Though the house that rebooted the Fallout franchise is best known for blasting mutated baddies with Fat Boys and, more recently, their blades-and-bullets-fueled WET, they—with the aid of developer Rebellion— have also been quietly working on a title closer to Tom Clancy territory than post-apocalyptic or pulp-film worlds. Loosely based on the life of real-deal Navy SEAL Richard Marcinko, Rogue Warrior was originally being developed by Zombie Studios until Bethesda turned the reins over to Rebellion, who reworked everything from the story and setting, to the tech and gameplay.

The final product offers a messy mix of cool concepts and unfulfilled potential that'll likely only appeal to Marcinko's most faithful following or shooter fans whose trigger fingers are still itching even after spending countless hours on Modern Warfare 2's front lines.

Loved
Non-fiction Fisher: Richard "Demo Dick" Marcinko is the real world's answer to Sam Fisher; from heading a SEAL Counter-Terrorist Team to forming Red Cell, a government-appointed unit tasked with testing the Navy's vulnerability to terror attacks, this guy makes Jack Bauer look about as bad-ass as a yellow neckerchief-sporting Cub Scout. Rogue Warrior does a decent job of capitalizing on its non-fiction hero, setting its story in an engaging Cold War-era campaign that sees him infiltrating North Korea and the U.S.S.R. in search of weapons of mass destruction. Additionally, Marcinko's character model, complete with grizzled facade, salt-and-pepper beard, and a pony tail evocative of Steven Seagal's memorable '80s mane, is a dead ringer for the real Demo Dick. Amping the authenticity further is voice work provided by Mickey Rourke, fueled almost entirely by F-bombs. From his repeated use of "Happy 4th of July mother-f*cker." to the unfortunate-image-conjuring "This is a total goat-f*ck.", the foul language is absolutely ridiculous. However, given Marcinko's involvement in the project, I can only assume these over-the-top obscenities accurately represent a real part of the man's personality. Additionally, complementing the salty dialog is the occasional clever gem such as "President Reagan sends his regards." uttered by Marcinko as he tosses a Russki off a bridge, effectively immersing players in the era.

Non-stealthy Stealth Kills: One of the title's few signature features is its "Kill Moves", brutal cinematic finishers yielding lots of blood and often the use of a large serrated blade. They're meant to be stealth moves, but being sneaky hardly factors into their use, as you can just charge up to a baddie, jam on the attack button, and enjoy the neck-snapping, jugular-slicing, kidney-stabbing animations. Sure, you could argue the mechanic is broken given how forgiving it is, but I'll be damned if I didn't have a good time pulling off these creative kills without ever triggering the type of too-sensitive stealth mechanics that often sully the genre.

He Shoots, He Scores: As an FPS fan and an admitted Achievement/Trophy-chasing whore, I appreciate Rogue Warrior's shooter-centric point boosters. No cryptic "secret" score-amping goals, here; just straightforward tasks such as nailing a specific amount of head-shots, using every weapon in your arsenal, taking out a cluster of bad guys with a single grenade, and completing an entire mission with only your sidearm. Not terribly creative, but satisfying in a way that'll get trigger-pulling gamers to slightly alter their usual style and even replay some missions to achieve these score-ratcheting tasks.

Hated
Empty Promise: Despite a cool concept, driven by Demo Dick, the Cold War vibe, and brutal finishing kills, Bethesda and Rebellion have sunk this promising property's potential in shoddy design. From its dumb-ass AI and lazy level design, to its wonky cover system and all-over-the-place hit detection, the title feels unpolished in its best moments and just plain broken during its worst. Marcinko's path is peppered with as many bugs as bad guys, yielding multiple immersion-breaking moments that ultimately leave the game doling out frustration and fun in equal doses.

Wait, It's Over?!: Rogue Warrior's blink-and-you'll-miss-it campaign makes Modern Warfare 2's brief solo run seem like a 40-hour epic. This could be partially forgiven had its single-player campaign boasted the same blinding polish as Infinity Ward's aforementioned juggernaut. But with 3-4 hours of lackluster quality, this one feels more like a budget title or retail-wannabe DLC like Watchmen: The End is Nigh or The Warriors: Street Brawl, not a game boasting a $60 asking price.

Multi-player without the "Multi": Rogue Warrior's online arena is like a ghost town that's been deserted even by its resident specters; after several attempts, I wasn't able to find a single opponent to unleash my guns and grenades on. Of course, given the dearth of modes, unpolished mechanics, and stiff competition from the season's superior online offerings, it's little surprise Demo Dick will be spending the holidays alone.

With Sam Fisher and Solid Snake taking the season off, I was hoping Marcinko could fill the stealth-killer void. While his history and forehead-attracting hunting knife pack more than enough potential to support a solid new franchise, his debut vehicle falls way short.

