You don’t mess with the Dick

Richard Marcinko. Veteran Navy SEAL. A hero of the US Cold War. His friends call him Dick, “Demo Dick.” Yes, I too chuckled at his nickname, but if you met this hardcore open-fisted killing machine in real life, you’d be gurgling for breath out of the new hole in the side of your temple if he heard you so much as giggle at his nickname. He’s that kind of bad-ass.

Unfortunately, much like its main protagonist, Rogue Warrior also carries an equal degree of “bad,” only this time it’s not book-ended by some appropriately nefarious attitude or “kill-anything-that-looks-funny” outlook on life.Rogue Warrior is just bad. Really bad. And not bad in a good way like Dick’s bad, but bad like bad breath or bad news or bad day at the office bad.

Dick was hoping for a shift in his Korea

In Rogue Warrior, the player takes on the role of Dick as he is embedded deep within North Korea during the Cold War. There’s an appropriate introduction bringing the player into the scenario (with Mickey Rourke as the voice artist for Dick), but it’s really difficult to take it seriously from the get-go. First off, the introduction suffers from a really poor frame-rate, and secondly, it just seems so implausible. Dick lands behind enemy lines with two highly-trained buddies armed to the teeth and ready to take on the entire North Korean empire. They promptly dispatch the enemy guards they come across, only to find a round pin in one of the guard’s icy death grips (based on what happens next, round pins are seriously lethal). Dick’s two highly-trained buddies stand slack-jawed and staring at each other for about five seconds before the inevitable explosion occurs, and they are both erased from the storyline. Maybe I’m being too cynical here, but by the looks of the situation, they had plenty of time to dive for cover (like Dick did), and if they were as hardcore as they are made out to be, they wouldn’t have frozen, dumbfounded, for five seconds anyway. Nonetheless, this is the story of how Dick’s life got flip-turned upside down, and then he found himself staying in a place called North Korea.

Once you’ve overcome the stupidity of the introduction, you are introduced into a world that doesn’t seem much different to standard FPS fare, but things quickly go from bad to worse when you start to “play.” Whatever engine they’re using for Rogue Warrior is horrendously slow and jerky. Without trying to suggest Perfect Dark Zero (PDZ) or The Thing are bad games (because they’re NOT), Rogue Warrior has a very similar feel to PDZ mixed lightly with The Thing (that’s how I felt). It would also appear that the developers came to the concept planning meeting with a host of “good ideas” but most of these good ideas’ execution is downright dismal.

For starters, the inclusion of “motion-blurring” is obviously intended to bring to Rogue Warrior a much-needed cinematic effect but because we’re participating in a world that feels so obviously detached and dated, the only effect motion blurring achieves is to make itself feel grossly out of place with the rest of the game. The developers also wanted to include a mix of stealth and combat, and to this end the lighting and environmental effects on the first level do a great job (lightning flashes illuminate guards’ shadows against the walls so you can plot your next ninja move), but the storm only lasts for the first level, so this feature is grossly underutilised.

Speaking of underutilised and “good ideas” - players also have a few limited opportunities to shoot out electrical boxes and lights to render the area into darkness, where Dick’s nightvision can be employed to stealthily sneak up to confused guards and perform one of several “kill-moves” to dispatch them silently. This tactical element is also introduced in the early stages of the game but as with the weather effects, it doesn’t last long. Another missed opportunity to break the monotony.

Although there are plenty more missed opportunities (this review isn’t long enough to go through them all), there are also plenty of just plain DUMB ideas too!

