In Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor and Helldivers 2, the vital spirit of twin-stick shooters lives on
From the deck of the Claw of Individual Merit.
There's a certain kind of game that has you running in circles. This isn't because it's poorly designed or lacking waypoints. It's because it's frantic, endlessly generous, and loves to throw horrible things in your path. It's unfair in the very best way. It's an arcade game. Specifically, it's a twin-stick.
All twin-stick shooters bow at the altar of running in circles, often the altar of running backwards in circles. Now I am a grown-up and know a little of the mysteries of baking, I often think of Robotron and its glorious ilk as being Churning Games. You're in the kitchen, spoon and bowl in hand, and you're getting the air into that egg mixture.
Going in circles isn't just the optimal way to play something like Robotron, it's also the most beautiful way to play. When you're going in circles you get to see the emergent heart beating at the centre of everything. Different enemy types, obeying slightly different rules of engagement, break into separate patterns. Grunts flock together into a bait ball. Brains seek out family members. Enforcers work their way to the corners. Hulks just hulk about, the big idiots.
This stuff is never far from my mind. When I close my eyes the phosphenes I see form the lurid shapes that scatter across a typical Robotron screen. That said, I've been thinking about all this a bit more recently, due to something a colleague said. They'd been playing Helldivers 2 - who hasn't - and they had a nagging thought that wouldn't go away. This third-person sci-fi shooter really felt like a twin-stick.
And here's the thing. It's not the only non-twin-stick I'd encountered recently that had that feeling. Caveat: lots of brilliant people are still making actual twin-sticks today, but what I'm talking about is something a little different - the vibe of twin-sticks captured in other adjacent genres. Let's dig in. Let's explore. Let's start running in circles.
Helldivers 2 is a satirical multiplayer blaster in which you play as one of a foolish bunch of Space Nazis who fire themselves out of orbit, diving down from ships like mine with callsigns like the SES Claw of Individual Merit (Halo, take note of the names you can make in this thing) and crashlanding on various hideous alien worlds where there are fights to be had with giant bugs or glinting robots.
This is all very Robotron from the off, and that's worth reflecting on very briefly. Robotron and the early twin-sticks were all a bit satirical, it feels, not just because Eugene Jarvis, the godfather of the genre, was and is video games' very own John Carpenter. I think there's just something about how cruel and gleefully unreasonable these games are that makes a designer want to have a bit of fun with the scenario. The robots massively outnumber you in Robotron, so why not have you playing as the last human family on earth? The stakes are bloody and hopeless in Smash TV, so why not have you starring in a game show and killing in the name of winning toasters? As soon as I was into Helldivers 2 and through the tutorial, my scuttling space fascist was gifted the most ridiculous cape. The gap between how they saw themselves and what they actually were suddenly revealed itself. I laughed out loud. Jarvis would love that cape.
There's more to the DNA I think. The first Helldivers was legit a form of twin-stick, a top-down arcade blaster that gave you freedom of movement and aiming to make up for the fact that it was very easy to run out of ammo. Much of that arcade thrill has seeped into the sequel, even if it's a third-person behind-the-character affair.
Why does it feel so twin-sticky exactly? I'd say there's a couple of reasons. For one thing, the landscape of each planet is the sort of procedurally-generated formlessness that is given shape purely by whatever enemy objectives are placed on the surface. It has the space and open potential of a twin-stick arena, even if it's huge and you see it from a more limited perspective.
More: enemies spawn in bunches, and can come at you from all angles, meaning that running in circles now and then is really not a bad strategy here - although granted it may not make you many friends online. Anyway: take one group down and it's not unusual to start taking damage from another part of the map entirely. Helldivers 2 has the panoramic intensity of a twin-stick.
It also has the right kind of enemies, and this is something I should really have noticed earlier. A twin-stick doesn't just give you movement on one stick and aiming on another. It gives you the kind of foes who make sense of this. That is, glass cannons. Everything in Robotron is deadly enough to kill you in one hit, but will also expire in one hit too. (Okay, not the Hulks, but they really are their own thing.) Knee-deep in Helldivers 2, there are lots of terrifying big baddies who need a whole clip or more, certainly. But the game never forgets the joys of letting you swat away one-hit tinfoil robots or hideous paper-thin bugs who can still do you an injury if you give them an opening. This is the kind of combat that keeps you moving. You're always in danger, but you're always being reminded of how deadly you are too.
That's Helldivers 2, then, but I've also been playing - just need to check the name - Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, the spin-off from the massively successful Deep Rock Galactic. Survivor's an auto-shooter, which is what I gather we're now calling Vampire Survivors-alikes. You move around an open space, firing automatically every few seconds. Kill grunts. Gain XP. Use XP to become more deadly and unlock more weapons that also auto-fire. Onwards and upwards.
A few years back, twin-sticks were everywhere. (A few years back it was wonderful.) Again, brilliant people are still making them, but these days it's auto-shooters that are truly everywhere, and they do feel like a mutation of the basic twin-stick idea. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor offers many of the same pleasures of a twin-stick. You have to find space for yourself amongst hordes of enemies. You need to keep moving, you need to keep ahead of the mass of horrors on your tail. You don't have to aim, as such, but you do need to pick a path through the upgrades that come your way. Positioning still counts. Running in circles still counts.
Deep into it and Survivor brings back many Robotron memories, in fact. It has mining and different classes and mini-missions, all of which are great, but it's linked to the glory days of the arcades because it's so incredibly unfair and so relentless and it loves it all so much. You are so utterly outnumbered, so mobbed and harassed. You can't help but cheer.
And like Helldivers 2, like Robotron and Smash TV, there's a kind of glamour to this, a screen-filling bedazzlement that emerges from the fact that there is one of you, hundreds of them, and no respite to be had. So what do you do in any of these games? Well, you could do worse than start running in circles.