Shoot Many Robots

First of all.

I think I've made the same observation before, but I'd really like to find the patient zero reviewer of this game that came up with the idea that Shoot Many Robots is like Metal Slug with multiplayer.  It's really an amazing hallmark of the game journalism landscape that literally every goddamned review I've read of this game is that same stupid idea, which just makes one wonder if any game reviewers actually played Metal Slug beyond just credit feeding past the first three stages of any of the games, or maybe just played the GBA version.  Or maybe it's something else that I can't think of because my brain pretty much froze at the concept that a game like this is JUST LIKE METAL SLUG.

Look, I understand you're lazy, and it might be hard to explain run and gun shooters to an audience of mongs that depend on arbitrary numbers to determine their cud-chewing opinions.  But saying Shoot Many Robots is like Metal Slug is like saying Castlevania is just like Mega Man.  Like, you're in stages, the A button makes you jump, and B button is what you use to kill your enemies.  Sometimes those enemies have different attack patterns, and there's platforms that might confuse you!

But here's the big thing:  there is already a sub-category of games that are about a million times closer to Shoot Many Robots than the Metal Slug series, and are probably played more anyway!  What I refer to are the literal fuckton of dumb shooter flash games.  You've probably played one, either on Kongregate or Armorgames or (if you're a 12-year-old babby) Newgrounds.  It's always the same shit, where you control your cool gun guy via WASD, and your mouse controls aiming, a little crosshairs roaming around while your cool gun guy's torso twists around in various disability check inducing manners in order to follow that gunsight.

Shoot Many Robots is basically that game, except ten dollars, a grinding mechanic, and marginal multiplayer.  But since I'm a complete idiot for the aforementioned dumb flash games, I sort of like it!

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The thing that gets me the most about Shoot Many Robots's gameplay is the way turning works.  Basically, where your crosshair/cursor is determines where your guy is actually facing.  If you move in the opposite direction, your dude does a weird little backwards shuffle that will quickly result in you getting overrun.  I realize that the alternative would probably remove whatever challenge the game has, but I still find myself getting swarmed every so often because I tend to follow the path of the bullets than some teeny tiny red crosshair, especially because the game loves randomly zooming and panning, hurting my old man eyes and making me realize I will never be an MLG Pro Diablo 3 player.  Even worse is that the aiming, apparently due to it being originally for console, is imperfect at following the mouse.  Instead there's about 12 pre-defined directions the gun will fire in, being determined by where the cursor is closest.  This isn't a big deal most of the time since you're facing an endless stream of horizontal terror, but when the game throws out floating turrets and shit your only hope at a quick and non-embarrassing victory is jumping into the air and...shooting at them horizontally.

The core gameplay is thus:  two types of stages, one sort of side-scrolling with killer robots, one arena style overwhelm battels with waves of enemies.  There's a combo meter that reminds me of the shitty fucking combo meter from Metal Slug 4 which determine the amount of game money you make.  Game money is what allows you to buy equipment, which is the game's big selling point.  To be fair, there is a ton of pretty clothes and guns in the game with a ton of varied effects, but it falls into the same pits that pretty much any game with adjustable, level-restricted equipment* falls into:

1) You outlevel 95% of the equipment, and thus have no reason to ever get it or play with it to any meaningful degree, and
2) Of the 5% of that equipment remaining for the max level, 4% is completely useless compared to the remaining 1%.  The game doesn't even try to hide which are the best pieces, since they're the ones that are a million times more expensive than everything else.  Good thing there's a cash shop (unggggh)!

Maps are either recycled about a million times or they're so goddamned similar that I got confused.  There's about 4 types of enemies which are reskinned occasionally to hurt you a little more and take a few more gunshots.  You will never ever really need the secondary weapons that require ammo (I still use the ice beam I got near the start of the game, and have no regrets).  There are EXACTLY two bosses, which is really stupid in a genre that arguably depends more on quality boss fights than any other genre.

And yet, I still sort of like it.

A large part of this is because, while the game is mindless mush, it's still vaguely fun in a world where you can't even really find competent run and gun games anymore, and sometimes you don't want to 1cc Metal Slug X for the three dozeneth time or try to find the hidden meaning of Rush N' Attack.  Stuff blows up good, the idea of being able to punch back bullets is fun, and my brain is dumb enough to get a release of endorphin whenever a cool new gun drops for me.  There's so much wrong with this game, but for the most part I worry about breaking the fragile egg because look do you see any other eggs you dumb cock?  I'm aware of my being an indie apologist, but whatever, consistency is for dumb teenagers.

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There's one thing I cannot logically argue myself around, though:  the fucking online multiplayer functionality.  It is 2012, how in the fuck does this game not have a lobby system of any sort?  If you want to play online with people, you are limited to playing with Steam Budz, or Quick Match.  What is Quick Match?  Most of the time, something you click that after five minutes of waiting, shunts you back to the menu screen.  If you're lucky enough to get in a game, you have an equal chance of the following:

1) Having everyone leave the game immediately
2) Going to a stage that you are way way too strong for while your teammates are severely underequipped, forcing you to hang back like a protective baby bear because the Shoot Many Robots community is fucking shit at these sorts of games
3) The opposite experience, where you end up hanging out with max level super equipped death dealers in an endgame level where it would take five minutes for you to kill anything, resulting in you getting tons of XP and superior equipment that you won't be able to equip until you reach max level.

I reached the level cap of 50 without playing a single game where I didn't feel I was either completely wasting my time or being a complete waste for my team.  Of course, this could have been solved by creating an open lobby system where you could start games on the stage you were designed to be on and other people could join up too, but I guess that would have required effort.  So now we have a game where you are either the powerleveller or the powerlevelled.