Rebellion and 2000 A.D. are both British veterans of their respective fields: video games and comics, and like Marmite and potato crisps, both go well together. Unlike Marmite crisps, however, Rogue Trooper: Quartz Zone Massacre is a winning combination in anyone's book.
If you've never read the comic the story is laid out as follows: Nu Earth is a human colony world in the future that has been wracked by unending war between the Norts and the Southers. The Southers have created the Genetic Infantrymen (GIs, get it?) - super soldiers that can fight without the cumbersome breathing apparatus required by normal human soldiers in the hell that Nu Earth has become, in the hopes of winning the unwinnable war. Thanks to the duplicity of a traitor general in the Souther ranks, the GIs are slaughtered during their first major offensive in the Quartz Zone.
You take on the role of Rogue, the last survivor of the GIs, who is attempting to seek revenge against the traitor responsible for the massacre of his fellow soldiers. He's not really alone, however, as the personalities and knowledge of his fellow GIs are encoded on computer chips that have been removed from their skulls and slotted into some of his equipment. Rogue and the personality chips from some of his colleagues make him a one-man army literally as well as figuratively, an interesting concept that makes the game stand out in the sci-fi themed action game market.
Rogue's colleagues are installed into three pieces of equipment: Helm is in Rogue's helmet and is used to hack doors or enemy computer systems and create distractions via holographic decoys; Gunnar is in Rogue's rifle and provides some targeting assistance as well as the ability to act as a sentry by putting the rifle on a tripod; and Bagman is in Rogue's backpack, and manufactures extra ammunition and new weapon mounts for his rifle from material scavenged from dead enemy troops and found on the battlefield.
The visuals are quite good and appear to be faithful to the comic, with nice use of colour and respectable polygon counts. Despite being a port of a PS2/Xbox game from several years ago it holds up well against current games developed specifically for the Wii, with good use of ragdoll physics and atmospheric lighting effects. Surround sound is well-implemented and your chip colleagues will chime in with amusing little comments or useful information, though this can be turned off if the banter is annoying you. The voice acting is top-notch and the cut scenes are a mix of in-game engine and pre-rendered footage that compares well with the rest of the game visuals. The presentation creates a rich and immersive world which will no doubt make you want to check out the collected Rogue Trooper comic strips if you aren't already a fan.
The basic controls work well: the pointer controls the gun and - in an improvement over Resident Evil 4's controls - the camera, with a user-configurable dead zone and vertical and horizontal sensitivity settings. Twisting the Remote in sniper mode controls the zoom which steps through a few levels of magnification nicely once you get used to it. The B button fires; the A button is used for contextual actions or diving for cover when moving, and C is used to crouch (this can be set as a toggle if desired) for avoiding fire and sneaking up on the enemy who can then be dispatched with a click of the A button. The + and - buttons bring up menus for viewing an area map and manufacturing ammo and equipment with Bagman, or making use of your other colleagues' abilities to act as sentry and distraction. The D-pad enables switching your equipped gun mounts and grenades as well as toggling sniper mode and using medical packs to restore health.
The Nunchuk control stick is used for movement as well as aiming and throwing grenades using motion controls, although sadly the aiming portion of grenade throwing presents the weakest of the controls in the game. Preparing a grenade throw involves entering "aiming mode" by tilting the Nunchuk up, which shows the arc for the grenade throw assuming your throw is unobstructed. The distance can be altered by the control stick and then the grenade thrown with a flick of the Nunchuk. Unfortunately, there is no user settable sensitivity for the Nunchuk tilt, so casual positioning of your left hand may initiate grenade aiming mode (which disables character movement) accidentally; the lack of feedback when you're in this mode and obstructed can be frustrating until you realise what's happened. Using the the Z button (otherwise used only for targeting enemies from behind cover) to toggle aiming mode or even just using the pointer to indicate the target for the grenade throw without having to stop and aim would have been better solutions. When it works, it works very well for putting grenades where you want them, though it's good that you can also just chuck a grenade straight ahead with a simple Nunchuk flick and no aiming involved.
The game is structured as a series of missions which see the character going through urban battlefields and alien landscapes on foot, broken up by a couple of vehicular rail-shooter sections and occasional use of gun emplacements. The HUD does a great job of ensuring there's no confusion over where you're supposed to go next, even in the more complex multi-tiered levels. Most missions are fairly linear with several objective points and numerous enemies, but you have a good deal of flexibility in how you dispatch them which keeps the action from feeling repetitive. You can snipe from a distance (hitting the breathing apparatus of an unsuspecting Nort is always good for a laugh) or try sneaking in for quick kills up close and personal. Using a holo decoy to draw enemy fire towards your waiting sentry gun whilst flanking the enemy and attacking with pistol and grenades also works a treat. You'll need to use different tricks because the enemy AI is generally quite good: targets will move forward and attempt to outflank you, liberally throwing grenades to drive you out from cover. Once under cover themselves enemy soldiers under attack tend to stay there, so don't expect to just wait for their heads to pop-up to be hit by your sniper fire - a welcome change from first-person shooters like Call of Duty.
Whilst some might criticise the game's length, it certainly provides a good bit of fun and can be finished in a few days of play, with the basic campaign being enjoyable enough for multiple replays. There are two further difficulties to try out and cheat settings to play with which get unlocked after the first playthrough, as well as bonus artwork (it's quite interesting to see how close the game's art design is to the original comic and where they diverge) which is unlocked by reaching certain milestones in the game.
