Rogue Warrior

*Rogue Warrior* is the nineteenth episode of Just Bad Games, released on June 19, 2020.

## Transcript

**Shane**: *Rogue Warrior* is a first-person action title created by Rebellion Developments and released to the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 in 2009.

**Adam**: Some may look at the cover of this game and go, "Meh. This just looks like a generic army warfare game".

*(gameplay shown)*

**Shane**: And you would be a hundred percent right! But it does have one standout feature.

**Adam**: Unlike the other games that feature fictional protagonists, this title revolves around an actual human being: former US Navy officer and SEAL unit commander Richard Marcinko.

**Shane**: Marcinko, also known as "Demo Dick", is a decorated Vietnam War veteran. He created the navy's first counterterrorist unit in SEAL Team Six, and was even tasked with testing security in top US military installations around the world with his specialized team, Red Cell.

**Adam**: With his extensive and unique military background, Marcinko had experiences to share. So, he did, by writing an autobiography called *Rogue Warrior*.

**Shane**: Now pause. Let's introduce a seemingly random person for a sec: Tom Clancy. You might've heard of him. Despite never having served in the armed forces, he authored several famous military and espionage-focused novels that had a profound impact on popular entertainment. This includes the world of gaming.

**Adam**: Tom Clancy personally got involved in development, lending his name to several game franchises that went on to sell multiple millions of units. *Rainbow Six*, *Ghost Recon*, *Splinter Cell*. Any publisher or developer in the games industry would kill to have a name like Mr. Clancy's connected to what they were making.

**Shane**: Including Bethesda Softworks. As the Tom Clancy umbrella of titles was quickly becoming one of the highest-grossing franchises of all time, other franchises like *Call of Duty* and *Battlefield* were receiving massive critical and financial success. The genre was proving incredibly lucrative, and Bethesda was sort of left behind. How could they correct that?

**Adam**: Reenter Richard Marcinko. See, he wasn't just a one and done author with his successful *Rogue Warrior* autobiography. He continued to coauthor more books, like uh, *Leadership Secrets of the Rogue Warrior*. Uh...

**Shane**: He would also spin the *Rogue Warrior* branding into its own series of fictional titles, fabricating world events that had a heavily made-up version of himself.

**Adam**: So Bethesda likely eyed Marcinko, thinking-

**Shane**: "Wait, you're telling me there's a real war veteran who has seen actual combat, who is so good at his job, he founded the real SEAL Team Six, the thing that inspired Tom Clancy's *Rainbow Six*, and this guy writes novels about himself and nobody is making games about him? We need to sign this guy right f\*\*kin' now"! So, in 2006, it was announced that the *Rogue Warrior* series would be infiltrating the world of video games with the help of publisher Bethesda Softworks.

**Adam**: Development duties would be fronted by Zombie Studios, who had previously worked on Tom Clancy's *Rainbow Six* series. What a coincidence! The game, titled *Rogue Warrior: Black Razor*, would include a slew of features: a campaign that could be played by up to four players cooperatively, realistic enemy and team AI, huge customizable multiplayer support.

**Shane**: Until it didn't.

**Adam**: The *Rogue Warrior* project went radio silent, missing its 2007 release window.

**Shane**: The game was later picked up and sizably rejigged by Rebellion Developments, another company that worked on Rom Clancy's *Rainbow Six* series. Another coincidence! This time around, the game dropped the "Black Razor" subtitle, simply being called *Rogue Warrior*.

**Adam**: Gone was the co-op, the team AI, the ambitious miltiplayer promises.

**Shane**: Here was a game more heavily focused on Dick.

**Adam**: While it still had the *Rogue Warrior* moniker, it wasn't going to be based on Richard Marcinko's autobiography. Instead, it would be a totally made-up story.

**Shane**: And the Marcinko-based lead would be voiced by none other than Academy Award Best Actor nominee Mickey Rourke- from *Diner*. Does anyone remember *Diner*? It has Steve Guttenberg! The Gutt!

**Adam**: So, by this point, *Rogue Warrior* was rebuilt from scratch, new engine and all, in just over a year. When the dust finally settled on release, what exactly did we get?

