Rogue Warrior Review
Played on PC
Developed by Rebellion Developments
Released 26th November 2009
When you think of video games, you probably think of fantastic experiences like 'Red Dead Redemption 2's character growth, 'The Last of Us' story, the grandeur moments of 'God of War (2018)' or maybe nostalgia wafts through you and memories of beating your first tutorial, boss or even game overcome you. Now what if you grabbed the reverse of all those incredible stages of your life, and dunked it into a bucket of manure? You'd probably get something akin to 'Rogue Warrior'. After beating 'Lucius', I had a weird hunger for more games that are so bad that they're good and, while I crowned 'Lucius' and 'Resident Evil 6' in the past as such things, I have been mistaken, because this dumpster fire of a game perfectly met my requirements and, it's safe to say, that it's the pinnacle of such a title.
'Rogue Warrior', originally subtitled 'Black Razor', was supposed to be a first-person shooter developed by Zombie Studios (having noticeably created the 'Spec Ops' series) in collaboration with Bethesda, set in modern-day North Korea. However, after 2 years and Bethesda publicly being displeased with the progress, the publisher shifted the project into Rebellion's hands, who redesigned many of the creative and technical features that Zombie had input. Was this for the better? Would the game still be recognised as one of the worst video games ever made? I'm not sure, but I can say that this game has created quite a blemish for the catalogue of the 'Sniper Elite' developers.
Story
The story is quite horrendous and, just like the rest of the game, has qualities that end up being so bad that they're enjoyable, and others that are headache-inducing with how garbage they are. The narrative of 'Rogue Warrior' follows Richard Marcinko, a US Navy Seal sent on a mission to North Korea to disrupt the USSR's activities amidst the Cold War (1986 to be more exact). This 2-hour campaign does so many things wrong that it ends up feeling right. It's almost as if it doesn't try to hide its heavy anti-USSR propaganda approach and the ridiculousness of it is somewhat funny: the protagonist taking down a bunch of "commies", the constant praising of the US and its president (even though Reagan is notorious for being a terrible human being) and the "Hoorah" action that goes into blowing up a Soviet missile. The escalation of events, the slightly boring debriefs in between levels, the poor writing; there wouldn't be anything redeemable about any of its qualities if it weren't for the fact that you can at least laugh at its discombobulated state. The only thing that isn't laughable about this story is how the ideas it proposes like the USSR having the tech to start a nuclear war unscathed before the US, make it seem like some cheap ripoff of 'Call of Duty', and not in any good way.
Gameplay
The gameplay wasn't all that bad. The biggest offender of the gameplay design is that it's quite plain and sapped off any depth, creativity or diversity in approach. Its base structure is that it's a first-person shooter with elements of stealth (i.e., crouching behind enemies). There really isn't anything else to it. The reason why it's not all bad is because it feels like the game itself is not all there, creating this unfinished personality that almost makes its flaws redeemable, like playtesting a buggy Beta or a demo with incomplete features.
I think where this is most evident is in the stealth mechanics where, while the takedown animations were really smooth and well choreographed, there's an absence of the mechanic's importance as, in more than half the campaign, either all enemies are already alerted to your position, are placed within the level to spot you immediately, or the level design doesn't provide enough opportunities to make the stealth worthwhile. Another case of this is how the game introduces night vision goggles in the tutorial but I don't think I used them once since their introduction, seeing as every area post-tutorial was too well-lit to warrant its use.
Outside of this equipment were the weapons and while they stuck to the rudimentary format that is present in every other shooter game since the dawn of time (pistol, shotgun, sniper, assault rifle, etc), the lack of variety wasn't much of an issue given the short playtime of the campaign. There are a couple of odd creative choices here and there like making the spacebar the aim button (before remapping) or having your character suddenly go third person while climbing a ladder as if we need to see the animation for it. There was also multiplayer but with how rough the performance was (more on that in a bit), and the severe brain rot I acquired playing the game, I decided to skip out on it.
Characters
Even though there is practically no depth to the only present character of Richard Marcinko, I figured the Characters section would be the best place to talk about the dialogue in this game because this is where the "so bad its good" motif stems from. The combination of the most stereotypical American "Hoorah" voice acting with dialogue where the word "motherfucker" is the second most common besides "the" (not factually true, but it does feel like it) is both gorgeous and trash. Before I unveil some of the best one-liners this game provided, I have to complain about the intro/final scene. Why did we get introduced to 2 completely irrelevant characters, only for them to die at the beginning in the dumbest way possible by staring at a live grenade? The fact that there's absolutely no mention of them until the very end where the witty and corny dialogue shifts to try to make some empathetic moment is so damn weird.
As for the one-liners, here are some of the best: "It looks like the douche bag convention’s in town", "I’m gonna show ‘em what time it is" followed by "BOOM time, baby". And finally, words that made even Shakespeare cry: "Suck my balls, my hairy fucking big balls, wrap them around your mouth". Beautiful.
Atmosphere
Jesus Christ this game has quite a bit of technical issues. To prevent the game from crashing every 5 minutes of playtime, I had to download 2 random files I found on the Steam community page, and even then, there were still issues. Frame rate drops, screen tearing and much more. Now, my PC might not be built like a NASA computer, but if I can run 'Minecraft' with Shaders on, I should be able to run a 2-hour-long 2009 game. Just to keep the game optimised, I had to run it in under 1080p AND have motion blur turned on for some reason.
The hurdles you have to jump just to play a game that looks like it only just discovered what texture rendering is, is probably as impressive as it is shockingly bad. Out of all the 2009 games, regardless of the budget they had, 'Rogue Warrior' does look quite sloppy in comparison, but it's nothing so egregious that it makes you want to bleach your eyes or anything of the sort.
The soundtrack is, surprisingly, pretty good. The main menu theme, the battle music, and the entire OST are quite good at complementing what the game was supposed to be thematically and, while it does tread into some unoriginal ground, it gives itself enough of an identity to not fade into the background. The best track, however, has to be the end credits music which is comprised of this snazzy G-Funk sound where the character's voice lines are remixed into a rap. As amazing and godly as this is, it does make me wonder if the developers strived to make the game terrible from the get-go.
Story - 2/10
Gameplay - 4/10
Characters - ?/10
Atmosphere - 3/10
GARBAGE/G.O.A.T
This game is the perfect representation of the dichotomy between "GARBAGE" and "G.O.A.T".
