Robots are causing quite a stir these days, huh? AI language models like ChatGPT are running around doing everybody’s homework. Androids are parkour-ing around like teenagers on adrenaline. Robots are even taking away jobs from animators for cryin’ out loud! And you wanna crawl into bed with them? Fine, you made your chromium-plated bed with fiberoptic sheets, and now you gotta LAY IN IT. And while you do, I expect you to entertain yourself with these robot-lover video games until Skynet finally goes online and kills us all. Maybe you’re trying to get in good with the robots? You’re hoping to prove that you’ve been on their side all along? “No don’t vaporize me! Just look at my PS4 library! All games about you! Then check my search history! It’s all robot porn! Closeups of toasters! Microwaves drenched in mysterious fluids! I’m like that girl from Titane!”
What you are is SICK. So take this filthy robot games list and GET OUTTA MY SITE. PUN INTENDED.
Nier Automata
Nier Automata is an action RPG game about a bunch of androids who are fighting a war against a machine menace that has taken over the Earth. Set 11,000 years in the future, the last remnants of humanity have taken refuge on the moon, and have instructed a group of battle androids called the YorHa to eliminate all machine lifeforms and prevent humanity’s extinction. Immaculately dressed battle android 2B and her twinky companion 9S set out on a ruined planet Earth to fight battle after battle in an endless war. But what are the machines fighting for? And why are they imitating people? Starting families? Finding religion? Begging not to die? What does it mean to be human? Or alive, for that matter? WHAT’S IT ALL MEAN!? Existential questions abound.
Heavy Rain
Heavy Rain was one of the original game-as-movie titles! This game is a psychological thriller about four characters and their hunt for a serial killer known as the Origami Killer. The game is similar to your favorite little robot game because of its branching narrative that changes depending on the choices that you make. Just don’t choose wrong, unless you want to see your favorite character get folded like a paper swan.
Cyberpunk 2077
I bet a robot lovin’ little freak like you LOVES William Gibson, right? You know, the guy who invented the cyberpunk genre with his seminal novel Neuromancer? Well listen, if you haven’t read it, you should play Cyberpunk 2077. They practically lifted William Gibson’s entire world out of it. Set in Night City, you play as a cybernetically enhanced human named V, who battles against both the city’s criminal underbelly and the all-powerful corporations that run the world. Lots of different choices. Lots of different endings. LOTS of different guns.
Control
This might be a little bit of a departure for you, but I figure someone with your kind of sci-fi kink could appreciate this game. Control is about a woman named Jesse Faden who enters the monolithic Federal Bureau of Control building to seek answers from her past. What does the FBC do? They control and contain extradimensional threats who want to take scissors to the fabric of our reality. Faden finds out that the building has been taken over by an alien presence called The Hiss, and is named the FBC’s new director by a supernatural entity known as The Board. So what does this give her? Telekinetic powers and a freaky shapeshifting energy gun! So cool!
Fahrenheit (a.k.a. Indigo Prophecy)
Made by the same chuckleheads responsible for your lil’ robot game, Indigo Prophecy was released in 2005. The story centers on a supernatural force that causes people to commit random acts of violence. The game begins in the bathroom of a New York City diner, where a man named Lucas Kane has just committed a murder that has no memory of doing. Now the poor bastard has to evade the police while simultaneously trying to figure out the truth behind the murder. Later on in the game, you take control of the police detectives trying to solve the murder and Lucas’s ex-girlfriend. Drama! Complete with multiple endings!
Life Is Strange
Let’s put all the high sci-fi games to bed for a second and get back to the real world, shall we? It’ll do you good. Listen to some friggin’ birdsong, why don’t ya? Life Is Strange takes place in the small fictional town of Arcadia Bay, Oregon. High school student Maxine “Max” Caulfield peeps the murder of a fellow student. Uh oh. Luckily, Max has time-travel powers! She uses her powers to travel backward in time to prevent the tragedy, but of course, this leads to a whole slew of unexpected outcomes. Max soon reconnects with her estranged best friend Chloe, and the pair embark on a quest to lift up the nice rock that is Arcadia Bay and take a gander at all the creepy crawling things happening underneath. They end up discovering a conspiracy involving the town’s wealthiest members, and their decisions will culminate in the multiple-endings fate of the place they call home.
The Mass Effect Trilogy
Mass Effect has it all! Robots galore! Action! Strategy! Science fiction! Morally ambiguous decisions! Multiple endings! Plus a harem’s worth of hot aliens that you can have sex with! A few hundred years into the future, humanity discovers a mysterious element named “element zero”. What’s so weird about element zero? Well, when you run an electrical current through it, it releases a “mass effect field” of dark energy that raises or lowers the mass of surrounding objects. Once the eggheads of the world rubbed their brain cells together, they figured out they could use this property to jump-start technology. I’m talkin’ spaceflight! Faster than light travel! Megacities! Planetary exploration! And best of all? Humanity discovers that it is not alone in the universe. It’s all great until a super-intelligent robot army from beyond the stars tries to swallow up the galaxy, and you’re just the plucky spaceship captain to stop it!
(featured image: Square Enix)
