Rogue Warrior
System: Xbox 360
Developer: Rebellion
Publisher: Bethesda
Genre: FPS, Cover Shooter, Action



Okay, so this fucking fuck of a fucking game is fucking kind of fucking weird...

Just kidding, I'm not going to do that for the entire review, but man oh man this could have been the ultimate so bad it's good game! Rogue Warrior went through hell to get developed before landing on Rebellion's lap and releasing to horrid reviews with many citing it as one of the worst games of all time. I can't agree with this for numerous reasons. One is that the game certainly does function and if something didn't function, I would probably give the game a MUCH lower score than I did. Yes, things are exploitable but the game certainly isn't broken by any standards with a couple of glitches I found along the way. But in general, this almost has the perfect brew to go down in the history books as THE bad game. A complete vanity project, this game features Dick Marcinko (a real person BTW) in a plot to end the Cold War once and for all during the mid-80's. Despite what you may think, no. It's not based on his autobiography, it's not based on any actual missions he had done in service and it's certainly not based on the ridiculous fiction books he co-writes. This is a wholly original game with Dick being the main hero and my god it's crazy.

This game is bonkers but it's also hilarious in the wrong ways. First off, this is a First Person Cover Shooter in the style of Quantum of Solace (a better game to be honest for the 360). Dick plays in the first person unless he's in cover in which he switches to third person. Dick has a weak variety of guns, mainly ranging from crumby shotguns to mediocre assault rifles. All you do in this game is shoot North Koreans and Soviet Russians while Dick says "Fuck" so many times that the people behind Swearnet: The Movie I think would faint in horror by how many fucks he says. And often, Dick's one liners are hilariously bad. I laughed so hard at a lot of them and one of the one liners involving "A Polar Bear Freezing It's Dick Off." had me completely in stitches. His lines are so in bad taste and just awful that you cannot believe this person is real. I kept laughing throughout the majority of the game because of how idiotic the dialogue from him is and to be honest, the game has become kind of a so bad it's good cult classic among gamers due to it's vulgarity. But does that mean the game is great? Not really.

I played it on Xbox 360 and the FPS usually stays at around 20 FPS which makes the guns feel sluggish. It doesn't help that enemies can kill you almost instant in 3-4 bullets, so you have to basically play this game like a Gears of War or Uncharted game. The gunplay just doesn't feel good mainly because of the framerate and sensitivity. I had to adjust the sensitivity actually which is never a good first impression when starting an FPS game. Aside from the hilarious dialogue, the voice acting is extremely poor. I don't think any of the two Hollywood level actors they got for this game gave an entire shit. The game also gets boring 70% of the way through and then much of the game after that is planting bombs constantly on missiles. Grenades are also useless as they have too little of a blast radius and can realistically kill only one enemy at a time, so grenades are a waste and don't matter in this game. The cover mechanics work fine, but they can be much more refined if this game wasn't rushed out the door. I also had a moment where I got checkpoint after I died instantly, meaning I almost had to restart an entire level because I kept get blown up by a barrel that was on fire which is probably the worst part of the experience for me.

My favorite part though is the glory kills. These are some of the most brutal takedowns I've ever seen in a game and I was ecstatic with joy every time Dick did one. If you press X, Dick will stab an enemy multiple times in the face or eyeballs or slit an enemy's throat and it's so vulgar and violent that I was cheering for the next one to happen. This is easily exploitable at the beginning of almost ever level. Mainly because you can use the takedown feature for like 2 minutes tops if you're running because enemies are slow and stupid and are always looking in front of them. The AI also is terrible. They'll mostly just hide behind cover for hours on end and even if you get close to them, they'll rarely shoot you much of the time. And some enemies are just extremely slow as said. There's not much else to say other than the graphics are below average and murky, not to mention the game thankfully is short at around 2 Hours tops so it doesn't overstay it's welcome for much longer.

If you can get this cheap like I did, it's a fun albeit mediocre romp that will have you howling with laughter for the first half of it. It's certainly got issues as so many have pointed out, but as a so bad it's good game, it ultimately falls flat at the 3/4 mark. Still, there's a cult classic in here somewhere.

