Rogue Trooper

Rogue Trooper, a game which has been released with almost no fanfare, yet it probably deserves it more than most of the hyped games being released, however its hidden gold and well worth a purchase.

the story is taken from the pages of 2000 AD, along side Judge Dredd, rogue tells the story of the GI troopers, A genetically engineered army, raised in tanks, it all sounds familiar and you can be forgiven for feeling like they have just ripped off every sci fi film from the last 10 years, but when you understand that the first edition of 2000 AD to feature rogue trooper was published in 1981, you begin to see that this character is more original than first thought.

enough of the history back to the game.

the story starts with rogue shipping out with his army of GI comrades to fight the norts, they are air dropped to a place called the Quartz Zone, however the supposedly unprepared norts have been tipped off and are fully armed waiting to shoot the drop ships out of the sky, nearly all the GI troopers are wiped out but rogue and a few of his unit make it through, among the survivors are gunnar, bagman and helm, each GI trooper is relatively cheap to manufacture in a materials sense but highly expensive and time consuming to train, so the souther labs came up with a system to download the entire personality to a bio chip located at the base of the neck on each trooper, providing this chip can be retrieved before the electrical energy remaining in the spinal column is expended the chip can be located in a slot on the backpack, gun and helmet of any GI trooper, which can the be implanted in a new host body back at HQ, as you may have already guessed, gunnar, bagman, and helms survival is shortlived quite literally and they are all soon attcahed to rogues vacant slots.

Each of Rogues comrades biochips provides unique abilities as follows

Bagman - is your number one stop for everything material, ammo, health pack, bagman is essentially a very compact manufacturing plant, as you travel through the game you obtain blueprints for further items that he can then manufacture for your benefit such as gun upgrades like a shotgun attachment. I wont spoil the other upgrades as its part of the fun of playing through the game, so your manufacturing stuff, how does this work, surely you need some form of raw material to maufacture the items with? well this is probably one of the best elements of the game, as you kill the enemies there bodies are salvageable, it is this which you recycle into ammo, medi kits and the like, it works really really well, it never feels like there is an abundance of salvage but at the same time it never feels like there is a drought. the game designers have achieved a really good balance, each time I decided to buy an upgrade or splash on ammo, I had to think about it, think about the enemies I was likely to come up against and make a decision on what I needed for the next run and gun it also adds to thye feeling of being out on your own, scraping together what you can to survive.

HELM - is your tactical and surveilance man, he provides encryption decoding of door locks and security systems and also offers a radar for the locations of enemy troops, vehicles and salvage deposits, he also provides a holographic decoy of rogue which you can use to distract enemy troops with.

Gunnar - as each chip has a personality and converses with you its good to know that the character of gunnar is spot on, if a gun could talk it would be exactly like gunnar, he offers an automated gun emplacemnet and a sniper skill with stabilising gyroscope (handy)

the game itself is a great display of art style and level design, I never felt like they decided to just rehash the same old textures or level lay out, I also didnt feel like I was fighting wave after wave of the same soldiers, the enemies seemed varied and so did the locales you had to fight through to get to the end, little touches like sparking wires in bombed out corridors just added to the immersion and the feeling of being in an alien world.

the controls are well thought out and easy to pick up, sniping is easy enough to pick up, and switching bewteen the eventuial arsenal at your disposal always felt quite intuitive and never a chore.

the game plays through very much like reading a graphic novel, cutscenes are present but never get in the way, and the story is intriguing and keeps you playing through to the end, its not the longest of games, but on completion a harder difficulty level is unlocked, I will be playing it through again at this new difficulty level and I will post back here when I have completed the campaign again.

I have now a further interest in the rogue trooper charcater and expanded universe and I will be tracking down the graphic novels to read through as it has peaked my interest and I want to know more, the game is left open for a sequel and I am hoping that we get a next gen rogue trooper for the 360.

there is a multi player element to the game which as yet I have not tried though I will be giving it a shot in the coming months, I will report back with my impressions.