Tuesday, May 27, 2014

I got it for the articles, I swear! - Drunken Robot Pornography

This game is silly. Very, very, silly. It's also thankfully a lot cleaner than the name implies, though it certainly makes it hard to talk to people about it without getting awkward looks.

Drunken Robot Pornography is an FPS Bullet Hell game by Dejobaan games, it tells the story of one Ruben Matsumoto, who's bar was burned down by his robotic bartender, who also took his 12 robotic exotic dancers and an army of robots which are now rampaging around the floating city of Sky Boston. and that little story is likely the most reasonable part of the game.
The title screen includes a lengthy, and suprisingly catchy, musical sequence.
At it's core Drunken Robot Pornography is a very fast paced, frantic game. You're equipped with a jet pack that allows you to jump around the games many stages and you will need it not only because of the stages being suspended in the air, but also because the enemies normally come at you in huge swarms, or if not hordes, then you have titans throwing lasers and projectiles everywhere. mobility is a big part of survival.

You also have a single gun. Unlike other FPS games though, where you can find and use multiple different weapons, Instead the game uses a system of power-ups, power-ups give your shots a new effect for the next few hundred shots, such as rapid fire or shooting multiple projectiles per shot. They can also stack however, allowing you to grab multiple power-ups and use their abilities at once. Get splinter fire, heavy fire, and rapid fire? your gun will let out a rapid spray of projectiles that do extra damage. It's a fun system that keeps combat rolling at a fast pace. There's also a couple useable power-ups, like decoys to draw enemy fire or smart bombs to give yourself some much needed breathing room.
Being surrounded by swarms of enemies is not an uncommon event.
Then there's the Titans. While there's plenty of small cannon-fodder enemies to go around, the real draw in this game is the titans. While there's a few smaller ones, most of them are massive, filling up a huge chunk of the stage and have to be blown apart piece by piece. This is where the combat really shines. There's nothing quite like bouncing off a jump pad, using your jets to curve in the air around a 30-stories tall titan as you let out a spray of fire that blows off another of it's many limbs.

Unfortunately, while the game is a lot of fun it's also fairly hard. Death can come in an instant if your not careful, and many levels have somewhat strict time limits. I had to turn down the difficulty as I got near the end of the game, which you can do at any time from the main menu. Stages are also fairly short meaning you lose little progress when you fail. That said with no ability to skip stages it's possible to become stuck at various parts of the game at least for a little while.
Titans come in a large variety of shapes and sizes, all of them want you dead.
The game also suffers from being somewhat short. There's 52 stages, and I beat them in about 5 hours. There is however, leaderboards for each stage and a handful of extra modes, including survival, weekly challenges, and user made titans. The game actually has a decent user-base producing titans for you to fight, and many of them are available in the steam workshop.

Finally, I should mention the game's soundtrack, it actually covers a large range of musical styles from classical to rock and never feels to out of place even at some of it's odder moments, such as the track for the stage that involves a lounge singer. The title them really stands out, it's alarmingly catchy and you may find yourself stuck sitting at the title screen just to listen to it.
paying attention to the loading screens shows concept art, ads for other indie games, and some quirky humor.
In conclusion, I think Drunken Robot pornography is worth looking at on uniqueness alone, you'd be hard pressed to find anything like it and the game overall is pretty solid. However, it can also be pretty hard at times and while what content the game offers is good, there's not a lot of it. This game likely won't last you for very long unless you really get into making and fighting user made Titans.

Drunken robot pornography was developed by Dejobaan Games, LLC. It is available on Steam and it's homepage is available here.

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