A fine shooter that uses Lumen and Nanite to superb effect.
Epic’s Unreal Engine 5 has had a long gestation period.
Enter RoboCop: Rogue City.
The results are excellent.
Instead, the lighting has more of a CG-like quality, like you’d see in an animated film.
That’s not to say that there aren’t compromises of course.
There are also some instances where you’re able to spot some light leak in the Lumen GI.
Again though, I want to stress that the overwhelming majority of the time this isn’t an issue.
Teyon seems to have avoided common Lumen lighting issues that we’ve seen in other games as well.
There also isn’t aLords of the Fallen-style overreliance on invisible area lights in RoboCop either.
Lumen reflections are also present here, again in their software-traced guise.
Reflections on semi-gloss to glossy materials are handled using this technique, with very good results.
That said, if you do look closely, Lumen reflections aren’t perfect.
Semi-gloss reflections can also exhibit slightly questionable quality, with excessive noise.
Reflections are absent on transparent surfaces too.
RoboCop also makes use of virtual shadow maps, which is a huge win for the game’s graphics.
As a result, we see extremely accurate shadows that near-perfectly capture very fine details within the game.
The results here are often beautiful, with many areas exhibiting CG-like sharp shadow detail and incredible variable penumbra.
There’s no screen-space trickery - this is all represented with a shadow map.
The virtual shadow maps are married beautifully with the Nanite virtualised geometry system to produce some stunning results.
Generally speaking, model quality is very high in RoboCop, with objects appearing good quality even up close.
That’s not to short-sell RoboCop’s unique visual touches, though.
Planters are particularly inspired - they explode into hundreds of geometric dirt chunks when shot.
RoboCop has a close fidelity to the source films it’s based on as well.
UE5 technology just takes what would otherwise likely be a perfectly good-looking game, and makes it exceptional.
Overall lighting detail appeared very similar, but there was a bit less breakup in some indirectly-lit areas.
Transparent surfaces also appeared to render at a higher level of fidelity in the quality mode.
Outside of those changes, nothing stands out, though there are likely more subtle tweaks elsewhere.
Surprisingly, that overall similarity between modes also extends to the game’s apparent resolution.
It’s likely dynamic resolution scaling is used as well.
PS5 seems to mostly be a match for Series X, and looks about the same in head-to-head shots.
It’s not a major difference ultimately, but it does look a bit better in its quality mode.
Perhaps the Series X version isn’t working as intended.
Traversal stutter returns as well, sometimes pausing the game for 100ms or longer, which is a shame.
That makes the quality mode in particular feel choppier than it should.
Finally, virtual shadow maps also take a hit, with lower resolutions and more visible aliasing.
The level of variable penumbra has also been decreased, with a less obvious falloff in sharpness.
Interestingly, the internal resolution is also 1080p in the shots I tested, suggesting parity there as well.
Outside of the technical minutiae, RoboCop is a decent enough shooter.
I was reminded ofDeus Ex: Human Revolutionat times, though the actual gameplay is much more one-note.
The technology really is the star of the show here.
RoboCop is a very graphically impressive effort, and a visual highlight of this console generation so far.
For those who want a glimpse of future graphics tech, it’s a worthwhile experience.
