Actor Mickey Rourke has had a hell of a career. He went from serious actor and matinée idol in the 80s to down-on-his-luck boxer and plastic surgery addict in the 90s to redemption in the role of Randy "The Ram" Robinson in sleeper hit The Wrestler in the 00s. That up and down career path was all leading to Rourke's greatest role(?): His appearance as the voice of Richard “Demo Dick” Marcinko, an "irreverent, battle-tested  a real-life Navy SEAL and founder of the elite SEAL Team 6", in Bethesda Softworks upcoming first person shooter Rogue Warrior. Check out our first look at the game here.

“Mickey Rourke was our first choice to play Marcinko in Rogue Warrior,” said Todd Vaughn, Executive Producer of Rogue Warrior in a press release. “He absolutely, one-hundred percent captures Marcinko’s raw and gritty personality.”

The game is based on the real life adventures of Navy SEAL Marcinko, and concerns a clandestine operation to disrupt a suspected North Korean ballistic missile program. According to Bethesda, players will "uncover a conspiracy and must covertly enter the USSR to destroy a technology that could change the balance of geopolitical power." Okay, so the game probably stretches Marcinko a bit, but still, it sounds like a lot of fun.

With more and more "real" stars entering the video game world and lending their voices to various projects, I gotta wonder if it really matters. Surely the inclusion of stars like Jay Mohr and Carmen Electra didn't help sales or reviews of the latest Leisure Suit Larry game, and that's probably not an isolated incident. So why do game companies bother signing the checks for stars?  Do you care who does voice acting in a game?

Rogue Warrior is coming out this year for the PS3, PC and Xbox 360.

It’s been a while since Bethesda originally announced Rogue Warrior, a Rainbow Six: Vegas-esque first-person shooter with a third-person cover system (albeit one without the squad mechanics), and just as long since they gave out any details about it. But at their press event in London last week, they not only reintroduced the game to an audience of journalists — formally confirming that the game was now being made by Rebellion (The Simpsons Game, Sniper Elite, and Rogue Trooper) for the 360, PS3, and PC — but other new details about the game as well.
 
Warrior is based on the exploits of Dick Marcinko, a Vietnam vet and Navy S.E.A.L. who, among other notable accomplishments, actually snuck onto and then off of Airforce One as part of a security exercise. In fact, part of the reason why the game’s been largely M.I.A. over the last few years is that Bethesda changed both the direction and developers of the game in order to make the player character more Marcinko-esque.

 

One way in which they’ve done this is by adding “Kill Moves,” which are similar to the takedowns in The Bourne Conspiracy in that they’re quick kills you trigger when you’re standing next to an enemy who doesn’t yet realize you’re standing next to him. These not only include some rather brutal knife moves (Mr. Marcinko loves his knives), but also such environmentally friendly attacks as tossing a guy over a railing. There are also some specific finishing moves you can do when you’ve injured an enemy, though the demo didn’t show off any of them.
 
Story-wise, the game casts you as Marcinko during the 1980s, with actor Mickey Rourke doing his voice. Originally sent into Korea to look for intercontinental ballistic missiles, you end up going rogue, disobeying an order to stand down, when you realize your mission is bigger than your commanding officer realizes.

Which, of course, means shooting up the place something good. In the level that was played lived for us, for example, you’re in a shipping yard where some of the ICBMs are being loaded onto trains headed for Russia, and you have to make sure that doesn’t happen by any means necessary.
 
Rebellion also announced that the game’s story-driven single-player mode would be augmented by some competitive multiplayer ones (though no co-op), with sixteen people “Deathmatch” and “Team Deathmatch” games being played on six included maps. Multiplayer will also have a ranking system, though the biggest reward seems to be that the highest ranked player gets to play as, you guessed it, Mr. Marcinko.
 
How any of this will play out, though, was the biggest question left unanswered — well, that and the health of the person who had to tell Mr. Marcinko he wasn’t going to do his own voice in the game — since while we got to watch one of the developers play through the aforementioned level, we were not given the same opportunity. And while the game is still in development (its pre-alpha, for those who like to keep track of these things), Bethesda are hoping to release it before at the end of year, which means any other questions about the game should be answered relatively soon.

 

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