RoboCop: Rogue City is an uncomplicated game that sets a set of definite goals for itself and lives up to them fantastically. The meat of the game is shooting punks with a variety of weapons (your trusty Auto-9 plus various guns found throughout the levels), moving slowly, deliberately and tankily as befits the titular RocoCop. Sprinkle in some investigation sequences (which are pretty linear and none too taxing on the player's detective skills) with some pretty engaging characters and story-telling, and the no-nonsense RoboCop fantasy is complete. There's some secret-hunting and a skill/upgrade system for those who like that sort of thing. It feels a bit perfunctory to me, included mostly because that's what's expected of a Videogame(TM), but it's servicable and not too obtrusive.
Wall World has a lot going for it: A fascinating premise, gorgeous pixel art and a fun rogue-lite formula that keeps drawing me in. Unfortunately, once I played for a sufficient amount of hours, a lot of little irritations started to compound on themselves. The weapons are interesting, each with its own function at different moments in battle, and you seem to get a good, random variety of them... but in a heavily weighted order that seems to guarantee you won't see new ones until much later in the game. The exterior backgrounds are beautiful, and there are different climates and weather conditions that make the world seem alive... but the wall itself is a black void enclosed by grey lines, and the only splash of colour is the tile-set you're digging through. A little cone of grey rock is the only indicator of potential dig sites. The seemingly infinite wall is an enticing mystery, and you can find caves with NPCs and journals that hint at the true nature of the world... But half the time it's a joke or reference without substance, the worst of which break the fourth wall and shatter immersion. The interface is intuitive and most of the time easy to read quickly... but there's a lack of information and detail that obscures whether a given effect will really work like you expect it to. Once you have more than one weapon, you can cycle through them with Z and X, but the weapon selector doesn't show the order in which you cycle through them. The game seems filled with these aspects that look great at first glance, but then begin to show their flaws after you spend a little time with them. I'm hoping the developer can apply the necessary polish, because that's all this game needs to go from middling to great.
The writing, the sound design and the visual style of the game are great! They combine to set exactly the right mood as you delve into the world of the occult, even if everything is represented by cards and tiles. Starting the game with little indication of what to do or even how to do what you gradually discover, you are given the sensation of fumbling your way to forbidden knowledge in a very real sense, which makes it that much more satisfying when you reach an epiphany. However, once you do figure out how things work (either by the intended experimentation within the game or by reading a wiki), the work becomes a slog. The abstraction and mystique gives way to a colour-coded solitaire that's more a matter of juggling cards and timers and less about feeling that sensation of tense exploration. The challenge at this point becomes attention span and patience - I did not manage to get one of the 'real' endings in about 30 hours of play because an ill confluence of RNG and impatience or poor planning on my part would always cause my downfall. In the end, I felt compelled to keep playing to achieve ascension, but I was not enjoying it. I can't deny I got my money's worth of entertainment from it, however.
