Sunday, June 19, 2016

1PanelReview RoboCop 2 (NES)


Your move, creep.

What it is: RoboCop 2 (NES)

Which is: A sidescroller platformer/run & gun action game
Created by: Painting by Numbers/Data East/Ocean Soft/Orion Pictures
Year: 1991
Available on: NES

 After the huge success of Paul Verhoeven's classic, several video game adaptations followed suit after each entry in the film trilogy. RoboCop 2 was no different. Without much surprise, the same developers at Data East returned with the studio Painting by Numbers for a second game for publisher Ocean. It is very similar to the first game, with a few noticeable differences. The game was released for several systems available at the time.

The plot is more or less based on the second film, following similar scenes as RoboCop battles a new drug crisis in the city. Culminating with a fight against a brand new model of RoboCop!

What's Good about it: Once again the game is another fairly standard sidescroller shoot 'em up/platformer type of affair. 
This time the game adds a few mission objectives to perform during the levels. The goals can be to destroy as many Nuke drug canisters as possible or also arrest a certain amount of enemies by running into them directly. Which is a pretty interesting idea on the paper at the very least. 
And if you don't complete your set of objectives, like not destroying enough Nuke or arresting enough criminals? Then you are prompted to learn back your basic training in a shooting range training. Failing that too, you must be forced through the same entire level again! Yeah, that doesn't get annoying pretty fast...
It's a nice idea for a challenge. If you have enough score, you can go to the next stage.
Perhaps the best part about this entire game is to get to fight against Cain's "RoboCop II" at the end. It's fun and challenging and is the closest to the film the game ever gets.
If there's any actual positive changes from the previous first RoboCop game is that this time there's no time limit and you can even jump! (Yes, the last game didn't have a jump button..)

What's Bad about it: The game is not that long but it can get pretty tedious.
Sometimes people complain how these classic game didn't have enough details or colors but here we have way too much random colors for a RoboCop product!!
The background art is very messy and almost confusing with way too many details at times.
The stages are really weird. You visit such strange places, there's this whole hi-tech facility with clockwork mechanics flying around..
Even though I love the fight against Cain, it's also a really bad negative aspect of the game. You see, they added some cheap longevity to the game by forcing you to fight him not once or twice, but three times!! And there's not even a different background, animation or attack pattern, nothing! It's just the same boss fight three times!!!
And finally...  The... Music... It's so tiresome, so bad... The horror... The pain!!

Overall: RoboCop 2 is an okay sequel but it mostly amplifies all the issues the first game add while changing some details for the worst. They couldn't even get the controls any better due to the poor inertia Alex Murphy suffers from...

This is one ugly looking 8-bit game. It's really that bad. If you're not a curious fan, I suggest you just Avoid It! The graphics are bad. The music is bad. And the levels are confusing. The first game was so much better in comparison..

The game simply suffers from a lot of issues several Ocean games had: slippery controls and sluggish animations, bad controls and really bad difficulty curve...

While the main release of the game was the Commodore 64 and the NES version, some of the other ports actually added some interesting elements. On the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad GX4000, Commodore Amiga and Atari ST it was the exact same game with slightly different level design and the interesting addition to also move on the horizontal plan and much more exploration. It also added some puzzle minigames in the progression. A final version, an Arcade port was also released that year which added a 2-player mode with added 3rd person shooting segments!
 
I give it: 1.5 / 3!

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