Robocop Comparison - Easy and Hard mode.

https://youtu.be/f5AxVbeIRKE

Ok so for this week I thought I’d upload a video based upon comments I got from the Robocop Arcade review. Mainly to see and compared in arcades how the difficulty can affect the gameplay and the significant modifications it can bring about to the point that the game can be enjoyable, challenging or downright just sucking your cash straight out of your pocket. 

So this was the first level of Robocop Arcade, played through as both Easiest and Hardest. Just to emphasise the point, I put the health choices up and down for the respective difficulties.

From the start we can see there’s no significant difference in gameplay. Enemies are killed by punches just as readily as in Easy as they are in Hard. It’s not until we get to the motorbike that we see a significant difference in that Easy can kill the bike in two hits, while Hard can’t kill the bike and takes a hit. From here on, it gets awkward. 

Once we’ve drawn a pistol, we start to see that the enemies take double the hits to kill them and we may also notice that in Hard mode, the enemy’s shots are faster. Punching seems to be the preferred method of killing the enemies in Hard mode except where they’re out of reach and need to gunned down. Resulting in a lot more shots being needed.

The power up has a huge impact on Easy mode with it becoming a wave of death while in Hard mode it has to be used up close to be effective and even then, makes it about as powerful as the standard single shot in Easy mode. 

I recorded the game twice, and put the video side by side to show a comparison, it’s almost in sync up until the shooting starts, then you can see the huge differences between what is the Easiest setting and the Hardest setting. Now imagine you’re going from Arcade to Arcade and find Robocop in both, then to see on one you can progress fairly well and the other leaves a bitter taste in your mouth when you’re annihilated on the first level.

Robocop - Arcade

"Half man, half machine, all computer game" -Actual advert.

In what was one of the forerunner films of the 80s and finally put the police as the heroes in a "5 minutes into the future" setting of Detroit, Robocop (1987) was something of a breakthrough with violence and story even for an 80s action film. The premise being that a cop, freshly moved in from another precinct, is out on duty with his cop-partner and gets a call to respond to a robbery, shit goes South, things get fucked up and he ends up becoming a shotgun target for the gang that committed the crime.

The less said on this the better...

Rather than leaving him dead, the company OCP which owns hospitals, insurances, banks, the police etc. (Gives us a lovely little privatisation situation possibility there) decides to use the dead officer in a new project that basically gives him a brain wipe, suits him up in titanium and sends him back out on the street as a robot cop... Hence, "Robocop", who is now a walking tank, and systematically starts claiming back the streets while corrupt politicians are throwing money around and trying to keep the crime going.

Enforcement Droid 209 series, the first one at least...

The film is well worth the watch despite also being one of the most violent films of the 80s, nay, all time. The tongue-in-cheek attitude to modern media and the (at the time) current trend of evolving technology and the economy are rather accurately lampooned and seen with considerable foresight in such a way that even today it's clear to see that some of the humour still pays off with the steadily increasing trends that were identified nearly 30 years ago.

Since when did anyone have a chainsaw in this film?

As a game based on a movie, you're going to have to be familiar with the movie to get the references that are used within the game, as the game follows this rather closely and uses locales, weapons, bosses that reference events happening within the film. Although even without the game/movie knowledge, there's still the fact that there's a game underneath the graphics and audio even if some of the references will be rather out of place and seem like they're thrown together for the sake of the game. Such as the first boss being ED-209 which is a giant of a robot walker, but makes sense if you've seen the film as you'll identify what he is straight away and the audio bytes synonymous with its identity. (20 seconds to comply, I think you'd better do what he says Mr Kenny...)

Powerups, while strong, are few and far between

Your game will take you through the city streets with a mishmash of gang members carrying knives and guns to grenades and the occasional use of a motorbike (Given the Emil incident in the film when they blew up a petrol station, see... more references), to the slums of the gang, a working scrap metal factory (not in the film), a drug factory/warehouse (with a very out of place boss) then the involvement of criminals taking over OCP which leads to the 2 more futuristic levels and repeat of earlier bosses but are beefed up for the ED-209 series. So some of the game follows the film and takes liberties with others, the film does have a scene involving OCP HQ but not to the same degree that the game makes out.

There's lots going on at this scrapyard. Fairly certain H&S will complain though.

And where the hell did jet-packing enemies come in? Robocop himself gets a jetpack in the 3rd film which was released WAY after the game was, so it's a bit of a random moment in this instance but fits in with the style and flow of the game.

Pimp my Ride meets ED 209.