Finally there's also a local co-op multiplayer mode which can be played with 1-4 players using splitscreen. Players can choose skins selected from Rogue and his buddies before they fell on the battlefield, each of which has different abilities in the game. There's a choice of five different maps, with three Progressive maps having the goal of getting to a pre-determined objective and two Stronghold maps, where the goal is to survive for a set length of time against a never-ending Nort onslaught. In both cases players share a common pool of lives and points are scored for all actions in the game. Secondary objectives are present in most of the maps which provide additional point scoring opportunities and bonus points are scored for lives left over at the end of the game.
Conclusion
Rogue Trooper stands out for two big reasons: it's one of very few decent third-person 3D action games on the Wii and it's a good quality game based upon a licensed property. Rebellion deserves credit for making a quality translation of this game for the Wii and it's nice to see a new independent face in Reef Publishing bringing it out. Having tackled one 2000 A.D. property here's hoping Rebellion gets a chance to try their hands at another in the future. Judge Dredd, anyone?
Comments (28)
great review...
btw i haven't heard of this game before (poor me)
i'll check the store soon
I keep seeing this one in stores and have been tempted, but didn't know anything about it, so ran away scared. Cheers for the heads up.
Coincidentally a friend at work told me about this game yesterday... weird.
It launched with a budget price so it shouldn't be hard to pick up cheap. Well worth a punt! Shame there's no North American release planned that I'm aware of, but I suppose there's always a chance Xseed could license it...
I have this one and it is really great.
A great review of a truly underrated game.
Rouge Trooper is a comic book? I thought it was an orignal video game IP.
tobad there doesn't seem to be a na release it looks great
Sean is this game the closest thing to GoW you can find on wii? or is bwii better than this to you?
Loved the comic as a kid and remember seeing a trailer for this game ages ago and thinking thats looks cool, then completly forgot about it.Thanks for the reminder. I'm gonna order it right now.Great review BTW
Ah, so there was never a NA release? That would explain me not hearing of it.
@DaDun: I don't know much about Gears of War other than it's a 3rd-person space marine game. I suppose in that sense it is. I'm assuming bwii, refers to Battalion Wars II? I haven't played it to be honest, but that's a realtime strategy game isn't it? Not the same thing.
If I wasn't playing Tenchu right now I'd be playing this again!
And yes, Rogue Trooper is a comic co-created by Dave Gibbons, the artist of The Watchmen and Gerry Finley-Day who wrote much of the original stories that appeared in 2000 A.D. magazine. Lovely stuff.
Here's some interesting trivia: Rebellion are also book publishers; I've just started Judge Dredd Volume 8 and noticed their logo in the publication details!
I have been waiting for this one...actually I had forgotten about it till tonight. Unfortunately its not out yet here...but then again that is a good thing as I have a ton of games I am playing right now and a few more that I will be picking up soon like Little King's Story.
Good review BTW.
I'd be more interested if Rogue in this game was actually Rogue from the X-Men. It wouldn't make sense but I wouldn't care because she's smokin' hot. I can do with this though ... if it's ever released in the U.S.
@10. DaDun
Yes, it is the closest experience on Wii to Gears of War on Xbox (or PC). It is a very similar tactical shooter, where you must find cover, shot from cover, but the best part is you weapon, that you can put down somewhere and activate it (so it works like an automatic cannon - it will find and shoot at targets alone, without your intervention - it has a superchip on it - it was one of you warfriend) and you can also shoot with you handgun.
Sometimes, you must use your helmet, to hack doors and terminals (there is your other friends CPU), but the best part is your bag, because he can absorb trash and make upgrades out of them for you weapon, health, ammo etc.
It si really a great game and especially experience, nothing other similar to this date on Wii.
its still PAL version right?i'll wait till the US version get out and then get it
Yes, it's PAL; no there's not been any version announced for elsewhere, though I suppose they could approach Reef/Rebellion to do a licensing deal.
Yes the game supports widescreen and is 480p.
looks good anyways if it comes to the U.S. I might get it
I love this game, my only complaint is that i enter grenade aim mode, or actually throw one every single time i scratch my nose
I realy want this game, but I havent seen it in ANY stores where I live
oh well.... thats why we have Ebay and such ^^
Cant wait to try it out
Ohhh, I saw this in the shops and thought with it being a licensed property that it would probably be pants [can anyone think of any decent 2000ad games apart from maybe that Slaine adventure?]. Having read this, I might actually buy it.
I saw somewhere on IGN this is coming out Stateside by the end of the year so people in the Americas should check it out!
Amazon has it listed coming out Nov. 24th. Thanks for the review Sean. I was gonna pick it up for the ps2 but since its coming out in less than a month stateside I might go ahead and get it for the Wii.
This looks awesome. Can't wait!!
So, this is based on a comic by Dave Gibbons? No wonder Rogue bears an uncanny resemblance to Dr. Manhattan. This game sounds pretty sweet, I hope it does get released Stateside...
Purchased this title recently and I'm playing through it right now. Alas, the control and camera issues really have tried my patience from time to time. Grenade throwing is a royal pain in the tookus. I think 8/10 is a bit high. I'd lean more towards 6.5 to 7.0 out of 10. It's a good title, and I'm enjoying it, but the controls make it hard to love it completely.
a few days of play? what the is that? so this game is 72 hours long.
Just discovered this game and will pick up tomarrow. How did I miss this?
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