmen!

Unfinished Business tries to diversify its missions and objectives as much as it can, complimented by the flashback sequences mentioned, but also with silly side quests, like helping a dude find his gold tooth or deciding who a stash of medication belongs to by interogating two people who are trying to take it.

All this, while blasting explosive barrels, taking off enemies legs, ricocheting bullets off windows to give you an edge against enemies, and yes, stuffing people’s heads through vending machines or throwing them down the garbage chute!

I just adore this game’s sense of action and exploration. It’s simple, but incredibly effective and feels all the more refined and balanced here, in some cases better than it was in the base game.

Just as before, the game really nails the sense of movement of RoboCop. He can’t really run because he’s a hulking mass of metal but that also means he can’t really duck or get into small spaces either. So you need to get creative in fighting points of cover and looking through the environment to find a way forward.

Or, last ditch, fight forward!

RoboCop still has skills to level up and expand upon, whether you want to major in combat, armor, engineering or something else. As you progress through the game and earn XP, you can gain additional competency in those areas and even learn new skills to help you out even more. It’s a cool way to give players options and decide what’s important to them.

Auto-9 also makes a comeback as RoboCop can place nodes on different PCB boards that give him some sweet bonuses. Only one board can be active at a time, and each board has red penalties scattered around everywhere, so you need to carefully place the nodes in a way that the energy flow doesn’t get cancelled out with negative effects. I actually spent lots of time on this section again, and found it to be really therapeutic and quite satisfying trying to optimse the board as much as I could.

The game also presents you with fun little diversionary puzzles, like trying to flick the right switches to turn the power back on or cutting wires to a bomb in the correct sequence. There’s even some fun conversational puzzles to get trophies and achievements. As you play through, it’s actually really impressive how enjoyable the gameplay flow and pacing feels and I was actually really surprised to find myself not feeling bored, but also not wanting to stop playing either.

It’s not infallible, sadly. Some enemy AI was really rough. More than a few times, I encountered enemies that were supposed to be attacking me just facing the complete opposite direction, not even moving and allowing themselves to be a sitting duck.

I also had quite a few graphical breakups, like during the finishing move animations, I had a few occassions where RoboCop was just holding a head minus arms, legs and a body. But it did sort of add to the humor of the game, in a sort of Oblivion/Skyrim kind of way.

The game also hiccuped quite a bit and had some frame rate dips in battle sequences and I did encounter one or two random hard crashes, which was a bit of a shame.

As for the game content itself, while I really enjoyed how solid the campaign was, the ending was a little bit flat and kind of left me wanting more. Here’s hoping for a full-blown sequel.

But all of the above just immediately gets negated when that familiar RoboCop fanfare kicks in during a gunfight, or Robo replies some unintentionally hilarious anecdote when asked to help civilians and he tries to rationalise it in a way that doesn’t deviate from the rules he must adhere to.

The fireplay in the game is massively satisfying, the new weapons are great – including the Cryo Cannon which is an absolute beast – and there’s just enough going on here that I was so glad to be back into this game again and playing as RoboCop again.

I would have loved a little bit more investigation and clue / evidence gathering perhaps, as this is largely an action-first game but I also really enjoy the quieter moments in it too – including the node boards. But I cannot recomend both of these games to people enough.

Even if you didn’t grow up with RoboCop and aren’t necessarily seeking that 80s retro fix, Rogue City and Unfinished Business are just fantatic shooters with some decent depth and variety to them

And a little bit of that fun jank that adds character.

Verdict

RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business is a fun, thrilling and generally exciting follow-on from the 2023 shooter. In addition to the new story, it adds just enough different elements from Rogue City to make it worth playing, and has an engaging variety between the flashbacks and mission flow. There’s a general jank to the game that makes it a little dicey on occasion, but it’s never overly frustrating or a majorly painful experience, beyond some surprising hard crashes. Its still as authentic a RoboCop experience as I’ve ever played in a game and I really struggled to put this one down during its duration. This one is mostly the right kind of….trouble. 

RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business is out now on PC, PS, and Xbox

Played on PlayStation 5

Code kindly provided by Nacon for review purposes