**Shane**: Only one way to find out. It's time to become the Rogue Warrior.

**Adam**: The game begins with an opening cinematic where we see a Soviet security detail systematically picked off by a shrouded figure. He's quick, he's sneaky, he's silent. This is setting the tone for an intelligent first-person stealth action experience that requires intense strategic planning. Exciting.

**Shane**: We jump into the main campaign, expecting to see the same skill we witnessed in the opening cutscene. And we're introduced to a team of characters that are- oh, not so stealthy. In a very loud helicopter. And intelligence? Strategic planning? This group of supposed SEAL-trained operatives has a member smoking a cigar over a chunk of explosives. Smart.

**Adam**: The bearded one is our titular Rogue Warrior hero, Richard Marcinko, with the other two members of the team being handpicked by Marcinko himself. Not only are they skilled, but by Marcinko's own admission, they've saved his life on multiple occasions.

**Shane**: Now he and his companions run a mission to make contact with a mole in the North Korean regime and his intel on a new type of missile being constructed.

**Adam**: Should be no problem, with their intense SEAL training and decades of high-risk and secretive deployment experiences, and-

**Shane**: Dick just jumped from a helicopter without a parachute.

*(Animation shows Richard falling to the ground)*

No no, everyone's fine. We can only assume they floated down magically. Anyway, once they touch down, the group combs some woods when they come upon a squad of random Korean soldiers, including some kind of captain. They're all whistling and staring off into space, clearly not having heard the helicopter that just passed overhead. Good soldiering.

**Adam**: Bam. They're taken out by Dick and his men. Who could've seen that coming? "That there's a real slippery, sneaky Dick". (laughs)

**Shane**: (laughs) They're about to move again when Marcinko tells his team to check the bodies of the recently-fallen victims, and we get this:

*(North Korean soldier sets off an explosive)*

**Adam**: Hold on. Let's watch that one more time and see just how long these seasoned operatives have to find acceptable cover.

(9.38 seconds)

**Shane**: Only enough time to slowly huddle in, react cartoonishly, maybe watch a kettle boil.

**Adam**: Demo Dick barely surveys the scene and decides to leave.

**Shane**: Wait, shouldn't he check on his buddies that he himself moments earlier allotted for saving his butt on multiple occasions? Couldn't they be alive and just need some minor medical assistance?

**Adam**: Likely. But no, Demo Dick barely glances back.

**Shane**: This plot is going great. Let's get to our first bit of gameplay.

**Payton**: Commander, this is Payton. What's your status?

**Marcinko**: It's a total goatf\*\*k!

**Payton**: Report!

**Marcinko**: F\*\*k no!

**Adam**: You may notice a cuss or two.

**Marcinko**: Lights out, motherf\*\*ker.

**Adam**: Or three.

**Marcinko**: Son of a b\*\*ch.

**Shane**: So here's the rub, folks: this guy swears a lot. Like, a lot a lot. And we'll talk about that more, but first, we need to mention the-

*(The game crashes)*

-well, this. About fifty seconds from the moment you first gain control of Demo Dick, the game hard locks up.

**Adam**: We had to restart the game multiple times just to progress past the first altercation.

**Shane**: Kind of a strange bug, but hey. Likely won't happen again, right?

*(The game crashes again)*

**Marcinko**: It's a total goatf\*\*k!

**Adam**: Moving through more of the first section of the game, we're just decimating the enemies.

**Shane**: It's shocking. They don't seem to have any idea at all that we're nearby, or that we're loudly slaughtering all of their friends.

**Adam**: Marcinko's got this impressive one-button insta-kill move that has a variety of fixed animations that all take place in real time.

**Shane**: Why bother shooting people with your gun when you can just walk up to them and push the A button?

**Adam**: If you think these guys are oblivious, well, eventually we get to a fuse box which we destroy so we can sneak around in the dark. Demo Dick, being the stealthy ninja assassin he is, decides that this is the perfect time to scream,

**Marcinko**: Chew on this, f\*\*kheads!

**Adam**: The enemy is a few feet away, totally stumped.

**Shane**: You see what's happening here, right? Demo Dick is trying his best Sam Fisher impression, but *Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell* this ain't.

**Adam**: In *Splinter Cell*, the player can use darkness, stealth and tech in fun, well-executed ways. In *Rogue Warrior*?