A decent yarn, some cool kills, and a genuinely interesting protagonist are no match for a product that feels unfinished and unpolished. If you're a fan of the man behind the game, or simply can't resist the call of gun-clutching hands and a cross hair centered on your HD display, you'll see the potential in this property and even have some fun stylishly dropping bad guys and F-bombs, while padding your Gamerscore. But even with that limited appeal in mind, I'd recommend not treading in Marcinko's boots until Rogue Warrior begins lining the bottom of bargain bins... which it may be doing already.

Rogue Warrior was developed by Rebellion and published by Bethesda Softworks for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC on December 1. Retails for $$59.99 USD on consoles, $49.99 USD on PC. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played single-player mode to completion on Xbox 360, attempted to test online multiplayer modes, but found no other warriors.

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[via Giant Bomb]

The two words are a name, a name that was not immediately familiar to me. "Dick Marcinko."

When I saw them, I should have remembered our Brian Crecente's preview of Rogue Warrior from April. In it, he confirmed what the appearance of those two words implied to me: That you place a name like that on an ad, right above the logo, if you want whoever sees the ad to think the name there belongs to a real person.

From Crecente's preview:

Marcinko enlisted in the Navy in 1958, transferred to SEAL Team Two in 1966 where he served two tours in Vietnam. In the late 70s he became the first commanding officer of SEAL Team Six, the US Navy's premier counter-terrorist unit. In the 80s he formed Red Cell, which was tasked with testing the security of naval bases, nuclear subs, ships, civilian airports and embassies.

In 1992 he wrote his autobiography, Rogue Warrior, which went on to become a New York Times best seller.

...

[Bethesda's Pete] Hines says that the game is meant to be about what Marcinko is doing and who he is and points out that the books Marcinko writes are about 20 percent truth and 80 percent BS, which is, Hines says, Marcinko's personality.

The game is sort of based on all that. A search of the Internet produced plenty more on the real Marcinko, who you could start reading about on the man's official site.

I don't know how much Rogue Warrior is based on the real Marcinko, nor how much of Marcinko's writings, which began as non-fiction and have spawned a line of novels, are based on real events. But what arrested my eyes was the portrayal of a game, via an ad, as if it was based on someone real. It lends a different sense of reality or seeming-reality to games, a medium I've almost only ever seen advertised as a form of pure fiction.

Brink will be a highlight at Bethesda's PAX booth this year, with live demonstrations of Splash Damage's first-person action adventure title being held on an hourly basis all three days of the show. Gamers will also be able to score Brink t-shirts, along with posters of upcoming releases WET and Rogue Warrior. Both of those titles will be playable on the show floor, along with Bethesda's upcoming Xbox Live Arcade offerings, Doom II and Quake Arena Arcade.

Stephen Totilo and I will be making our trek to Seattle in the middle of next week, so if you are attending the show, keep an eye out! I'll be the large sweaty guy, and he'll be Stephen Totilo.

PAX 09 Details [Bethesda Blog]

For actors, Rourke sees film and gaming as still totally separate.

"I don't really think people yet are comparing the two, insofar as somebody's performance in a video game as opposed to a feature film," explained the actor, who is appearing in upcoming first-person-shooter Rogue Warrior.

"The fact is," he added, "when I go out and see another actor we're not going to talk about video games." That's okay you don't talk about gaming, Mickey. But, maybe you should talk about fashion?

Movie stars bring sparkle to gaming [BBC] [Pic]

The event gave those present a look at WET, Rogue Warrior, the latest Fallout 3 downloadable content, and a chance to talk to the publisher and their developer about some of their upcoming games and projects.

While travel was paid for, our coverage was not. Here's a break down of what I wrote from the event:

New Fallout Announced
Fallout 3 Delivers Puppies! on May 5
WET: Guns, Leather, Swords and Acrobatics
Rogue Warrior Carpet F-Bombs With Rourke
Bethesda Teams With Del Rey For Elder Scroll Novels
Despite the Trash Talk, No Taunt Button in Rogue Warrior
Bethesda Says Snog Me Senseless With Mints

As with Blood in the Sand, Rogue Warrior is chock full of four-letter words and profane trash talking. But unlike 50 Cent, Richard Marcinko's character is on auto pilot when he cuts loose with colorful phrases.

I asked Aeron Guy, senior producer at Rebellion for the game, if they planned on kicking the cussing up a notch and, as with Blood on the Sand, allow it to not only spice up the conversations, but impact score.

No, not really.

"We tried to keep them triggered to what's going on in the game," he said. "It always raises a smile when he does one of his lines. He has some fantastic sayings."

It's too bad, because I think the ability to earn cash by taunting your opponents during a kill is highly under-utilized.

It's no longer a game being developed by Zombie. It's no longer using the Unreal Engine 3. It no longer hopes to deliver an on-the fly cooperative experience… or any cooperative experience for that matter. It no longer will introduce multiplayer maps constructed of tiles.

In fact, Rogue Warrior's key selling point appears to be pony-tailed former Navy SEAL Richard Marcinko's over-the-top use of nonsensical catch phrases and ability to dispatch enemies by stabbing them in the forehead.

