Eidos Fans Rejoice.
The story is based on an obscure UK comic book. Your character is some sort of a genetic clone soldier involved in a battle on Nu Earth. If you haven’t read the comic (which most people haven’t), don’t expect the game to give you much of a backstory. Fortunately, this game focuses on action, not plot.
This is a typical 3rd person shooter. It involves a variety of upgradeable weapons used in traditional military style, objective-based combat. Players will switch between the fan favorite styles of run-and-gun, sniping, grenade tossing, and stealth kills to accomplish these objectives.
The controls are solid, and the assortment of weapons adds some variety to combat. Weapons have distinctly different feels to them, which makes some a little difficult to aim without practice. Some gamers will hate this, while some will applaud the fact that different weapons are used in different ways, rather than just causing more damage.
For gamers who are familiar with other Eidos titles, this is the Legacy of Kain redone as a shooter. Players upgrade their skills and weaponry in the same way as in the Kain/Soul Reaver series. Rather than sucking blood or souls from fallen enemies, players gain experience points by “salvaging” technology from corpses. Players make the same choices about weather to kill from afar with tact, or just to cut loose with a melee style attack.
This game lacks the in-depth plot of the Soul Reaver and Legacy of Kain titles, but includes faster action and more combat. Fans of either series owe it to themselves to check this title out, even if only in a rental.
The game is fairly simple, and adjustable difficulty levels and cheat codes make it accessible to all gamers. The fact that the game can be played through so many ways (stealth vs. force) offers a great deal of replay value to those who become hooked. Those who do not become addicted to the gameplay at least get a quality title that they have a good chance of completing.
One of the other selling points of the game, which retails at $29.99, is the inclusion of online co-op play. While I personally am not an online gamer, I can see how this adds a great deal of replay value to the title and gives Sony fans more opportunity for cooperative gameplay.
Visuals and sound are slightly above average. Voice acting is done professionally, and there are no apparent glitches in gameplay or graphics. None of the game’s features will absolutely blow you away, but they are all done in a high-quality manner and will not leave anyone feeling disappointed or underwhelmed.
Rogue Trooper is strictly a “fun” game. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn’t offer anything you haven’t seen before, but it does a good job of presenting such fan favorites as shooting and stealth. Fans of third person shooter or Eidos in general would do well to give this title a try. People who don’t normally like this type of game won’t find anything in it that will instantly convert them to dedicated fans of the genre.
Most gamers knew if they would like this game or not the first time they saw it. Go with your initial gut feeling on this one and you won’t be disappointed.