One more note before I go. I want to link this video to everyone because I think it's genuinely important.



This is one of my favorite Youtube videos in a long time and made me subscribe to this guy's channel. If you have time, take a look at it. It covers a lot of ground for bad games and it even talks about the bigger releases in 2023 which honestly, are just kind of boring. But one of the most important things I took away from the video is that if there is a game that is considered bad, you should give it a chance! Who knows, maybe you'll just find it average or mediocre or decent. And I've certainly taken that advice to heart especially in the last few months after seeing this video. This video is the reason I finally bit the bullet on getting this game, because I honestly wanted to see what the fuss was about so I could be part of the conversation. And in the video, he also says why we shouldn't constantly get angry and full of contempt at failure because again, no one sets out to make a bad game! Loved the video and you should check it out.

Anyways, Rogue Warrior is medicore but has tons of laughs. Try it out for cheap!

Rating: 5.5/10

PROS:

-Brutal and awesome takedowns
-Hilariously awful one liners
-It certainly functions!
-So bad it's good for most of it

CONS:

-Not so great gunplay
-Bad performance on Xbox 360
-Vulgar to the point of parody
-Boring graphics and art style
-Poor voice acting performances
-Checkpoints can become broken
-Becomes boring after a while

-TheAutisticGamer

10 goatfucks out of 10 😎

That's probably some early UE3 game and something about it seems awfully familiar. Perhaps it's Damnation?

Update: After a total of 11 attempts, I have finally beaten DOOM Eternal on Ultra-Nightmare.

This was definitely up there with some of the hardest shit I've ever done in a game.

Good job! I remember getting down to about 20hp during the final boss and somehow still maintaining my cool, fun times indeed. Oddly enough I found 2016 to be much harder to complete on UN, but you can see for yourself if you're curious enough ;)

War for Cybertron on Xbox 360. So much personality, so much good simplicity, so much Transformers. There is a place for games that limit your choices in the name of immersion, and the Cybertron games did it perfectly. Maybe Activision will remember that one day ...

Wait 'till you get to Fall of Cybertron, it's an incredible step up in every way. Shame nothing came even close since then.

Feel free to post y'all, I've got nothing

Infernal

As usual, bolded means good, underscored means bad, replays are marked with a star.

9 Years of Shadows
Afterdream
AI: The Somnium Files
Alien Rage*
Alisa*
American Arcadia
Anger Foot
Bit.Trip.Rerunner
Black Mirror (2017)
Black Mirror III
Bramble: The Mountain King
Brazilian Root
Broken Pieces
Bully: Scholarship Edition
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood*
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger*
Carrion
Children of Silentown
Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller
Condemned 2: Bloodshot*
Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder
Dead Space (2008)*
Deadlight: Director's Cut
Deathbloom: Chapter 1
Deathbloom: Chapter 2
Distraint 2
Don't Be Afraid
Don't Be Afraid - The First Toy
DOOM 3: Phobos - Episode 1*
DOOM 3: Phobos - Episode 2*
DOOM 3: Phobos - Episode 3
EBOLA
EBOLA 2
En Garde!
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Pigsy's Perfect 10 DLC
Evie
F.E.A.R.*
F.E.A.R.: Extraction Point*
F.E.A.R.: Perseus Mandate*
Fears to Fathom: Carson House
Fears to Fathom: Home Alone
Fears to Fathom: Ironbark Lookout
Fears to Fathom: Norwood Hitchhike
Forgive Me Father 2
Gears of War 3
Ghost of Tsushima
Ghost of Tsushima - Iki Island DLC
Ghost Song
Ghostrunner*
Ghostrunner - Project Hel DLC*
Gone Home
Gray Dawn
Gray Matter
Gylt
Heal
Hell Pie
Infernal*
Instinct
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men*
Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days*
Layers of Fear (2023) - Director's Story DLC
Life is Strange 2
Lunacid
Manhunt 2*
Martha is Dead
MorphX
Murdered: Soul Suspect
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (2010) - Remastered
Nightmare House: The Original Mod*
Ninja Blade
Quake IV*
Okaeri
Perilous Warp
POOLS
Prey (2006)*
Project Crypt
Resident Evil 2 (1998)*
Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken
Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story
Shellshock 2: Blood Trails*
Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition*
Silent Hill 4: The Room*
Slender: The Arrival Remake
Soldier of Fortune: Payback*
Splatterhouse (2010)
Stranglehold*
Tacoma*
Tails of Iron
The 25th Ward: The Silver Case
The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit
The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation
The Chant - Gloom Below DLC
The Darkside Detective
The Excavation of Hob's Barrow
The Longest Journey (1999)
The Pedestrian
The Uncertain: Last Quiet Day*
The Uncertain: Light at the End
The Wolf Among Us
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lockdown*
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas*
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2*
Tomb Raider: Legend*
Tomb Raider: Underworld
Twin Mirror
Vampyr
Velvet Assassin*
VLADiK BRUTAL
What Remains of Edith Finch
Whispering Willows
X-Men Origins: Wolverine

