First time I booted this up I didn't like it much. I liked the art, but honestly, I thought the gunplay was beyond weak and I was on the fence about the writing - a smorgasbord of late-millennial-early-zoomer twitter-tumblr ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ humor which was laid on so thick it started to remind me of how and why reddit humor became a thing. So I put the game down for a few days and turned to Brazilian Drug Dealer 3: I Opened a Portal to Hell in the Favela Trying To Revive Mit Aia I Need to Close It thinking "yeah, this is an actually funny actually good FPS, lets give Shooty Shooty Robot Invasion another go just so I can have a proper frame of reference to properly dismiss it" and uh... yeah, it's actually pretty damn good, I had a great time with it once I learned to appreciate what it actually is.
As said above, the most immediately satisfying thing about it is the art - and if the art style isn't your thing, don't buy this, because it embodies the style of the writing so well - I'm 99% sure you will not like this if you don't like the art. You can get a very good idea of what the dev is about from their twitter - big women, muscular women, stinky stoner women, gothic nonbinary types - I wouldn't go so far as to say it's the Shantae of Dorohedoro, but like, I was definitely reminded of both. Don't get me wrong, everything else looks great too - the OTT cartoonish characters and robot designs are also wonderful, and the game does the 2D sprites on a low-poly 3D background way better than most - but yeah, I would say it's a bit fan service-y, but honestly, it's just obviously something the dev is passionate about.
Anyway, moving on, as I said, I was not convinced by the gameplay or writing at first at all. The first level is by far the most non-linear and the weakest. It's a decent-sized, fairly densely packed open level with a bunch of fetch-quest-esque objectives to fulfill with a bunch of minigames and some arbitrary waves of robots for you to take out here and there. Writing at this point is fairly one-dimensional, it's occasionally amusing and occasionally a bit questionable, and the combat isn't great. The first miniboss fight against Gus with the hammer is legit bad, and yeah, you need to get used to the fact some enemies are pushovers while others are genuinely very annoying, and the gunplay completely lacks any sense of impact. The platforming actually feels pretty nice if a bit chaotic, but in return, some of the fetch quests feel like looking for a needle in a haystack due to how densely packed the level is.
The funniest thing is that each level gets increasingly more linear and therefore better, and the writing went from coming across to me as wacky tumblr/twitter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ humor to like something more reminiscent of late 90s/early 00s Saturday morning cartoons - Dexter's Lab, Powerpuff Girls, Spongebob, Billy & Mandy, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and in particular, Invader Zim. Now if I say "Invader Zim with swearing" you're probably imagining the most obnoxious ♥♥♥♥ imaginable but honestly, if you imagine the best possible version of that this is still probably better written than what's in your imagination. As well as being very funny by the end - even if there's occasional jokes that maybe take a bit long to get to the punchline - it's genuinely affecting at times, if you told me when I was playing chapter 1 that there would be character arcs towards the end that I would be invested in I would have side-eyed you, but yeah, there's honestly some really good ones, y'know, for a videogame called Shooty Shooty Robot Invasion.
The gunplay... doesn't really improve, you just learn to tolerate it, but I will admit some of the bossfights from Chapter 3 onwards are pretty fun, and I liked the katana in the penultimate level. There's a bit of jank - usually in a boss fight you replenish all your health after defeating one form of the boss, but for the secret bosses in levels 3 & 5, this doesn't happen, and no reason is given. It's fine - at worst, boss difficulty is "a little annoying" with a controller, and these fights are no exception - but I have no idea if it's intentional or not. It's a small project so I'm more than forgiving, but it's something that might annoy others, but yeah, just so you know, you don't really play this for the gameplay so to speak. It's a testament to my love of the game's writing and visuals that I'm scoring it so high.