Bethesda said during a presentation of the game last week, that they weren't happy with the original direction of the game, so they decided to step back and start over.

This time, they went with developer Rebellion, and asked them to turn it into more of a "personality shooter" leaning heavily on the personality of Richard "Demo Dick" Marcinko who both wrote the books the game is based on and is the lead character of the game.

They also landed Mickey Rourke as the voice of Marcinko. Why not have Marcinko do his own voice?

"You find in life people who are the real thing can't necessarily voice act," said Bethesda's Pete Hines. "If you asked someone to go into a jungle and kill a bunch of people you'd pick Dick. If you want a guy to portray a guy who goes into a jungle and kills a bunch of people, turns out you pick Rourke."

In the game you take Marcinko into a 1980s' North Korea to try and disrupt a ballistic missile program. You end up tracking the some anti-ballistic missiles into Russia and once there "blow the shit out of stuff."

"You play as Demo Dick, a seriously bad-ass character," said Rebellion senior producer Sean Griffiths. "He is going to use infiltration, sneak and peak and a more gung-ho style of play."

Besides the typical running and gunning of a first-person shooter. Rogue Warrior has some pretty intense kill moves. About 25 of them to be specific. The ones we say included slicing open a person's throat, repeatedly knifing a person in the kidneys, tossing an enemy off a bridge and even plunging a combat knife into a person's forehead.

"Dick as seen these kill moves and whole-heartedly agrees with them," Griffiths said.

And, of course, there's all of that Demo Dick personality, illustrated most obviously with his catch phrases:

"This place is Goddamned begging for party favors."

"Jesus fucking Christ"

"Ah damn."

"Fuck me."

"April Fool mother fucker."

For his part Marcinko isn't just OK with the phrases, he loves them. "He curses way more than that in real life," Hines said.

The original game, Hines said, didn't feel like it was enough about Marcinko and his personality. Marcinko enlisted in the Navy in 1958, transferred to SEAL Team Two in 1966 where he served two tours in Vietnam. In the late 70s he became the first commanding officer of SEAL Team Six, the US Navy's premier counter-terrorist unit. In the 80s he formed Red Cell, which was tasked with testing the security of naval bases, nuclear subms, ships, civilian airports and embassies.

In 1992 he wrote his autobiography, Rogue Warrior, which went on to become a New York Times best seller.

The real tragedy of Rogue Warrior the video game isn't just that it seems to have become a generic shooter with a notable faced slapped on it, but that it effectively condenses nearly forty years of service in Vietnam, the SEALS and anti-terrorist units down to a string of profane catch phrases and two dozen absurdly violent kill moves.

Hines says that the game is meant to be about what Marcinko is doing and who he is and points out that the books Marcinko writes are about 20 percent truth and 80 percent BS, which is, Hines says, Marcinko's personality.

Taken as a tongue-in-cheek 80s action romp, I suppose the game could find an audience in the same way 50 Cent's Blood in the Sand has. But to do so it's going to be a little less serious and a little more kitschy, from what I saw.

Now built using a proprietary game engine, Rogue Warrior is expected out this fall for the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

"We are happy to be part of the ZeniMax family," said Sean "Building upon their great reputation and extending their direct reach throughout Europe and the UK is an exciting, new phase in the expansion of the company."

ZeniMax Media Opens London Office

Bethesda Softworks Establishes European Publishing Arm

16th February 2008 (London, England) - ZeniMax Media Inc., the parent company of Bethesda Softworks®, today announced it has begun direct publishing operations in Europe with the establishment of its London-based subsidiary, ZeniMax Europe Ltd. ZeniMax Europe will be publishing titles throughout UK/EMEA territories under the Bethesda Softworks brand.

Bethesda Softworks has a successful history as a developer and publisher of award-winning titles, most recently with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion®, which won critical acclaim and countless Game of the Year awards. While continuing to work with strategic European distribution partners, ZeniMax Europe plans to deliver a range of compelling titles to the European market in the coming years, including the highly anticipated Fallout® 3 in Fall 2008.

"This is an important step for us as we look to expand our presence in markets outside of North America," said Robert Altman, CEO of ZeniMax Media Inc. "We want to establish direct relationships with retailers and distributors throughout Europe and the UK as we bring exciting titles like Fallout® 3 and Rogue Warrior™ to gamers worldwide."

The European operations of the Company will be headed by Sean Brennan, an industry veteran with over 20 years experience in the European markets. "We are happy to be part of the ZeniMax family," said Sean "Building upon their great reputation and extending their direct reach throughout Europe and the UK is an exciting, new phase in the expansion of the company."

Working alongside Brennan are Greg Baverstock, Director of Sales and Business Development, and Christina Camerota, Director of Marketing and Public Relations. With a wealth of industry experience, the team has recently settled into the Company's new European offices which are located in the heart of London's West end.