(Originally published in this blog entry in March 2022)
https://xatornova.blogspot.com/2022/03/robotron-2084-twin-stick-apocalypse.html

There is something strangely beautiful about the end of the world in art and the reaction that it draws from its characters, particularly the feelings that it gets from the people facing the inevitable demise, because it is then that you see them at their rawest. Robotron 2084 fits that category as an abstract portrayal of the collapse of civilization by the hands of machines, and to that purpose it sets the player as a survivor in the middle of the catastrophe, surrounded by robots chasing down the remnant humans. You can opt to save them, but the main challenge is to get past the waves of machines. The aim of the developers is that the player feels panic in an apocalyptic scenario, and to that purpose there are two sticks, one for movement and the other one to shoot in a direction, as the survivor's defense mechanism. The repercussion this has on the player is that there's a need to coordinate betwen two forms of reaction: To dodge and to shoot, and these two draw your attention away from each other and conflict with each other, and the result is that there's a dissasociation between these two understandings of your avatar that leads to a chaotic state of mind that turns the attention of the player to the game, their surroundings and their position.

Now, this is a precursor to the twin-stick shooter genre, and great games have been born from this control scheme, such as The Binding of Isaac and Assault Android Cactus, but to me, the original Robotron 2084 remains the strongest because the feeling that it awakes is not only an adrenaline rush but also a desperate, raw feeling that complements the game's aesthetic vision. It does this in a purer state, because your bullets can't be improved and go in just eight directions, which means that unlike a lot of other modern shoot 'em ups, precision is also important in this game, and ultimately, because its nature as an arcade game turns around the power fantasy aspect that may arise from this. In Robotron 2084, defeat is inevitable, because no matter how many screens you go through, eventually you will lose, and the enemies win. There is no end to this game, and the developers transform this arcade convention into something beautiful. It reminds to the endings of Crisis Core, or Halo: Reach that came out decades after, but in a whole game dedicated to that feeling, without their sentimentality. You just fight through waves of enemies until your body and mind can't go on, and you succumb. That is when the game is really over. No extra continues. That's the canonical end. As a portrayal of the end of the world, it is successful and radical unlike almost any other shooter that I have seen.

Standing here, I realize you were
Just like me trying to make history.
But who's to judge the right from wrong.
When our guard is down I think we'll both agree.
That violence breeds violence.
But in the end it has to be this way.

+Beautiful Diagetic and non-diagetic music moves the plot as well as the OST
+Lovely dungeon and puzzle design
+Thoughtful NPCs and innovative time travel guide the story

-Exploitable combat
-Slow moving text

aggressively boring visuals meets aggressively generic rtx lighting meets aggressively generic soundtrack meets aggressively simple wait-and-see gameplay meets gorgeous, charming in-game instruction manual that outshines legitimately every other soulless aspect of this adventure meets aggressively tedious backtracking meets aggressively cowardly lack of writing, dialogue, and environmental storytelling whatsoever meets aggressively cute gator enemy meets aggressively one-note enemy designs otherwise meets thirty fucking dollars.