Back again for our regular Sunday roundup of quick-fire reviews and impressions of everything under the spotlight at Retro Arcadia this week, old and new and a bit of both. Bit of a landmark week for me too, with my son moving from here in the UK over to Seattle to be a college-athlete, leaving us with a strangely quiet house, and trying to get used to shopping and cooking for two again! I’m sure we’ll manage, and I’ll certainly make the most of the extra free time…

After hyping-up Robocop: Rogue City’s appearance on Xbox Game Pass for the past couple of weeks here, I not only got around to finally playing it, but actually gathering my thoughts on it too! Not that this was a big deal in the end because I loved it from start to just about finish… I’ll very happily watch the original three movies back-to-back but that’s about as much Robocop as I need to get my fix, while this must have been getting on for around fifteen hours and was starting to outstay its welcome, although that’s as much down to it being a perfectly functional but very average first-person shooter as it is the limited scope of its subject matter. Anyway, that aside, I had no problem seeing past all the other jank, like your partner blocking doors and throwing goons through walls, or choosing not to participate in the busywork, and I even learnt to ignore the weird-looking hair, because I was proper Robocop (meaning Peter Weller back in the role), in an authentic Robocop world, and that’s all that matters here! It’s set just after the second film, with familiar characters and a good-looking, atmospheric take on lawless near future-Detroit; the storyline seems pretty familiar too, as you unravel the latest drug-related threat to the city, avenge your partner and various other victims of things, do a bit of detective work, and generally stomp around, shooting everyone and everything across a load of missions, which is a load of fun while it lasts! All the mechanics feel good enough too, and likewise most of the presentation, aforementioned glitches and weirdness aside. Not perfect by any means but neither was anything it’s based on, and that’s still a blast forty years later, just like this is! 

Wheel World also just released on Xbox Game Pass (and elsewhere), and I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. It’s a stylised, third-person cycle racing adventure from Annapurna Interactive, which finds you chosen by ancient cycling spirits to travel around a gradually expanding open-world map, collecting a bunch of legendary bike parts to perform a ritual that will save the world or some nonsense. This involves exploring, unlocking stuff and upgrading your bike to compete against local “biker” gangs, building your reputation to keep doing more of the same. And as strange as it might all sound, and as lightweight as individual elements can be, I really clicked with it! There are oddball characters to meet, diverse Mediterranean-type (and more) environments with different terrains to ride across, and loads of bike bits, jumps, shortcuts and rewards to uncover, but even during the surprisingly strategic races, until near the end it’s all pretty leisurely, and apart from some glitchy collision physics, the simple act of riding your bike is a real joy, especially when you get it feeling just right for you. The bold. watercolour-ish, cel-shady art-style really complements the experience too, although I could do without the Italian indie synth-pop soundtrack, as good as the rest of the sound design is! Lovely old six hours or so though.

I won’t bore you again with my relatively recent but almost obsessive relationship with Dune, except to say I’ve been on the lookout for a couple of games based on it since I finally penetrated Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic about eighteen months ago, after decades of trying! One of those is Dune (or Dune 2000) on the original PlayStation, a 3D (obviously!) and impressively cinematic real-time strategy game from Westwood Studios in 1999, which I think they first published on PC the previous year before this release through EA, but is based on the older (and quite pioneering) Dune II for MS-DOS then Amiga and Genesis or Mega Drive from a few years before. It’s all regular Dune stuff though – choose one of three Houses then fight for control of the spice melange, the psychedelic drug powering the universe exclusively produced on the desert planet Arrakis. This takes place across thirty missions – interconnected by a full-motion video narrative – which have you building all the stuff you need to find and harvest the spice, and also building your army to keep the other Houses at bay or go after their operations. I’ve never had a PS1 mouse but the controller works fine in its absence, with various menus and commands all easily accessible from different buttons and icons; the only real challenge is selecting units at speed when an enemy turns up, or even worse a giant sandworm! Adds to the tension though, which is always there regardless as you go about your business, and missions are generally well-paced and well-balanced, and fun to try again differently if you need to. The complexity is pitched about right too, never overwhelming but with plenty of depth, and you’ve also got a few other solo and multiplayer (via link cable unfortunately) modes on top. This style of game is never going to push the console too far but it’s recognisably Dune, there’s lots of detail and texture to the visuals, and the cutscenes are of their time but still a nice distraction. And when a copy eventually appeared on eBay, it was a real a bargain too! 

Right, not for the first time and undoubtedly not for the last, I’ve gone long with those, so I’ll leave what’s become an ongoing obsession with Windjammers on my new NeoGeo Super Pocket handheld until next week! I’d like to think I’ll have finished Death Stranding by then too but you know what I was saying about Robocop going on a bit too long earlier? Well, I’ve played this for a hell of a lot longer now, and as much as I’ve also really enjoyed it, honestly I’m getting a bit bored, and it looks like there’s still a way to go, and I’m not sure I want to. Anyway, I’ll let you know about that, and a cool Spectrum game I’ve just gone back to, and whatever else crops up between now and next Sunday when next Sunday comes around! And in the meantime, be sure to check back on Wednesday, when we’re going to be taking our monthly trip back exactly 40 years for the very latest in video gaming with Retro Rewind: August 1985 in Computer & Video Games, straight from the pages of the original magazine, so I’ll hopefully see you for that too! 

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