Robots - The Sound Of Machines

27/04/26

Sometimes, I feel that my lack of research as to the games I play for this site really pays off. I mean, I get the vibe of what I’m playing - going in, I knew Robots would be a generic-looking platformer, adapting the generic-looking (but rather good!) animated film that was… long enough ago I don’t want to really think about it. But the lack of research led to Robots being one of the first big, genuine surprises I’ve encountered this year; whilst it’s bones are of a middling platformer, not only is Robots in actuality a basic Metroidvania dotted with secrets and upgrades, it’s also home to what genuinely may be the very best soundtrack on the GBA not produced by Nintendo. Seriously, I’ll say it right at the start; Robots is not the most fun game in the world, but this soundtrack is so good, I’ve weighted my entire damn opinion around it. It’s so good, I’m throwing it up here, so hit play, enjoy it whilst you read, and we’ll get back to it soon.

Whilst my memory of Robots has lessened over the intervening decade and a half since I last watched it, the game seems to adapt all the major important bits of the movie. Rodney goes to Robot City to meet Bigweld, an inventor of robot parts (not gonna go into all the philosophical questions THAT raises), before discovering he’s been ousted by a conniving, capitalistic-obsessed robot named Ratchet.

I say it covers the large strokes, because it’s really just a handful of cutscenes stitched around the main gameplay of exploring Robot City as Rodney - hell, most of the supporting cast only gets one or two cutscenes a piece before going to the shadow dimension for the rest. Plus, it doesn’t even have the hilarious double-entendres I loved from the film. No more jokes about baby robot deliveries’ or how ‘making the baby is the fun part’, referring to literally building the robot instead of the other thing. Sex. I’m making a joke about sex. Like Robots did. Ha. Ha.

Robovania

Uh, anyway. At first, Robots gives the impression of a fairly standard platformer that I’ve seen waaaay too many of at this point. It’s got that weird perspective where it’s not quiiite a flat 2D perspective, and not quiiiite the isometric look you’d see in something like the Spyro games, but a kind of layered look where you can somewhat ascertain the depth of field and the ‘layers’ of any given area. In regards to controlling Rodney himself, our tin-can hero can jump about, beat robots to death with his trusty tools, or you can take control of his trusty companion, Wonderbot, to remotely activate levers and… uh, well, that’s really it in regards to the remote controls, actually! Bit of a missed opportunity.

So, I just ran through the tutorial level, getting to grips with how this otherwise-platformer was going to play, and sans the wonderful tunes flowing into my ears, settled in for what I expected to be a pretty forgettable experience. Rodney didn’t feel great, but it was playable. An hour or two, and I’d be done, I’d write this review, and it’d be gone from my head.

But once I got through the first area and began doing the customary ‘hit all the buttons’ to learn Rodney’s moveset, I realised Robots was a bit different. Well, whilst this initial moveset was lacking for a platformer, I did open the map menu - a surprise in itself, because how many platformers have maps, I thought to myself. And then I saw how the map was laid out, in those beautiful, multicoloured squares that are pretty much only used for one kind of game.

Robots isn’t just a platformer - it’s a goddamn Metroidvania, one of my favourite genres of all. Like any metroidvania, upon defeating bosses, Rodney’s moveset will slowly expand - or rather, the abilities of Wonderbot to add to his platforming prowess. You’ll get the ability to glide, bounce high in the air, or grab zip-lines to gain access to new areas or little secrets sequestered in each zone. Rodney’s personal progression comes from his inventor character, which is to say, by completing tasks both in the main story and to the side, he’ll gain blueprints and parts he can utilize to create new weaponry to work alongside his trusty spanner.

The Devil’s in the Difficulty

These other weapons - a long ranger gun, magnet bombs, and lightning, uh, shooter-thing, have their use cases in combat and to progress, but the moment-to-moment combat you’ll find yourself in is easy enough that 90% of foes - most of which just fire stock-standard bullets at you, or try and slap you around - can be defeated with just the basic melee strikes. Still, options are always nice. The only time they really feel optimal is in the boss fights, of which there are only a couple and even then there’s a repeat in there. In regards to the game’s already monotone combat, these boss fights are probably the least interesting parts of the game - cycle-based encounters where you’re trying to dance just out of range until you can wail on them. Wash, rinse, repeat, but at least the final boss has a pretty decent variety of moves for you to learn to deal with, even if it’s waaaay too long of a fight.

Much of the little discourse this game receives - hilariously, mostly in the comments of the game’s soundtrack - lies around the game’s apparent high difficulty, and I went into the game with that preconception, since this was one recommended to me by one of my buddies who said they struggled with it as a kid. But honestly, I didn’t find Robots outright that difficult. I didn’t get killed off by any of the nigh-on endless robots hunting Rodney’s shiny metal ass, there’s no bottomless pits to tumble down and die in, and even the bosses don’t pose much of a threat. The game isn’t difficult - it’s just fighting you every step of the way.

Robots platforming is… functional. There was never a moment it felt utterly unresponsive or anything, but just as much, I never felt 100% in control of Rodney during platforming. Rather than fighting the controls, it felt like the controls were constantly poking me in the foot to distract me. Depth perception issues abound, leading to more than a handful of falls that feel avoidable. Later on in the game, you’ll be making glide jumps across rather large gaps, but the game spaces them out *just* wide enough that unless you jump at the very last moment, you’ll be sent tumbling down to where you started - or worse, as Robots equivalent to bottomless pits are just dropping you to an entirely different screen, wasting MORE time. Sometimes glides don’t come out properly at all, I had issues getting the ‘super’ version of the bounce move, and I constantly felt Rodney’s hitbox was getting stuck on that of the enemies. Like I said, it’s all functional, but I’d be lying if I said that it always felt good, or even frequently felt good.

