PixlBit

If I were to tell you that there’s a game for XBLA that combines the side-scrolling shooting of Contra with the 4 player co-op and loot based RPG mechanics of Borderlands, what would you say? Sounds pretty awesome, right? As someone who loves those two games, Shoot Many Robots sounds like it would be right up my alley. It sounds like a game crafted by the gods of programming, at least on paper. The actual execution of Shoot Many Robots is far from that idyllic image.

You probably wouldn’t expect a lot of depth from a game titled Shoot Many Robots, and you would be correct in that assessment. Levels scroll from left to right, and you’ll run, jump, and oh yeah, shoot robots. In fact, that’s all you’ll do. There aren’t hidden secrets to find or platforms that need precision to be reached. All you do is run forward and shoot.

That could be a lot of fun, but Shoot Many Robots is lacking a certain something. By the time you’ve played 5 or 6 levels, you’ve pretty much seen everything the game has to offer you. The titular robots that need shooting are bland and lacking in variety. Most of the time you’ll just be shooting wave after wave of the smaller grunts. Some more humanoid robots fire missiles that you can bounce back with a well-timed melee attack, but your positioning has to be perfect to do so. That’s difficult to do when the screen is full of little enemies. The game doesn’t really offer any challenge beyond throwing more robots at you. To shoot at, naturally.

 It’s just all so boring. I mentioned Contra at the start of this review, and as I was playing Shoot Many Robots all I could think of was that I wished I could fire up my NES to play a game I’ve played since I was 7. The fact that Shoot Many Robots is lacking in the excitement of a similar game from 25 years ago is telling, and I was ready for my time to be over with this game almost immediately.

Bolted onto this side-scrolling shooter are a pretty decent number of RPG elements. You’ll get experience points for doing what you do best (that would be shooting robots, if you haven’t been paying attention), and each time you level up, your base damage increases. Killing enemies quickly increases your score multiplier, which in turn causes more bolts to drop. You can spend these bolts at your RV (read: mission hub) on new weapons and outfits.

Your character can equip two weapons. The first is your main weapon, and no matter which piece you choose to pack—everything from magnum pistols to sniper rifles—this weapon has unlimited ammo. Your secondary weapon is your heavy hitter, and consumes ammo. These guns are much more exotic, ranging from rocket launchers to freeze rays to high caliber Gatling guns. The sheer numbers of weapons you can unlock and use are staggering, and I found that my loadout really mattered depending on what I would face in each level. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to change your guns without losing all progress in the level, so any XP and money you earned vanishes if you realize you picked the wrong gun for the job.

There are also a large number of hats, tops, and pants that you can equip, which give you all manner of stats and abilities. These can range from perks like increased damage or healing, or new moves like a ground slide or an aerial slam. Shoot Many Robots tries to have a sense of humor, and that is shown in the outfits more than anywhere else. You can deck your redneck avatar out with golf pants, fairy wings, and top it off with a little robot that, er, tries to have relations with your head. All of the gear is based on your level, and of course the better the gear, the more expensive the item.

And this brings up my biggest gripe with Shoot Many Robots. The game seems designed around getting the best gear, leveling up, and doing better damage to increase your star rating at the end of each level. Earning stars is the way you unlock new levels, and it feels like the key to success in Shoot Many Robots is grinding through previously completed levels for more XP and bolts; unless, of course, you want to spend some real money to get better gear. That’s right—Shoot Many Robots features micro transactions. In fact, the game comes across to me as something that was intended to be free to play on the PC, with micro transactions funding the game. I don’t know if that was the case for sure, but seeing the option to basically buy your way out of the time sink it would take to grind for bolts sure makes it seem that way.

Granted, you don’t have to spend extra money to enjoy the game, but it throws the economy out the window when 70,000 bolts are just a dollar away. Certain weapons and gear can only be purchased with real money, also adding to the sinking feeling that you aren’t getting the full experience unless you plunk down some extra cash.

Multiplayer is surely where a game like this would shine, and again, that sounds great on paper but fails in the execution. If you join a session in progress and the rest of the players are in a level, you’ll have to wait until they either complete the mission or wipe out. There’s absolutely no actual drop-in multiplayer. Also, if you end up with players that are higher level than you (which was my experience every time), you may as well give up, as the enemies are stronger and take more damage, requiring more powerful guns to compensate.

If you somehow manage to get a group together that wants to play from level 1 and keep going, there’s some fun to be had. But as a level 19 player getting matched up with other players in the 40s on the hard difficulty, there wasn’t much for me to do but die. A lot. In fact, you could say that my multiplayer experience could have been titled Killed by Many Robots.

Shoot Many Robots has the building blocks for something amazing, but it never quite comes together in the end. The shooting and platforming aren’t very precise, and each level devolves into a situation where you walk forward until you’re attacked by a swarm of enemies before moving on. Wash, rinse, repeat. With that said, the leveling system and weapon unlocks can get to be a little addicting, and if you can find some buddies to play with that are around the same level you might get a great weekend out of this title. But for me, I’m done with robots. I guess I shot too many.