Rogue Warrior (2009)

Rogue Warrior is infamous for being one of the worst games out there so it should not come as a surprise that I am not that positive about it, and that is an understatement.

You play as Richard Marcinko, a Navy Seal veteran that needs to stop the launch of a ballistic missile in North Korea. You are dropped deep into enemy territory with your team, kill some generic North Korean soldiers and then, your buddies immediately get blown up by a soldier holding an unpinned grenade in his final moments. The fact that your squad mates looked at the grenade, looked at each other in pure Loony Toons style for about an hour before being yeeted away is beyond me. It marked the start of a bad game, and it sure as hell was.

You play trough a couple of very generic levels that all look the same. You murder Korean soldiers and need to find your way to your next objective. That is all there is to it. No side missions, no progression system, nothing.

You can use different approaches (or so the game makes you think) like stealth, guns blazing or a little bit of both. The only problem is that the mechanics are really broken and with stealth, you can kill anything if you are crouching. Even in broad daylight or moonlight, you can walk in front of their faces, and they do not see you. Put a knife in their throats and move on. It is ridiculous.

The combat is poor, and the AI is incredibly stupid. They are generic bullet sponges and for a Navy Seal stealth expert, it felt much more like playing Rambo with a beard and mustache. The gun play feels cheap and dirty, and your weapons sound like pea shooters. You can hold two weapons and although that is not that bad, you get offered many different weapons throughout the game and you never know which ones are best suited for which situation. Not that it matters, they all still feel just the same.

The graphics in Rogue Warrior are horrible, they are blend, grey and unpolished. They are seriously depressing to look at and offer nothing special. Animations are terrible and there is no detail whatsoever in gunfire, explosions and the generic, repeating kill moves that you perform.

The sound design is one of the worst I have ever experienced. Like I said, the guns sound like pea shooters, sound disappears in the middle of a kill animation and the voice acting is atrocious. It is a disaster. The worst part is the ending. When the credits roll, you are treated to a rap, composed by Uncle Richard, containing nothing but swearwords and goat balls. What. The. Hell.

Throughout the game, Richard swears constantly. I do not mind that in games and sometimes, I find it hilarious, but it is just constant, over and over again, many times without any reason. It gets repetitive and annoying after a while and there is nothing you can do to make him shut up. The worst part is when you are “sneaking”, and he just yells out of the blue “Come and get me mother*ckers”. No one reacts, and you are like, why, what?

And off course, the game is completely broken. Enemies clip trough the walls or spas out when killed, you fall trough the floor, constant crashing at random moments, FPS drops and overall, it is one big mess. I yet have to find a game that surpasses it.

Rogue Warrior is also very short and can be completed in three hours at max (if the game did not crash that much). It is also ridiculously easy because of the broken AI and the poor combat mechanics. A combination of camping and the broken stealth mechanics made this game too easy, even on the hardest difficulty.

In the end, Rogue Warrior has nothing to offer. It is broken, lifeless, generic, and overall, just horrible.