When loading up a new game published by Hi-Rez Studios, a player has certain expectations. Their catalog is full of titles that skew very close to existing megahits, changing things up ever so slightly. Paladins is a hero shooter that leans heavily on games like Overwatch but mixes up character abilities in a unique way. Rainbow Six: Seige or Counter-Strike. Zooming things out to the third person and including a Battle Royale drop-in each round make it functionally unique, but the game has a ways to go to catch up to the big boys.
Like many modern shooters, Rogue Company features selectable hero characters, each with their own loadout and special abilities. Players can pick from two primary weapons and a unique set of perks pulled from a larger pool. Their special abilities, which can range from a grenade that drops barbed wire to a portable barricade, are unique, but they don't do enough to define the characters. The weapons and perks surrounding those moves all feel rather generic, leading to moments where a player can easily forget which character design goes with which set of weapons. At times, the roster can feel like Call of Duty loadouts rather than distinct personalities.
It's a strange mixture. The heroes have a cartoonish look that clashes with the realistic arsenal they have at their disposal. The original key art for the game fits more with this gameplay, but the hero designs are one of the few things that the developers at First Watch Games have nailed from the get-go. While there could be more character work in-game to really get these personalities over, the designs are varied enough to effortlessly form a cohesive world right up until one of them picks up a standard assault rifle.
As far as gameplay goes, there are two main modes. The one players will likely gravitate to is Demolition, which has the attacking team trying to plant a bomb in one of two locations. There's no respawning, and teams of four fight until one side has amassed seven wins. Strikeout is a 4v4 round-based deathmatch mode where each team gets a handful of respawns. Players can unlock more of each character's loadout in Strikeout via the in-game store before each round. However, the precision and teamwork needed to plant a bomb better suit Rogue Company's tactical ambitions.
In both modes, the time to kill is very quick, and the maps are generally tiny, leading to rounds where enemies are often on top of each other within 15 seconds. For objective modes, this simply speeds up the action, but deathmatch games all quickly devolve into one team setting up shop near the enemy spawn and taking potshots over and over. Even though Rogue Company is a third-person shooter, it feels impossible to get a grasp of any given position's immediate surroundings. There's always one angle that goes unnoticed, and every angle will be explored simply because the maps are so close-quarters.
There's also the matter of the cover "system," which feels like a throwback to the days where standing behind a giant box counted as a game mechanic. The tutorial makes it seem like hiding behind cover is a vital part of gameplay, but there are no Gears of War movement abilities to be found here. Instead, it's a lot of crouch-walking and hoping that you're hugging the nearest shipment crate close enough to avoid enemy fire. While Rogue Company also makes gestures towards more fast-paced encounters (even including melee weapons that almost never see action), the lethality of enemy fire puts a kibosh of any plan other than popping out occasionally and returning fire.
Thankfully, Rogue Company is still in some sort of beta, so there's time to readjust the gameplay into something more interesting. If the game were to either alter the game modes to work with the close-quarters combat or increase the map size, it would instantly open up so many opportunities to let players utilize the unique abilities that each hero has. Those with defensive traps and other deployable gadgets feel out of place in a game where heading into the open can often feel suicidal.
Maybe the developers can also strip out the completely unnecessary and trend-chasing airdrop at the start of each round. That nod towards battle royale hints at an overlaying confusion as to what exactly Rogue Company is aiming at. It seems split between imitating several other unique titles, becoming a jack of all games, and a master of none. It should likely pick one and stick with it or settle in as a mostly generic shooter that many will forget a week after their first rounds.
Rogue Company is out in closed beta on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch. Screen Rant was provided a digital code on PC for the purposes of this preview.