**Shane**: Well, you can stand right in front of a guy.

**Adam**: In front of an open window.

**Shane**: With lightning illuminating the room.

**Adam**: And he still will not be able to see you.

**Shane**: Eat your heart out, Fisher. Demo Dick is so good, he could poke this guy's nose, and he'd still stay hidden. Genius.

**Adam**: Pass this section, and it's on to a sniper sequence. Don't worry, though. You probably won't get shot at, as the enemies will block their own vision by aiming out of cover while trying to look through solid concrete.

**Shane**: "Demo Dick can't get a headshot if he can't see my head"!

**Shane and Adam**: Brilliant!

**Shane**: You know what's not so smart, though?

**Adam**: What's that?

**Shane**: Limiting the main character to only two weapons while providing absolutely no indication of what weapons they might need moving forward through the level.

**Adam**: Yeah, the game has a bad habit of having you come across a stockpile of weapons from which you can only pick up two at any moment. Trouble is, all the weapons act drastically different, and in some cases, you won't know if you'll be able to find more ammo for that weapon moving forward.

**Shane**: This seems like something the devs may have decided because games like *Call of Duty* happen to do it, but they didn't know why *Call of Duty* did it in the first place, like limiting weapons to make for a more streamlined multiplayer experience.

**Adam**: Well, sure, but doesn't *Rogue Warrior* have a multiplayer mode?

**Shane**: Oh, it does, but uh, nobody's actually playing it.

**Adam**: But, back to the single-player mode, take our advice from playing this ultra-realistic shooter: switch out your second weapon if you like, but NEVER EVER drop your silenced pistol.

**Shane**: It has infinite ammo, and you always respawn with it. Even if you accidentally drop it during a mission and pick up another weapon, your gun magically respawns in the next level. How did he find the exact same American weaponry in the heart of enemy territory? It's a miracle!

**Adam**: And miracles are a regular occurrence in *Rogue Warrior*. Check this out.

**Shane**: Enemies blow up in a wall to attack Demo Dick. Now how did these guys on the other side of the wall know that Demo Dick was there, and what explosives did they use that could blow up in a wall but not hurt themselves? A miracle.

**Adam**: Here's another: Demo Dick is hiding behind a wall and tossing grenades at soldiers, but no matter what he does or how accurate he is with them, they won't hurt the enemies.

**Shane**: Want another? Bullets will not hit Demo Dick in cutscenes, even if they really, really should. Here he is making a hasty exit from a room after finding some intel. He jumps out onto a balcony ledge, and three soldiers rush into the room.

**Adam**: They open fire on him. He sits there, head fully in frame as bullets ricochet around him, spouts a one-liner, and throws a grenade that- oh, sure. They only work when it's awesome, I guess.

**Shane**: Was that a rope with a grappling hook just like, sitting there ready for his to use this whole time? Who put that there?

**Adam**: Ugh. This game. There are no words.

**Shane**: This was just the first level. After completing it, we find ourselves in an alleyway with a few more useless soldiers, and once we take them out, we climb a ladder and-

*(The game crashes)*

**Adam**: Oh. Great. The game locked up.

**Shane**: So we replayed the section again.

*(The game crashes)*

**Adam**: And again!

**Shane**: We gotta level with you. We were so certain that this game was completely broken here that we figured we'd missed a patch or a fix or something. I mean, you wouldn't keep selling this game if it was this broken, right?

**Adam**: The game crashes at random spots all over, even if you've gone through an area. There are no game saves, but there is a very unreliable auto-continue function that may or may not actually let you continue.

**Shane**: Sounds like a challenge to play this game, and boy, do we like a challenge.

**Adam**: So we kept pushing along. By this point, at the start of the second level, the game had crashed eleven times, requiring a full restart.

**Shane**: But eventually, and surprisingly, we did make it through.

**Adam**: And that's when we discovered something amazing: North Korean future technology from 1986. Wireless keyboards and a CRT monitor with no PC tower in sight. All this, plugged into nothing. How do they do it?

**Shane**: Other future technology includes forcefields, or broken aiming mechanics. Who knows? I can't aim downward!

**Adam**: Now around this part of the game, Demo Dickie finds one of the new missiles being built that he was sent here to uncover. Marcinko knows exactly how to deal with them, though.