Control-wise, Robo moves along at a steady pace for someone weighed down with hydraulics and titanium armour but can jump faster than he walks... fair enough, it's a game. Shooting comes in the 5-way directional flavour in that he cannot shoot downwards unless walking on stairs at that angle, any attempt to aim downwards invariably has Robo ducking and shooting in that direction instead. However, it's functional, gets the job done and the controls and the rate of fire set in such a way that you can almost always avoid gunfire and other such issues if you're careful and don't just charge head-first into bigger issues.

This week on "Shit that never happened" this boss!

Your usual cap-gun (The Auto 9 from the films) does sufficient damage to be useful even if it's supposedly the weak "standard" weapon. You can hammer the fire button and butcher the health bar of bosses quite readily. Alternatively you might find other weapons like 3-Way shots which can be just as lethal up close to the more heavily armoured enemies like the chainsaw-nutcase; armour piercing shots which shoot through items and blockades and does a lot of damage but limited in ammo. The final weapon is the Cobra Cannon from the films, which is a huge blast of a shot that slaughters most enemies and cripples bosses in 2-3 hits but as with most of these weapons, you'll find them at a point where you end up with little to no ammo left to use for the actual boss fight. So most of the fights will be you and a pop-gun Auto 9. Unless you're very conservative.

That's hardly fair! But who cares, bring it!

The music within the game takes directly from the films, the first level being a good rendition of the Robocop theme tune and the boss music taken from the fight between Robocop and ED-209 in the OCP tower from the film. Later levels take tunes from other key points within the film such as the car chases and scenes set within the warehouse. Further sound bytes are taken from the film such as Robo's pseudo catchphrase of "Dead or Alive you are coming with me" during boss battles, or "Drop it" at the start of most levels or against key opponents wielding the heavier firepower within the game, such as the Cobra Cannon.

See above for Jetpack comment in review.

You can power through the game on credits, each time you die you get the chance to continue back where you were with another credit, though it cannot be recalled if there is a maximum number of continues that one could use within a single session, some games for example have a max of 6-7 continues before you get a compulsory Game Over, while others will not let you continue once you get past a set level (usually when on the final level), but in this case for the most part you'll get back up with full health and time and be straight back to the battle. Which is usually enough for the rest of the level and/or boss except on the final few levels when the firepower directed at your can be criminally overwhelming.

Some could say I've played this a bit before.

But you do have some respite, there's 2 bonus levels that act as "shooting ranges" in a sort of first person perspective and gaining high scores here will gift you with extra food/health for the next level, while in levels you can occasionally find the baby-food pickups that will replenish limited health or the even more rare bonus containers that will increase the maximum health Robo can have (and not fill it at the same time) while dying will reset that health level back down again upon continue, making levels harder as a result of failing and PAYING to continue the game again. Not quite a working economy model there.

If you're not careful you CAN kill hostages... If...

Of course, it's not quite enough but then again, that's the whole point of getting cash out of the players. It is however a good game which is quite strange given that a lot of licensed games are not very good and are running solely on the merit of the original film/franchise. In this case however, you've got a very good game which pays homage to the source material in a closer way than a lot of other games would do, is very playable and responsive and keeps in with the theme of the original material. It does take some different routes like the Wrecking Ball (no Miley here) boss that features not in any film (save the 3rd, but again, way after this was made) and the junkyard battle which isn't part of the original film at all, nor are the super-powered ED-209s, or fighting 2 ED-209's at the same time in the last session of the penultimate level only to then take on ANOTHER tower of climbing, ANOTHER ED-209 (with rockets! which you can punch!) and then the final duel with Dick Jones though sadly you can't blow him out a window.

...I win.

It's still a fun, fairly enjoyable and reasonable game, looking very gritty in the right places and fitting in with the gritty theme of the sort-of futuristic Detroit and firmly stylised after the first film. It could have done a lot worse and given that it's made by Data East, which has been hit and miss quite regularly with their games, shines through as a diamond amongst the shit.

Robocop NES

You've seen the film, now suffer the 8-bit

In one of those moves to capitalise on the popularity and success of the arcade game, the NES version of Robocop was brought in within a year as a "sort of" port to the gaming industry. In what seems to be an acceptable practise, games would be produced on one machine and then other companies that worked on other formats (i.e. Started in Arcade, then would be made for C64, Nes, ZX81 etc) in order to bring the game to other machines in a way that could be played but wasn't quite the same standard as the original arcade game. Sometimes these games were VERY close to the original (Take Bubble Bobble as an example) and in other cases the game was.. well, let us just say that it wasn't very much like the original and in many cases was either a passing similarity or more of an "in name only" kind of concept.

So instead of getting a near approximation of the arcade game we get this instead... You can likely tell by now which tone I'll be adopted for this review. Well done for recognising a pattern, aren't you clever.

