Robocop is a good single-player FPS which stands out for its dialogue and voice acting. The game really captures the essence of the Robocop films from the 1980s and having the original actor, Peter Weller, voice Robocop makes all the difference to the recognisability of the principal character.

The gameplay is quite good fun and the game is not too difficult so I recommend playing it on hard mode. There are a stack of guns you can fire in addition to your trusty side-arm. You can pick up and throw objects, punch, stun, bludgeon, electrocute and grab people and also charge forward. The enemies are a range of punks, bikers, paramilitaries and robots. They have a slightly humorous aspect, frequently complaining about a particular injury or that something hurt in the moment after they have been killed. It's not clear whether it is intended to be funny but the radical punks do come across quite comical anyway. They are just canon fodder for the game so there's no point thinking too deeply about it.

The interaction with NPCs was some of the best I have encountered, with some really interesting characters. The dialogue and how you treat them can have an influence on the progression of the game. More than that, some of the choices you have to make are quite thought provoking in a way that challenges your biases. Robocop's directives compel him to enforce the law, including issuing parking tickets on cars and fines to street drinkers, but the choice is yours as to whether he actually does or not. It's the times when you want to let people off or there's no clear right or wrong that make these choices tricky. Although you investigate crimes and use a special ability to scan for clues, you don't have to spend ages searching. I think the balance between gun-fights and situations is about right and it helps to keep you grounded in the character because you frequently have to deal with matters as a police officer. In many games it is easy to forget about the character you are playing but not here.

There are some annoying things about the game. The slow plodding footsteps and lack of ability to jump, kneel or even step up is quite restrictive compared to most similar games but it wouldn't be Robocop if he could do these things and you soon learn to accept his movement limitations.

I played the game on a high end PC with 14th gen Core i7 and an NVidia GeForce 4080. Despite this, there were quite a few graphical glitches, particularly with reflections. I varied the reflection type and changed the DLSS settings, but these aberrations continued. There were also numerous times that the game froze to a black screen at the start or end of a cut scene. The frame rate suffered in some of the most intense battles. On one occasion I reduced the screen resolution from 3840x2160 to get past one of these crashes and also make the thing run more smoothly. I did notice some other graphical artefacts where squares would appear or edges would get pixelated. The game's bleak cityscape looks stunningly good with all the graphical effects turned on but some objects close up could have come from a game ten years ago.

One annoying thing I was not expecting was the lack of a save game feature. This seemed like a throw back to games from previous decades. It wasn't even clear where the checkpoints were. It certainly didn't save every time you entered a new area or anything like that. Sometimes there were twenty minutes or so between saves. I really don't understand why the game was made this way. In fact, I did not find it to be the sort of game you would need to save in case you died because it's not that difficult. It would just be nice to be able to save the game and walk away when you are tired or have something else to do. The game can turn into a bit of a marathon because you will do anything to avoid having to sit through cut scenes multiple times or repeat some trivial mission just because you exited at a time that suited you.

Overlooking the gripes about the graphics, the crashes and the lack of a save game feature, I would highly recommend Robocop: Rogue City for its story, gameplay and voice acting. It is good fun in a fairly superficial way but really captures the essence of Robocop if you are a fan of the original movies. Even if you never saw the movies before, I think you would want to watch them after playing this game. While Robocop is an action hero, the story asks deep questions about where the line between human and robot lies for cyborgs which is a question that will resonate down the ages.

MudRunner is probably the most frustrating game I have ever played. It is designed to be that way. In the game you spend a lot of time stuck or struggling to make progress or thwarted in achieving goals, but there is some satisfaction in overcoming these challenges. After the first job where you have to drive an articulated lorry to a parking place through a city, the second job has you driving completely off-road through a boggy, flooded forest to collect logs and deliver them to a lumber mill. What makes this difficult is the fact that apart from the mud, there are lots of obstacles like rocks, trees (obviously) and flooded ravines. The wilderness would be quite relaxing if it weren't for how stressful it is to navigate. I frequently ran out of fuel just short of my destination or rolled a truck in the middle of nowhere, so I spent far more time retrieving abandoned trailers or winching trucks back upright than actually delivering logs. I have to say that it has all been a lot of fun, but totally hectic and annoying at the same time.