Don't feel bad if you haven't heard of Rogue Trooper -- I hadn't either. A long-running series of UK comics, Rogue Trooper chronicled the adventures of the titular soldier, a blue-skinned Genetic Infantryman (GI) engaged in an eternal war between the Southers and the Norts on the planet of Nu-Earth. The new game by Rebellion covers similar territory, throwing players into the role of Rogue as he cuts a swath of destruction across the landscape in search of a traitorous general. It's as good a story for a game as most, and the relative simplicity leaves you free to worry about more important things, like blasting lots of Norts.

Like many franchise-based games, Rogue Trooper presents its carnage from a third-person, behind-the-back perspective. What better way to remind that you're a blue-skinned tough guy? Most levels features straightforward shooting action, with mostly linear paths and scripted events. A couple sequences mix things up a bit with some turret-based blasting, but for the most part Rogue Trooper is the prototypical third-person action game.


Luckily, a couple elements of the Rogue Trooper universe add a bit of much-needed flavor to this enterprise. Your three GI squadmates, Gunnar, Bagman and Helm, bite their respective bullets early on, but that's not the end of 'em. Thanks to the magic of GI biochip technology, their personalities get to live on in Rogue's rifle, backpack, and helmet, respectively. Apparently unaffected by the indignity of being turned into camping gear, each of Rogue's dearly departed adds a few new ripples to the gameplay.

Gunnar serves as a surprisingly capable gun-of-all-trades. He can be fitted with a silencer for stealth ops or be setup as an automated turret to mow down incoming squads. Pressing R3 engages a very capable sniper mode. Helm serves as a head-based hacking device, able to crack any electronic device unfortunate enough to have a nearby surface onto which the non-ambulatory hat can be set. He can also project a hologram to draw enemy fire. Finally, Bagman manages your inventory, manufacturing ammo and even entirely new weapons on demand by using the scrap material Rogue can collect from the environment and enemy corpses. Altogether, this gives you quite a few tools with which to smash your way through the Nort defenses, and Rogue's mobility is pretty good, too.