112 total, 79 new entries & 33 replays.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

My top 10 would look something like this:

10. Bramble: The Mountain King
09. Lunacid
08. AI: The Somnium Files
07. Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller
06. Anger Foot
05. Life is Strange 2
04. Black Mirror III
03. Ghost of Tsushima
02. The Longest Journey (1999)
01. Vampyr

I never really bothered to list them before, but I definitely agree with quite a few mentioned above, adding some more of my own:

- games being too easy (I find it really hard to focus on what's going on in the game if my interaction with it let's me get away with simple button mashing, it is the ideal setup to cure insomnia though)

- games suggesting to lower the difficulty (when things do ramp up and I die a couple times too many, I like to continue exploring other strategies without the game mocking me with a popup that you can accidentally click on, you can kindly fuck off and let me enjoy getting railed)

- unskippable cutscenes (the most prominent examples being games like Far Cry 3 / 4 or Dead Space 2, titles that hold significant replay value, but are annoying to come back to because of that, I've already seen all the highs and lows, now let me just enjoy the damn game!)

- stealth in older (non-stealth) games (these segments usually came with cracked AI that would notice every bloody dust particle caused by a slight tilt of your analog stick or spot a pixel of your player model from a mile away, I'm almost positive that none of these levels were actually play-tested)

- swimming in older games (I'm dreading these levels in retro titles, you spend way too much time fighting the controls more than anything else)

- escort missions in older games (babysitting an AI that has a mind of its own and often does not respond to command features has never ever been fun and is one of the most artificial ways of upping the difficulty)

- badly placed checkpoints (I always felt like 2010 was the year when that "trend" started: ready to fight a tough boss? here, watch an unskippable cutscene or suffer through a downtime section every time you have to redo it!)

- story over gameplay (unless I'm playing a Telltale-like, I want the game to be engaging as a game without forcing the narrative down my throat, that is however not seen often in recent triple A games)

- forced slow walking (devs telling a story by slowing the game down to a crawl, yeah I know how to walk in games at this point and I don't need you to hold my hand for that)

- bulletsponges (oh yeah, who doesn't like those, especially without any sort of feedback. It sometimes makes sense when you're dealing with a chunky lad, but not when every damn regular unit is bathing in large HP)

- being unable to save whenever in story-driven games (this is probably a technical thing, but I do wish I could quit and continue at my leisure, there is nothing at stake gameplay-wise so you might as well grant me full agency over how to progress)

- tailing (by car, on foot, it really doesn't matter. It's so fucking boring, even in my beloved Grand Theft Auto IV, especially Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag took it to the next level and made almost every second mission just that, zzz)

- uneven difficulty (so many developers out there think it's perfectly okay for the whole game to be either easy or manageable and ramp shit up all the way through the fucking roof at the end, because.... well, it's the last battle, it has to be hard? Not if I grow accustomed to the lack of challenge over the course of the whole game, I don't want to suddenly have to completely readjust myself just so I can finally see the credits roll)