**Shane**: Yeah, that's right. He's gonna blow them the heck up.

**Adam**: And how does a master of demolition attempt to detonate a bomb planted on a dangerous explosive missile?

**Shane**: By setting the bomb up, running just slightly beside the missile hangar, and letting the thing go off.

**Adam**: Lesser-trained demolition afficionados hate him.

**Shane**: After a massive explosion with the building crumbling just mere feet in front of Demo Dick, the camera awkwardly jump-cuts instantly to Marcinko inside a vehicle, driving away to somewhere.

**Adam**: The very next thing we see is a soldier who should be primed and alerted due to a missile factory that had just been totally leveled. However, instead, he's fixated on two cans. Little can of pear, little can of tomato- they must be important, but we're not sure why. Anyway, he doesn't seem to notice or hear us walking around at all, so-

*(Marcinko headshots the soldier)*

**Shane**: As we continue to play, we notice that instant-kill animations sometimes break the in-game world by switching out the position of the victim. Notice how the mechanic here is fixing a tire? As soon as you insta-kill the guy, he quickly jolts upright to a standing pose a little feet from the truck, and now he's holding a gun. Where did the gun even come from? This happens throughout the game.

**Adam**: Yeah, it's clear that little time was spent on animations here.

*(Soldier fails at hitting buttons)*

**Shane**: The game falls in and out of wanting to be a stealth experience. For example, we need to take this guy out stealthily as to not alert anyone to our presence. What is our super-silent takedown, though? Chuck him off a bridge, so he can scream like a banshee as he falls to his death! No alarm was raised! We're good.

**Adam**: In fact, the only alarming thing in this game is how Demo Dick talks to his superiors. We mentioned the protagonist has quite the dirty mouth earlier on, but some of the things he says to his superiors- they're just unbelievable.

**Payton**: Report, Marcinko. What are you seeing out there?

**Marcinko**: It's a goatf\*\*k, admiral. Your intel was bullsh\*t.

**Shane**: And sometimes, when he has no one to talk to over the radio, he just yells things at the top of his lungs while he's out on a super-quiet, sneaky mission. Here's a choice gem written for and delivereby by Academy Award nominee Mickey Rourke:

**Marcinko**: Suck my balls, my hairy f\*\*king big balls, wrap 'em around your f\*\*king mouth.

**Adam**: You may assume that this is all part of an inner monologue. It's not.

**Marcinko**: Knock knock.

**Shane**: He's just shouting this to all the soldiers around him.

**Adam**: The North Korean soldiers, who probably only speak, you know, Korean.

**Shane**: We soon found ourselves desensitized to the weird and awful things being spewed out of Marcinko's mouth, and our focus pulled completely to more of the ridiculous visual glitches in this game.

**Adam**: Like our awesome instant damage ability. One bullet makes a door disappear completely from existence.

**Shane**: Where did it even go?

*(The file cabinet door falls next to a Money Ghost reading a newspaper)*

**Money Ghost**: Where the f\*\*k did that come from?

**Shane**: And on the opposite end, we have this beer bottle, which you can shoot and damage all you want, but it refuses to go away.

**Adam**: Maybe you're like us, starting to get a chuckle or two out of all this poorly-implemented madness. But then we hit a wall of frustration that had us ripping out our hair. Folks, allow us to introduce you to the Boat Docks of Death.

**Shane**: In this section, waves of enemies from all over with seemingly perfect aim are hunting us down. This difficulty spike is sudden and relentless. Running around, dodging and leaping through a hail of gunfire, sure, maybe that could've been easy if we could jump.

**Adam**: Oh, did we not mention that? Yeah. You can't jump in this game, making waist-high divisions unpassable unless you walk around them.

**Shane**: But don't worry. You can hide behind objects in a mid-cover fire.

**Adam**: Yeah, but like we established earlier, cover fire doesn't allow you to aim properly, so good luck hitting anything worthwhile.

**Shane**: You're struggling to play. You're angry. You can't see how this game could break down more. But how about this chestnut? The game crashed more times here than in any other point in the whole experience.

**Adam**: It crashed over fifteen times in this one spot alone.

**Shane**: So, you're looking at us, and you're probably asking "why not switch over to the more stable PS3 or Xbox 360 versions of *Rogue Warrior*"?

