Rogue Trooper

Written by Troy Matsumiya  on November 11, 2005

Final Glimpse: Call it УBlue Man Group Goes PostalФ.

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UK developer Rebellion is about to bring us a big blue badass with a serious case of split personality. Based on Rebellion's own 2000AD comic series of the same name, Rogue Trooper is a third-person shooter set in a post-apocalyptic world called Nu Earth, where the surface is poisoned by deadly toxins. But even that hasn't stopped the fighting, so to help defeat the evil Norts, the Southers created Genetic Infantrymen (GI) supersoldiers who are immune from poisons and biohazards. Oh, and they're also blue and have creepy glowing eyes. Things went happily along on their violent and bloody ways until one day an elite squad of GIs were betrayed by their superiors for some reason, as evil superiors are wont to do. Fortunately, one trooper Ц the Rogue Trooper, of course Ц survived and is looking for a little payback.

On the surface, Rogue Trooper looks like yet another third-person shooter with an emphasis on stealth. What sets it apart, however, is his unique equipment. You see, the memories and experiences of his old squadmates Gunnar, Helm and Bagman have been downloaded into his weapon, helmet and backpack, respectively. This allows the Rogue Trooper to take advantage of his buddies' expertise and improve his own abilities. Not only that, but he can set down his equipment and let his virtualized friends take over while he performs other tasks; for example, setting down his gun turns Gunnar into an autotargeting turret while putting his helmet on a computer allows Helm to hack into security systems. There's no word yet on what Bagman does, but we suspect it will be something a bit more useful than folding undies and rolling socks. You will also be able to upgrade the abilities of both yourself and your equipment buddies.

You will also be able to use other weapons like sniper rifles, throw grenades, control vehicles and man turrets. If you want to stay safely out of sight behind cover, you will be able to Уshoot blindФ around obstacles (you can toss grenades like this as well).

You can take advantage of several stealth abilities to sneak up on enemies, but the game will not punish you too much if you want to run and gun. Similar to Far Cry, the game is freeform, letting you approach situations any way you like with huge, wide open maps filled with intelligent AI who react realistically rather than follow scripted events. However, playing sneaky will have its rewards; creeping up behind someone will let you enjoy some rather nasty kill animations in addition to not alerting nearby enemies.

Graphically, the killer blue man is highly detailed as are all character models, and the weapon and particle effects are quite impressive as well. The environments are appropriately apocalyptic, dreary, drab and dusty.

Not much has been said about multiplayer beyond that you will be able to play special cooperative missions for up to four players either on split-screen or Xbox Live. The cool thing about the cooperative mode is that you will be able play as Gunnar, Helm and Bagman before they were killed.