- absence of an FOV slider (newer games are getting better at including one, but I still hold the opinion that first-person-anything should come with it by default and that is not yet the case)

- obnoxiously artsy games (games with an art direction so obnoxiously "unique" where gameplay mechanics don't have to be good, simply because the artistic values is what the game is all about: GRIS or Shadow of the Colossus to name a few)

Top priority is definitely Doom: The Dark Ages, Eternal did set an insanely high bar but I have faith in id working their magic. The Max Payne 1 & 2 remakes would also be quite exciting, I'd honestly just be happy if they updated the visuals and kept the shooting mechanics of 3. Still curious to see how Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 turns out, but it's really not looking good so far. Judas, because it's been forever since we've had a BioShock game and the last entry was just "okay", but nowhere near as good as the previous masterpieces.

... Well, fuck.

Whatever, fuck it. I've already made up my mind... shit, I am not looking forward to this anymore.

I would recommend setting up the second save slot as your practice run on regular Nightmare and once you feel confident with a certain chapter, you then move on to your third save and do it again on Ultra-Nightmare, repeat that process all the way up to Final Sin (the first 3 chapters will be the hardest since you don't have all the fancy gear / upgrades yet). It's a real blessing you don't have to do the entire game in one session like in Wolfenstein 2 and there are no long unskippable cutscenes either.

I'm a good chunk into my 100% playthrough now, I've reached Taras Nabad. Nightmare difficulty has made me rethink my earlier opinion of this game not being as good as DOOM 2016.

I think i might go for an Ultra-Nightmare completion too. The extra lives might make it a lot easier than something like Wolfenstein's Mein Leben.

FYI, Ultra-Nightmare is exactly the same as regular Nightmare, with the only difference being permadeath (the game creates a hardsave at the end of each chapter, which is permanently deleted upon death), therefore Extra Lives mode is not applicable on that setting.

Use the chainsaw when low on ammo. This was something I never knew until someone told me.

The game explicitly teleports you to some sort of tutorial arena where it explains what the chainsaw does, how did you miss that lol

Amazing FPS, it easily ranks as one of the best in the genre, right up there with the original F.E.A.R., beating it on Ultra Nightmare has been quite the experience and while it does at first seem like a much harder version of the 2016 reboot, it's actually a lot easier once it clicks and because of having more options in general. Have yet to start playing the DLCs, I've heard mixed takes on them.

Damn, The Angel of Darkness being included is crazy, though that game requires a lot more effort than high-res textures, I've completed the original after installing all the necessary patches and it has still been quite a jankfest. The fact that it still had the same tank controls in a completely different non-gridbased environment also didn't help.

From the gameplay standpoint, remakes absolutely count as new games, especially Resident Evil games are drastically different from the original counterparts and so is the most recent Silent Hill 2 remake. I suppose you could add a barebones remaster as a replay since it's literally just upscaled graphics, but both the gameplay and the story remain 1:1 the same. I personally still log them as new completions, as long as there is anything new or different at all.

I double-checked the rules and I think I'm allowed to guess again.

I knew this game looked familiar but couldn't quite pinpoint it, but I had an epiphany and remembered that this is actually AI: The Somnium Files.

That it is indeed!

Is it Zero Time Dilemma?

nope

Gone Home

I really liked Inside, it's pretty much Limbo with more than 2 colors, better pacing and less frustrating set-pieces, not too long and very well worth at least one playthrough. Resident Evil 7 is an odd one, I did beat it once on PC but never really felt compelled to come back and do it all over for achievements and what not: it might have something to do with the poor enemy variety, BB-tier guns and just the overall change in tone compared to previous games, though the Texas Chainsaw Massacre angle was quite amusing and the graphics were insane without being too heavy on the system thanks to Capcoms first introduction of their RE engine. Death's Door isn't really my type of game, but what I've seen of it so far might push me to give it a whirl, it's just low priority right now.

Looks like Deception IV Blood Ties/ The Nightmare Princess to me.

A game I would have finished if it wasn't for a couple of extremely annoying stages in the middle.

Bingo