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It's been a very long time since Robocop, Detroit's favorite robotic police officer, has found his way into a video game. Understandably so, since the last Robocop film to hit theaters debuted in 1993, and the franchise hasn't been used much since. In 2001, Titus Software announced it was planning to bring Robocop to the current generation of consoles, though updates following that announcement were sparse at best. Two years later, Robocop has finally made it to the Xbox. The game is a first-person shooter, where you, as Robocop, have to take down the criminal element of Neo-Detroit by blasting your way through every bullet-fodder gang member in sight. Unfortunately, Robocop for the Xbox, despite its lengthy production cycle, has a bevy of horrible problems that render the game practically unplayable.
Robocop does have a few different weapons at his disposal, such as his trusty MGC M93R-AP automatic pistol.
There are nine basic missions in the game, each with multiple sections. Each mission in the game has one primary objective, a few secondary objectives, and some bonus objectives. The primary objective has to be achieved in order for you to progress, whereas the rest simply factor into your final score at the end of every level. All the missions in the game are actually quite long, but this turns into more of a detriment than a pleasantry as soon as you realize that you are completely unable to save the game at any point during a mission. Saves only take place at the end of each mission, which could have been OK, if the game weren't so mind-bogglingly difficult. Practically every mission in the game takes quite a number of tries to get through, and dying is an incredibly frequent occurrence, almost to the point of inevitability.
How can Robocop be so easy to kill? Partially because every level is completely overloaded with enemies, and Robocop evidently doesn't know how to duck. Every bad guy in the game is armed to the teeth, and though the enemy AI isn't especially adept, they still know how to fire their guns until you're dead, and they absolutely love to do so. Robocop, as you might assume, isn't exactly spry, so he can't just run away when a bad guy is shooting him in the back with a submachine gun. Occasionally you'll find objects to hide behind when things get hot, but more often than not you'll just have to blast your way past every enemy while taking a lot of incoming fire and just hope that there's a power-up somewhere nearby to replenish your health.
Robocop does have a few different weapons at his disposal, such as a machine gun that attaches to his arm, a missile launcher, a grenade launcher, and, of course, his trusty MGC M93R-AP automatic pistol. However, save for the guns that create big explosions, most of them really don't have a whole lot of impact unless you're spot on with headshots. Shooting a bad guy with practically any gun in the game anywhere other than in the face just doesn't lend itself toward a productive result. It can take upward of 9 to 12 non-headshots per enemy to take them down, and considering that ammo is limited, this is extremely irritating. Periodically, enemies will simply give up after taking five or six shots in the chest, so you'll at least save a few bullets in these instances. Adding to the frustration is the fact that the game's auto-targeting system is pretty much broken, and when you couple that with some unwieldy analog controls, you'll find that hitting your target at all, let alone landing multiple shots, is practically an exercise in futility.