I can only imagine robo is blowing one fat raspberry at this point.

6 levels of platform trawling (you don't jump) where Robocop will walk slowly from one side to another and gradually punch and shoot his way past thugs, mugs and under-world scum, beat off dogs (not like that...) helicopters, large people that are bullet proof (mostly...) an odd assortment of bosses and villains ranging from generic tough guy that can be encountered repeatedly later on, to Miller who held the mayor hostage to ED209 (twice) and so on.

Like the arcade game, there's punching and shooting, though unlike arcade there's the lovely incapacity that is the game deciding "No guns here" and forcing you to punch everything once again. The arcade did this initially and never again, but this game will occasionally FORCE it upon you while fighting pretty much the same enemies you were while having access to the gun. On top of this, you'll have a time limit (which gets VERY tight in the last levels) and a health bar where you tank damage (or not, seriously, at what point did a dog bite through Titanium Alloy armour?). Your weapons range from the pistol to the machine gun to the cobra cannon so it's nice to see that little nod of acknowledgement.

Wow... can we get any more supposedly patriotic? It really doesn't work on non US audiences

There's slightly more focus (ONLY SLIGHTLY) than the arcade game in keeping with the theme of the film. The 2nd level for example is set entirely around the siege with the mayor and your boss being the very guy that Robo punches out of a window (to land on a crash mat that isn't entirely out of shot and used again in the news report, but enough movie mistakes here). Not only do you have to traverse the building and search various rooms, you'll also be able to actually punch through the walls to find secret routes and then take on the boss in a shootout with a hostage and then kill him. It's nice to see that the NES throws in things that the original arcade didn't touch upon.

The third level takes place in the warehouse, akin to the films drug factory. Followed by going to OCP headquarters which is what happens next after interrogating Clarrence Boddicker (yep.. dicker..) followed by the showdown at the steel mill (film again) then back to OCP (like in the film!) If anything that should be praised here is that the game follows the film rather than just using it as ideas for backdrops, it sticks fairly closely to the plot and mimics it in the cut-scenes between levels which is a lot more impressive than the arcade managed to do it.

The problem however is that the arcade focused on gameplay and responsiveness and the NES... didn't.

Possibly the most impressive graphic in the game, and even here it has glitched.

Graphically speaking, this game is ugly. The backgrounds are almost enough to make me puke blood in disgust (especially the first level) but redeems itself by having one of the HUGEST ED-209 bosses I've seen in a game, so big in fact that they boss fight(s) tend to be in dark rooms so the graphics can be focused on rendering him in-game (a shame he's so easy to beat if you have the machinegun).

It can also be hard to work out where the doors are in the game and sometimes the sensitivity and precision required to enter the door can be a nightmare. It's also a little odd in trying to go through a door and having never encountered one before, not realising you can go through the door in the first place. Often a fun thing to witness while you run back and forth trying to find what you're missing until you die of time-out. Yay, use another continue.

You'll learn to love these moments, it's when the music is different

Incidentally, dying = new life = continue = restart the whole level and slowly walk through it again. As you can see, this is a key formula for qualifying for dickmove-university. Especially annoying on level 6 where you start on a backwards moving conveyor belt and goes EVEN MORE SLOWLY for your progress. Aside from this, there's a lot of other inconsistencies where some doors can be walked into on the horizontal plane on which you walk, while other doors are rather more disgusting in that you have to push up to walk through them while they look like these other doors that you can hobble your way through with your oh-so-limited frames of animation.

Controls are an absolute shitbagbastard, of the highest order. Stairs are a nightmare to try and ascend or descend while the actual act of picking up items is still a case of TeaBagging Hit or Miss wherein you need to duck but have to be almost pixel perfect in your positioning just to get a battery or health bar. Later enemies have the lovely ability to hit you no matter where you are and serve JUST to drain your health until you slap it down.

Punch fight. Bullets don't do shit here. Yes it's as dull as this picture looks.

There is far too much dependency upon having perfect timing for the game to be any real fun and it becomes quickly a slog through the hardest and slowest forms of gaming if only because your reaction times need to be super human and your control with the not-so-entirely-accurate-control-system(more hyphens please) has to be above and beyond.

Avoid this. It's a disaster of a game that's ONLY saving grace is that it sticks far more rigidly to the plot of the original film than the first arcade game does.

A boss fight... It's about as many enemies as you'll get on screen at once.

And the music... you'll be begging for a different tune on the levels, it's the same cheese-fest schmaltzy rubbish of the original theme tune. Actually you know what, fuck this. Go watch the original film instead while playing the arcade version.

And avoid the shitty remake film!

...Afterwards, blow my brains out for having to suffer this game.