It's not subtle!

Drunken Robot Pornography is an Asimov-ian introspection on the nature of humanity, and its remaining relevance in a future of floating skyscrapers and ubiquitous automatons. No, I'm kidding. It's a stupidly-fast-paced shooter about flying around on a jetpack and violently blasting apart robots with lasers.

This relatively-simple premise works because of ... not exactly "polish," but how cranked up the game is. Movement and flight are disorientingly fast, and so are enemies and lasers. Death can come swiftly, but most levels (that I've played so far) take a minute or less to beat anyway. There are only a few power-ups, but getting them is typically crucial, since they increase firepower so dramatically -- and they stack, such that the ultimately-upgraded weapon is some kind of firehose-laser-shotgun.

Some levels just have score goals, where points are gained by killing enemies and collecting martinis, but most levels involve taking down some arrangement of "titan" robots. The basic genius of DRP is that these large, often screen-filling, boss robots have weak points; but those weaknesses are straightforward enough to not significantly distract from fast-paced running and jetpacking. These fights tend to boil down to shooting at a particular side of the titan, then another, then another - while avoiding incoming enemy fire - before eventually shooting at its center, which just further reinforces the game's sense of constant movement.

As a stretch, one could even interpret DRP as a 3D bullet-hell schmup, with a small life bar.

Although the story is totally irrelevant to the gameplay, it succeeds in instilling a sense of humor and irreverence throughout. The artificially-intelligent power suit, whose name is "Suit," will occasionally talk about item pickups, sentience, and bad jokes. The protagonist himself frequently makes dismissive remarks about the illogical swarm of robots attacking him. And "voicemail" audio clips are occasionally unlocked between levels, which provide some insight into the radically (realistically) stupid world that surrounds the game.

There are even a lot of tertiary modes and features packed in here, like community levels?, and titan customization? But that sounds like a bunch of work. I'd rather drink and shoot at robots. Kudos to Dejobaan for going many, many extra miles, though.

To rain on my parade here, though -- I gave up after about 20 levels and an hour of playing. Cutting the game this short (the total level count is at least in the forties) wasn't exactly in my plan, but I could see that I had hit a wall of difficulty I was unlikely to surpass. The life bar is never very substantial, and as levels become more and more full of lasers and explosions and robot parts, death comes too suddenly for me to really deal with.

But DRP is one of a very few games which I feel satisfied with even without completing, even having only played it for a brief time. Maybe I'll return to it someday to give level 21 another shot. At the moment though, I'm totally content with the number of giant laser robots I've demolished.

Progress: Finished level 20 on Normal.