A Welcome Mediocre Surprise

The fact that the game is a Metroidvania gives it points on its own, but sadly, it is a pretty basic one. The structure and flow of the game is pretty linear, with only minor revisits to previously explored areas, and even then, it’s just to pick up the odd health upgrade, a piece of the Obligatory Animated Movie Gallery or sometimes, if you’re lucky, a piece of a weapon upgrade. Even more frustratingly, the game doesn’t even direct you to explore that much; completing a zone will usually teleport you to the start of the next one, or at least near where you need to re-explore to progress. Thankfully, towards the end of the game, the exploration elements improve, with required items being hidden away adjacent to your next lockout point, but I just wish there was a bit more throughout.

The game’s closest thing to ‘side quests’ are little tasks you’ll pick up from random robots around town. It’s where the game best conveys its anti-capitalistic themes outside the barebones main story - robots, unable to find spare parts due to Ratchet’s cutthroat business practices, are literally breaking down and on the verge of shutting down, tasking Rodney with finding parts in exchange for rewards. Typically, though, you don’t have to go far to find them - they’ll almost always be in the same zone, usually not far out of the way, and half the time they were in the exact same ‘screen’ as the task-giver! At least the rewards are typically worth it - usually being upgrades to Rodney’s weapon arsenal. I just like being nice to robots.

There’s also a myriad of minigames spread throughout to change things up, and I think they’re a pretty good distraction. The only one of the bunch you’ll probably be playing more than once is the ball-rolling vehicle game, where Rodney rides a ball down the Collective Ball Rolling Highway, which you’ll have to play each time you want to use the Fast Travel system dotted around the map. Normally I’d be furious. I'd have to play a damn minigame every time I fast travel (lookin’ at you, Kingdom Hearts Gummi-Ship), but it’s fast enough and engaging enough to not be a bother. The other minigames - such as the Diner-Dash-esque Oil-Service or the Dominoes Slide are fun for a play or two, but they’re distractions, nothing more, and if you don’t have a reason to play them? You’re just not gonna play them.

It’s a shame - the metroidvania elements do add to the game, making it a lot more interesting than an otherwise cookie-cutter platformer, but they still feel a bit half-baked overall. A pretty decent chunk of the game that feels akin to a pretty standard platformer - just moving linearly through a single zone, fighting enemies, and just… doing slightly different things than you were before. There’s no crazy, paradigm shift like a Screw Attack from Metroid or the ability to fly from Castlevania - I know, an insane comparison to make, but bear with me. R

Regardless of how mediocre I feel they are, I’m really glad that the metroidvania twist is here. Let’s assume we throw out all the Metroidvania elements, and you remix what we have into a normal platformer? It’d go from the uneven, yet curious game that it is, to something I’ll struggle to remember a month from now. Robots isn’t amazing, but it’s memorable for a lot of reasons. At least there’s a few detours along the way to spice things up.

Sounds of the City

But let’s get to the elephant in the room. When I booted up Robots, I was greeted to an incredibly smooth and evocative - well, for the Game Boy Advance’s infamously shoddy sound chip - title theme. I didn’t recognize it, but it has been the better part of two decades since I watched Robots. Maybe Robots sounded like pure goodness all this time, and I was just too small and stupid to realise. Maybe it did, that’s not relevant. With each area I explored, the quality of that incredible soundtrack first gleaned in the title theme never once dropped. As much as I’ve gone into how middling and annoying actually playing this game was, the soundtrack genuinely chilled me out whenever I failed some jump or whatever.

Honestly, the soundtrack does a lot of the heavy lifting in differentiating the different zones of the game than the actual visuals do - the chillout theme of the City Rooftops contrasts wonderfully with the most dangerous, unsettling beats of the slums or the Chop Shop. I’ll be honest, if you’ve been reading a lot of these reviews, I’ve never weighted soundtracks too heavily into my opinions of these games, unless they’re notably good or bad, but I can’t understate just how much I dig this soundtrack. Incredible, incredible stuff - which goes to show by how I think it’s the only thing people actually remember about the game.

To wrap things up, whilst the soundtrack is astoundingly good, the game looks fine. It certainly looks like Robots, maintaining the patchwork metal world so beautifully animated in the original movie, contrasted by the the elegant curves of Ratchet’s headquarters, and the the steel hell of the Chop Shop at the game’s finale. The models are… fine, a bit on the fuzzy side, to the point that it’s kind of hard to work out exactly what some of the enemies are, but I’m nitpicking here. Robots, as with much of the game, is serviceable, but unimpressive.

I think on a gameplay level, Robots is middling at best, and forgettable at worst. It’s almost never outright unfun, and the wrinkles provided by turning this otherwise standard platformer into a Metroidvania does help make it stick out a little more in my memory. But there are so many little nibbling issues with the moment to moment gameplay, so many platforming pitfalls that make playing the game that much more annoying. It’s the soundtrack that saves it, a masterfully evocative, chill and spellbinding cool OST that doesn’t miss for a single second of it’s playtime. Seriously, it elevates the entire experience into a true toe-tapper unlike anything else on the console. But Robots as a whole… Eh, it’s okay. I think it's a unique enough experience to be worth a play, but it’s the soundtrack that’s the star of the show, nothing else comes close.

Thanks for reading my review of Robots! What a weird game with an amazing soundtrack. No review next week, I’m neck deep in Bravely Default and Pokopia. As always, if you have any questions or requests, you can email me at mgeorge7003@hotmail.com, or on BlueSky under GameBoyAbyss. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time!