Jacob was rudely awoken from a mildly drunken slumber by the shrill and piercing tone of his military issue mobile communicator. Blindly reaching out of bed to his jacket pocket, he flipped open the receiver and held it up to his ear.
"Private! Get your shit together!", the voice on the other end barked. It was the Sirius-Delta base Commander, and receiving a call from him at such an ungodly hour could only mean one thing; bad news.
"I need you back on base ASAP. I know you're on R&R, but HQ have an important mission for you!"
Alarm bells went off in Jacob's head; if HQ were calling *him* back then something or someone had seriously fucked up.
"Affirmative, Sir." he replied, struggling not to slur.
"You'll be fully briefed before dispatch, but the short of it is that those quacks in the military research unit were screwing around with some test EMP hardware, and someone set the bastard off. Its chaos here; half the site is in flames, the barracks have been completely destroyed and no electronic hardware is working correctly - I had to get this civilian communicator shipped in by chopper!"
Jacob was intrigued. Slowly the adrenaline levels in his blood were negating the effects of the previous evening's alcohol consumption. "Is the base under attack, Sir? Who is the opposing force?"
"Negative, the situation is now under control. As for the hostile force, we were attacked by our own defence droids! Seems that following the blast, their default emergency programming kicked in and they began registering everyone as enemy targets. Alpha and Bravo squads were butchered in their sleep. The metal bastards caught us with our pants down."
Pausing to catch his breath, the Commander continued, "The robots on base have been eliminated, but HQ is gravely concerned about the situation within the main RoboCorp Industries site nearby. We are unable to make contact with them due to all our comms equipment being reduced to garbage, and our emergency recon team has failed to return. You're the only available soldier within 100 clicks, and HQ need to ensure that any hostile robots at the site are destroyed; if any of the military droids based there break out to a civilised area the casualties will be off the scale."
Struggling into his uniform, the gravity of the situation sobered Jacob faster than a bath in ice-cold coffee. "Sir, I'll be there within the hour."
"Good. We'll issue you with an auto-pistol and a belt full of clips when you get here, then escort you to the RoboCorp site. Unfortunately, the auto-pistols are the only weapon in the armoury that were unaffected by the EMP; I wish we had something with a bigger bang to offer you, but that's all we've got."
Jacob grimaced. He didn't relish the thought of going up against an army of heavily armoured robots, armed with what was effectively the military equivalent of a pea shooter.
"An auto-pistol? Even with AP rounds, that's not going to penetrate their shields!"
"Take out the shield emitters with the pistol, then eliminate the robots. Like I said, you'll be fully briefed when you get here."
"Understood Sir."
The line went dead. Grabbing his keys, Jacob left his apartment and quickly marched down the main corridor of the residential complex. The condensation in the cold, early morning air felt sharp against his skin, a cool reminder that he was a awake and alive. Jacob hoped that he would remain that way, but following his discussion with the Commander his chances of surviving the mission didn't sound promising...
Playing The Game
Robotz DX is an unashamedly old-school, single-screen shoot-em-up with strategic game play. Although simple in concept, it is a difficult game to beat; you will die many times before you master all 30 arenas - and even when you do conquer the game, it's randomly generated level layouts will provide a new challenge on every subsequent play-through.
OK, with the hype and 80's sci-fi b-movie plot out of the way, let's talk about how you actually play the game... :)
On each level, the goal is to destroy all the robots within a time limit of 60 seconds. To destroy the (shielded) robots, the player has to blow up the red, pulsating shield emitters first. You'll know when you have successfully hit a target because it will flash white. There are bonuses to collect, and computer banks to use as temporary cover, or to simply blow up for extra points (and note that there is a small chance of the computers hiding an additional bonus within).
Sounds easy? Well, it isn't. The player takes one hit to kill (or contact with an enemy), and those 60 seconds run out fast.
Source: The Publisher Website.