**Adam**: Well, we can't, because those versions are no longer available on either console's digital store. The Steam release is the only one to have the gall to continue to charge you for this Demo Dick slopshow.

**Shane**: After multiple mind-bendingly cruel crashes and attempts, we beat the boat docks. This leads you to yet another fantastic cutscene.

**Adam**: This in-engine cutscene shows Marcinko talking nonchalantly to his commanding officer over the radio as he runs and jumps onto a moving train. Hey! Demo Dick can't jump!

**Shane**: His commanding officer says:

**Payton**: Keep a low profile, asshole. We don't want to make any headlines.

**Adam**: "Keep a low profile"? Not only did we blow up a missile base and kill countless people along the way, but two soldiers saw us jump onto this very train.

**Shane**: So of course, you would expect a whole army of waiting guns drawn as anyone on or driving the train was surely notified of Marcinko's obvious presence.

**Adam**: Eh, no problem. We get out in a chunk of land that's supposedly the border between North Korea and Russia. Why would we be so silly as to expect highly-trained, vigilant armed forces here? How can we expect anything in this game to be done competently when they can't even make water look kind of like water? It's tinfoil covered with veins.

**Shane**: Other textures, like this gap in the wall, disappear and reappear depending on how far you are away from it.

**Adam**: But those weren't the only glitches. We stumbled upon some serious audio problems. Check out this sequence where we walk into a building. Suddenly all the sound just stops.

**Shane**: It seems like the further we get into the latter half of the game, the worse held-together *Rogue Warrior* is, and the more we see the scenes of the game that needs tubs of polish. Even basic effects, such as the snow here, seem to have stuttering issues and path problems. It always feels like the snow is moving incorrectly as you're moving around.

**Adam**: And while the stealth death sequence animations seemed okay at the beginning, they start to get really lazy really fast.

**Shane**: This insta-kill move is so badly animated that Richard pushes the enemy soldier's own gun to his head and fires, only the gun doesn't fire and it's not aimed at his head.

**Adam**: They even have this one reload animation where Demo Dick throws an empty magazine on the ground. Now, I'm no physics expert or anything, but shouldn't the empty magazine be, you know, on the ground after throwing it there? Where could it have possibly gone?

**Pink Money Ghost**: I have no idea where it came from! It just sort of appeared!

**Yellow Money Ghost**: Do you think it's dangerous?

*(The magazine falls into the yellow Money Ghost's back and kills it)*

**Pink Money Ghost**: Yes.

**Shane**: Oh look, more stealth gameplay, only now the old shooting of the power box to knock out all the lights just alarms all the soldiers, who instantly turn around and start to fire on you. I mean, come on, what am I supposed to do with this game? Nothing seems to be stable or consistent. Why bother teaching me this in the beginning if it's not gonna work later? Oh, and of course, two seconds after this, it crashed again. Again! (growls)

**Adam**: Maybe we should take a moment to revisit the plot and figure out what's happening so far. The missiles that were being built in North Korea have been shipped into Russia, so now our brave hero, Demo Dickley, finds a secret underground bunker in a building where he discovers that Russia is using these missiles as a strategic defense network. These can be used to knock down any incoming missile attacks that the US might fire against them. This effectively makes Russia missileproof.

**Shane**: He learns all this by scoping out some brand new, hi-def, full-color flatscreen monitors. Mid-'80s Russia with that spicy HDR flex. Convenient for Richard, too!

**Adam**: So, of course he gets into another argument with his superiors over the radio, and he goes against their direct orders and decides, "Hey! This place needs to blow up".

**Shane**: So does he set up one of his many packs of explosives on the console and get the heck out of the building?

**Adam**: Of course not. He uses the Russian computer network he's never touched before, because I guess he's a hacker now as well, and sets a missile to blow up the building he's in. Oh, and instead of running away, he just goes deeper into the building itself, because that's safe.

**Shane**: Look, we know what you're thinking, and yes. Sending a missile to detonate the area directly where you're standing is a very bad idea. But instead of talking about that, let's watch and criticize how these missiles blow up instead.

