The Reagan era was all about bashing commies.
In Bethesda Softworks’ “Rogue Warrior,” you get to relive those days and do your patriotic duty by bashing hundreds of them across North Korea and the Soviet Union.
The game is set in 1986, and your job is to derail a ballistic missile program. You play as the famous Richard “Demo Dick” Marcinko, who earned a Silver Star as a SEAL in Vietnam and then helped establish SEAL Team 6 and Red Cell before writing his autobiography — titled “Rogue Warrior” — and a string of novels about special operations. Your character — who looks very much like the real Marcinko — is voiced by actor Mickey Rourke.
The game is a pretty basic shooter with a very linear plot and action. You start each mission with a silenced pistol and assault rifle and then follow the path until you’ve killed all your foes and blown something up. You can pick up different weapons along the way, but there’s no need to search for secret areas, power-ups or unlockable content. They’re not there. This makes the campaign very straightforward, but also very short. I buzzed through it in less than four hours on the medium difficulty setting.
None of the missions are particularly challenging. You can blast your way through most levels without too much difficulty, but it’s often more interesting to rely on stealth — sneaking up and dispatching a foe with a knife.
The game gets a hard M rating for blood, violence and the fact that every other word from Marcinko/Rourke is four or 12 letters long.
The game offers the usual online options, with nothing that stands out as exceptional.
In the end, “Rogue Warrior” offers a standard-issue shooter experience with little that’s “rogue” about it.
Platforms: Xbox 360 (tested), PlayStation 3, PC On the Web: roguewarrior.com
