Back over at the Bethesda Softworks booth, the order of the day was to check out Rogue Warrior, the game based on the unbelievable real life soldier Richard Marcinko.

Marcinko’s early career involved playing an active part with the Navy SEALs, and from there, his story reads like a hundred Cold War action movies packed into one.  In Rogue Warrior, players will take control of the infamous Marcinko – voiced by Mickey Rourke - as he battles Soviet forces.

Punctuated with brutal, profane, and funny dialogue, Rogue Warrior embraces many of the standards of modern day shooters.  Most of the action is in first person mode, utilizing a cover system that switches the camera to third person. 

As the player moves Marcinko along his mission, there are essentially two routes to take: All out warfare or stealth. 

If you take the action route, Soviet forces will square off against you, hiding behind destructible cover and calling in for reinforcements when you’re spotted. 

If stealth is more your thing, there are countless takedown moves, with most of them revolving around broken necks and vicious stabbings, sprinkled with pushing people off of high surfaces for good measure.  These are made all the easier to perform with the ability to blow out fuse boxes to cast the Soviets in darkness while you don a pair of night vision goggles.  At best, the enemy troops might fire in your general direction if you make too much noise or come too close, but the game takes place in an era when night-vision gear wasn’t widely used.

While Rogue Warrior is definitely built on the story of a fascinating and rebellious real life soldier, the game itself does come across as somewhat standard for shooters these days.  Without the dark and curse-laden commentary from Mickey Rourke, there isn’t much to make this particular title stand high above others currently out.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing – the game makes use of many well liked features employed today – but anybody who is already neck deep in other shooters may have trouble seeing why they should chase this one down.

Rogue Warrior is slated to come out in late 2009.

Keyan Reid
Professional Hero
JRE Thug Division – Core Elite