*(cutscene of explosions in the building)*

During the in-game cutscene of a targeted missile hitting the very building that old Demo Dickaroo is inside of, we see the missile seemingly arrive from the moon and make contact with the facility. The resulting explosion blows the windows out from the building. This means that explosion blew up everything currently inside, but here, not a few seconds later, we see the internal stairwell that was inside the facility blow up, even though they were directly behind said windows. Here, just a couple seconds later after that, the same thing occurs once more. This shot from the lower part of the building has an explosion just appear in the middle of the room from the floor. So let's do everyone a favor and edit this in the correct order so that it makes sense.

*(edited cutscene shown)*

Ah, isn't that better?

**Adam**: The next batch of gameplay revolves around stealth sections, and of course, they don't work properly. We blow up missiles, kill idiotic soldiers, deal with visual glitches, all while bearing witness to more crappy one-liners that you can shake a Demo Dick at.

**Marcinko**: I'm gonna gut you like a fish.

**Adam**: You want game crashes? We got loads of those, too. This game has very much outstayed its welcome.

**Shane**: By this point, you'd think we've seen every fault the game has to offer. But we kept finding things that really blew our mind.

**Adam**: We were in a gunfight and noticed something funny about bullet holes.

**Shane**: Now here we are playing the original *Half-Life*. Look at how many bullet holes you can make, and they will all stay there for a really, really long time.

**Adam**: And over here, we've got *Left 4 Dead 2*, a game that came out around the same time as *Rogue Warrior*. Not only do these bullet holes stay for a long time, but so do the bullet holes that appear from the bullets travelling through the wall and hitting the wall behind it.

**Shane**: And here is *Fallout 3*, a game from the same publisher as *Rogue Warrior*, Bethesda. And wouldn't you know it, the bullet holes remain.

**Adam**: Now, in *Rogue Warrior*, if you shoot a few bullets and just wait for a while, they magically and slowly fade away in real time, and it looks so cheap.

**Shane**: Bethesda published a game that got this correct in *Fallout 3*, but not in their other- oh wait. *Fallout 3* just crashed.

**Adam**: That's uh, unfortunate.

**Shane**: Enough. After playing this game in a crash loop over and over, Demo Dick apparently needs a missile guidance chip off a submarine. I don't even know why and I don't care anymore.

**Adam**: The guidance chip, which typically would be secured somewhere inside the submarine, is on the outside of the vessel, so anyone could just walk up to it and take it like Richard is doing right here.

**Shane**: Demo Dick blows up more bombs after picking up the chip because why not. And just a few hundred feet away from the heavily-armed and highly-guarded military base, a recon team just casually drives a boat up to, and I can't stress this enough, a highly-armed and highly-guarded military base with absolutely no interference from anyone. They pick up Richard Marcinko, who has been leaving a conga line of dead soldiers and exploded buildings from North Korea to Russia and has just stolen a highly-advanced chip from a military base that I can still see in the background, and nobody is gonna shoot at them. Really? REALLY? How is this man so lucky? How?

**Adam**: And it just sort of ends right there, as the boat slowly putts away.

**Shane**: Oh yeah, that makes sense. Unable docking station, and no boats or subs to go after this international terrorist who constantly defied his superior's orders. He actually drops a line about getting out of a court-martial when he hands over that submarine chip. What a man. What a hero.

**Adam**: This first-person shooter is astonishing. An amazing crash-landing of an attempt at trying desperately to take Richard Marcinko and rebrand him as a Tom Clancy surrogate. *Rogue Warrior* is one of the most crude, nonsensical, frustrating, and unstable games we've ever played.

**Shane**: This game crashed over 44 times, making it a treacherous jaunt to complete this horrid journey.

**Adam**: But, it all ends on a high note. One final, beautiful moment that captures all the horror and uncertainty of *Rogue Warrior*.

**Shane**: A credits sequence with a spoken-word rap song performed by Demo Dick himself.

**Marcinko**: *Boom! Ah. Have a seat, motherf\*\*ker. Anybody home? Hey, daddy's here. Come on. Glad to see me f\*\*kface? Send me the bill, motherf\*\*kers. I'm over here, f\*\*kface. There's gonna be f\*\*kin' bleeding all over the place. Sorry, a\*\*holes. Quiet day at the office is about to get severely f\*\*ked up.*

**Adam**: Bethesda, remove this game from Steam, because-

**Shane**: **IT'S JUST BAD.**

*(A Steam review is written, saying "I can't believe I forced myself to play the whole thing. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME.")*