In North Korea, no-one can hear you scream…

I know that Dick Marcinko is a real-life superhero and all of that, but for some reason known only to the developers, they figure that having a plethora of kill-moves executed with Dick’s fingernail just isn’t enough to convey how hardcore Dick really is. No sir, Dick isn’t quite reaching the height of his prowess with kill-moves that would immediately render a real-life ninja into a catatonic state of fear. Nope, Dick also needs to have seriously bad language and a chirp for every bullet casing that hits the floor. Making a stealth kill isn’t a real stealth kill without first shouting out an insult about the victim’s grandmother, right? You betcha. A grenade isn’t a grenade unless it’s thrown with a dash of witty insults, right? You betcha. The worst part for me wasn’t necessarily the absolutely idiotic proposition of screaming a death cry when trying to perform a silent kill-move, but moreso the fact that Dick is obviously suffering the need for compensation - and believe me, he has plenty of jokes to do with his name. Pencil-this, eat *ahem*, handful of what-nots. Dick’s got a wonderfully colourful assortment of rolling commentary, which is all totally unnecessary and makes him look more like a truant than a grizzled special forces operative!

The HUD also features a radar that shows off objectives and opponents, and although it proves very useful, it is unrealistically so. Dick has this omniscient sense of every nearby enemy’s location, even if they’re not actually visible, and this doesn’t improve the game, it detracts from it. It feels far too much like a shoot-‘em-up than a challenging FPS, and it’s very difficult to resist the temptation to run-and-gun (and hope you hit something) or lob grenades into seemingly “unoccupied” rooms, waiting for three red blips to fade from the radar.

The game is also horribly unpolished! There aren’t more than ten character models throughout the levels, and only about three looped sound bytes for each enemy type. Enemies sometimes get stuck walking into corners or shooting nearby explosive devices in front of them (a prismatic but utterly pointless suicide), and don’t be surprised if you find some floating corpses!

Despite Dick’s astute arsenal of verbal abuse (they can hurt… really hurt), he still doesn’t seem to have figured out how to avoid enemy grenades, and the entire control system makes it impossible to break out of cover mode and sprint away from a grenade before it goes off. There’s a very helpful grenade indicator that shows you how close the grenade is, and where it is in relation to you, but this is merely sufficient warning for you to prepare yourself to restart. Speaking of warning - you also can’t perform a kill move until an enemy has come out of crouch mode, so for all your money you could be standing next to an enemy for quite some time while receiving a series of lead injections until you have a chance to pull off the much-favoured close-quarters kill-move. PAINFUL!! To add to the atmosphere and intensity, the game will spit out an occasional Scream Tracker 3 Module as a soundtrack to spice up the mood, but in some cases (like these), nothing would have been better than something.

Dick’s not worth the Dickens…

Overall, despite all its good intentions and high hopes (really? Someone had high hopes for this?), Rogue Warrior is a dismal product. It’s running off a seriously dated engine, there are plenty of bugs left in the game, and the aiming system is abhorrently frustrating. It doesn’t take more than six hours to complete the solo campaign on the hardest difficulty (and grabbing achievements along the way isn’t all that challenging), so thankfully if you’ve got this game you won’t be wasting all that much of your valuable time! Multiplayer brings a brief respite to the short-lived singleplayer game, but it’s just as dismal in action - game levels feel contrived and devoid of life, and even this close to release, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a game online, because I don’t think anyone’s playing it.

There’s just not enough goodness or variety with this one, and if you want to play a game of similar (if not far better) quailty, you would be better off with something like Perfect Dark Zero, which at least allows for co-operative play (but I doubt even a co-op buddy in Rogue Warrior would pull it away from the Dark Mire of Pathetic that it is). If you have this game, my advice to you is to sell it, trade it, or burn it - it’s not worth the media it’s printed on. If you don’t have it, then thank me for only wasting five minutes of your life reading this review and not six hours playing through the most painful experience since receiving a lead enema (I’ve been told it’s painful. I have no experience of this). The only reason this game gets a star at all is because I can’t give it a blank rating. I may have considered the star for Mickey Rourke’s rap, but it’s a very crude rendition in the credits, which may have been funny if it weren’t so crass.

The Good: It’s not too long and ..well, no, that’s it. It’s only about six hours of torture.

The Bad: Everything. Engine. Graphics. Frame rate. Sound. Multiplayer. Single player. Language. One-liners. Everything.

Purchase: