Rogue Trooper
Rebellion and Eidos deliver one of the best shooters of the year. Full review inside.
Published: June 5, 2006
Rogue Trooper's controls just feel right too, allowing you to aim with precision, scramble behind or over cover, and fire off things like grenades or mines (both can be precision lobbed by holding the Square and Circle buttons, respectively). Health refills are a simple button press away, and reloading is done automatically if there's about a two second lull in gunfire. Again, all this does is make the more redundant tasks automated, and it works perfectly to suck you into digital Nu Earth.
And Nu Earth is gorgeous in its own way. See, the conflict between Norts and Southers over the planet erupted because of two things: the energy rich minerals on the planet and its incredibly close proximity to a wormhole. The wormhole takes up a significant portion of the sky in most levels. It's a constant, swirling vortex of pearlescent matter, and it gives the otherwise war-torn landscape an eerie serenity. Whether because of all the pollution in the battles or the fact that it's just an alien planet, the game also relies heavily on rich blues and greens. Though it's used sparingly, the lighting in the game is also done to perfect cinematic effect. The first time you stumble into the massive crater of a downed space station as huge sluices of smoky light pouring in through the holes in the wrecked hull, I dare you not to be just a little amazed at the programming chops of the development team -- and the PS2 for pulling such a look off so nicely.
To top it all off, the game runs at a fairly even clip, too. There's slowdown from time to time (usually because the camera is forced to take in too much -- and most often when you're forcing it to sweep out over a bit area; when trained even on more dense sections, it seems to stay steady), but for the most part things are remarkably smooth. This just gives you more time to take in some of the more elaborate level designs like Nu Paree, which is drenched in rain and neon light.
Still, for as good as the visuals are, they wouldn't have nearly the same impact if they weren't backed by some wonderful sound effects too. Guns bang and burp and chug like they should (particularly the bigger mounted guns you'll man from time to time throughout the game), and the constant chatter from your fallen squadmates, plus the little bits of conversation from enemies are great. You'll sometimes catch them in mid-chat, but this quickly turns to business, giving you details on incoming fire, covering fire, and so on.
There's also the score to be concerned with. I honestly think I owe more to the recurring theme that composer Tom Bible constructed. It's reused throughout the game in varying strengths, but the fact that I can still hear the slightly melancholy notes bouncing through my head a couple couple days after I finished the game says something about how much of an impact it had.
And really, that says something about the game as a whole. It had an impact on me, despite clocking in at under double-digit length. That's not a slight against the game; the style of gameplay would only lend itself to a finite amount of fun, and Rebellion wisely built the game and story around this. The characters -- and especially the environments -- that were constructed around this basic concept support and strengthen it so nicely that I honestly can't see anyone not liking this game (review scores from everyone else seems to indicate otherwise, but I still maintain that it's great stuff).
Rogue Trooper is a rare kind of action experience. You'll get moments of levity, heavier bits of dialogue and a decent (if basic) storyline that helps string together some of the most visually impressive levels ever seen in a shooter. I know I'm seemingly alone in my love for the game, but it really is better than you'd expect, and if this is the way 2000AD games are headed, maybe I'd better start studying up a little more.
