Overview – developed and published by Bubby Darkstar, Shooty Shooty Robot Invasion is an absurdist first person shooter, set in Amerikaw that is being invaded evil robots. As Shooty, take on the robot horde and save the world from the robot invaders, while interacting with a colorful cast of idiotic NPCs throughout the game. This title is available exclusively for the Steam service, with a link to the game at the bottom of this review.
Disclaimer: before I get into the review, I would like to thank the representative who provided Shooty Shooty Robot Invasion for this piece, via the Keymailer service. The provision of this software has not influenced the contents of this review, all thoughts and opinion contained within are my own.
Now with the introductions out of the way, let’s get into the review, starting with the story. I will be covering the core aspects of the experience, as there are some secrets and special hidden things that I do not wish to spoil. NOTE: there is profanity and sexual humor in this game, please proceed at your own discretion.
Story – in Amerikaw, evil robots have invaded, attacking Califlorida where Shooty lives, who is part of the Force of Robot Killers (F.O.R.K.) who is rudely awoken by her commander. She is then briefed on the situation that is unfolding, before getting thrown into the battle against the robot menace. Now Shooty must get the other members of F.O.R.K. together, beat up the robot menace and save Amerikaw from these idotic robot assholes.
Gameplay – Shooty Shooty Robot Invasion is a colorful first person shooter, where the player can explore six large locations, running around and blasting robots. The player controls Shooty, a member of FORK, who is tasked with stopping the robot invasion, armed with robot hurty only bullets and rage. In each of the levels, Shooty must complete a series of objectives, like helping people, completing tasks and killing lots of robots.
During stages, there will be combat encounters with the evil robots, where the player must take down all the enemies in the area. When these encounters occur, the player will often be trapped in a confined space, battling out in arena combat. Battles can consist of a single group of bots, or multiple waves, only ending when all hostiles have been defeated. Shooty will be armed with a variety of weapons, like revolvers machine guns and even a Katana.
The ammo for the weaponry is infinite, meaning the player doesn’t have to worry about accuracy, letting them just spray bullets everywhere. The player will start most of the stages with one weapon, but it is possible to find additional guns to increase their arsenal. However, there are some sections where Shooty will be unarmed, which can have Shooty exploring and talking to the weird cast of NPCs, or having to fight with her bare hands.
Alongside the combat skills that Shooty possesses, she can also dash to dodge attacks, run to quickly cross areas and jump using parkour skills. While using her movement abilities while running and in the air, Shooty will be able to use an up close and personal attack, striking the foe. Usually this will only be able to hit one enemy, knocking them back, but if they are close to multiple enemies Shooty will be able to strike several of them at once.
There is a wide variety of enemies to fight, with many of them themed to the areas that Shooty is currently in. Like cowboys, heavy rockers, angels and devils, as well as generic robots that appear frequently in the different stages. Some of the robots will take several hits to kill, others will have barriers and there will be others that are killed with one shot. The attacks will include melee, ranged and area of effect attacks that can really hurt Shooty.
At set points during the course of the game, the player will encounter powerful bosses, who can deal significant damage to Shooty. All of these battles take place in contained arenas, many of the bosses having wide reaching and deadly attacks. Some have area of effect attacks, summon additional foes and even have shields on them. Each of the bosses have multiple phases, often shown by hearts below their health bar, which is at the top of the screen.
While in battles, Shooty can take a fair amount of damage before being defeated. Shown as hearts on the side of the screen, taking damage will cause a heart to lose its color and break if damage is taken again. When all hearts are broken, Shooty will die and they will need to restart from a checkpoint. If a combat wave is completed, or a boss section is cleared, Shooty will regain all of the health she has lost, preparing her for the next battle.
During the stages, the places where Shooty needs to go, as well as the characters she needs to talk to are marked with red exclamations. But be careful, as some of the red quest markers will progress the stage to the next step. For the optional interactions, the player will see grey question marks above NPCs to talk to. The NPC dialogue is optional, providing humor and entertainment, as there are many weird and wacky characters to interact with.
Throughout the game, there will be character interactions, story dialogues and animated cutscenes, which are filled with many a bad word. These further the absurdity of the game experience, with characters that fit a wide range of archetypes. The story is pure madness, with robots to kill, evil conspiracies to uncover and a president that just wants to inspire Amerikaw. These scenes cannot be skipped, which may be off putting for some.
Hidden within each of the stages are secret areas, which will have special requirements to enter. These areas have a whole extra sub narrative to them, which further adds to the value of this experience. This experience is pretty long, offering a lot of content depth and replay value, as it may not be possible to find all of the secrets in a single play of the game. Sadly, there is only one save file for the game, meaning to start again, the save file needs to be wiped.
Now with the gameplay covered, it is time to discuss the other aspects of this release, starting with the controls.
Controls – the controls for this release are pretty well laid out and easy to use, using the traditional mouse and keyboard set up. There are few skills to use, with the movement, combat and the ability to use actions to go interact with the world. Players can also use Controller through a recent update, with mixed support for controllers, but using steam input will streamline the process. All controls are responsive, intuitive and lag free during the action.
Difficulty – there is a rather moderate difficulty curve to Shooty Shooty Robot Invasion, with the first stage working as a good tutorial. However, the further the player gets into the game, the more challenging the game will become, especially during the unarmed sections. Thankfully the tough sections have regular checkpoints, in the event of the player getting killed, leading to little progress lost. This game can be beaten with enough time and persistence.
Presentation – from a visual perspective, this title is gorgeous with hand drawn visuals, which are vibrant and add to the absurdity of the experience. The environmental design has this weird and wacky look to it, with the different themes, like western and heavy rock themed casinos, alongside the insanity of Califlorida. The character designs work extremely well, with all characters having unique traits, which give them a distinct personality.
Then we get to the animated cutscenes, which feature news reports, flashbacks and humourous character interactions, all laden with a lot of profanity. There is a lot of weird humor too, with jokes about weed, relationships and more. The game over screens are also entertaining, with fake newspaper headlines. The sound for the game is solid, with weighty and impactful sound effects, as well as a soundtrack that has feels unique, as well as voices that are just beeps.
Final Thoughts – I very much enjoy both first person shooters and absurd/surreal humor, so Shooty Shooty Robot Invasion was an easy yes when I got the chance to review it. The vibrancy of the world, the insanity of the story and the weirdness of the characters all work together so well. Then there is the action, which is fast paced, frantic and chaotic throughout. This happens most during the boss fights and wave battles, where attacks can occur from all sides.
I very much enjoyed the story of the game, it pulled me in and entertained me, with the dumb jokes, weird humor and cast of characters. The game feels just right, with gunplay that is reactive and responsive, especially in very chaotic situations. Then there is the extra content, which expands the value on offer. The only issue I think people may have is the unskippable cutscenes. This makes it easy to recommend the game to everyone that enjoys FPS games.
In the end, I give Shooty Shooty Robot Invasion a final score of 4.5/5. This absurd and chaotic first person shooter is a hell of a lot of fun, with characters that are ridiculous, surreal humor and profanity throughout. Oh and robots, lots of robots to dismantle and destroy. If you want to check this game out for yourself, a link to the game will be below. The game is currently on sale for a limited time.
Link to Steam version (HERE)
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