Another thing to watch for is the automatic and inexorable degradation of your droid's chassis. Just wandering around, your droid's health is dropping. Unfortunately, it may be difficult to keep track of this in the chaos, as the only indicator of health dropping away is in the small icon at the bottom of the screen; it may be difficult to shift one's eyes down there while you're trying to fight quick-moving droids approaching you from all angles. Transferring to a new robot halts the degradation process. However, a better way to manage this occurrence is by picking up the numerous power-ups that destroyed droids drop.

These power-ups include super repair, which completely repairs your droid (where normal repair drops only repair one point); +1 transfer; +1 armor; +1 battery size; recharge rate; freeze (which halts all enemies temporarily); rampage (which supercharges your weapon and speed for a short time); bouncy bullets; smart bombs, and possibly more.

The droids that move against you, all of which you can possess and take over, come in a wide variety of forms and offer a range of strengths. Some are hoverbots, allowing you to travel over pits that are normally unpassable by wheeled droids. Some offer greater armor at the expense of speed; others have different types of fire, from spread bullets to rapid-fire shots. There is so much going on all at once you'll find it difficult to derive much of a degree of strategy with your stable of droids, relying instead on the "extra lives" they might afford you upon your current droid's demise. Also, it's important to remember that the droid to which you transfer next might be anywhere in the arena, which can get confusing.

In addition to the enemy droids, there are various environmental hazards to beware, from indestructible gun emplacements to mines. There are also boxes to destroy that sometimes reveal enemies hiding within them, but these seem to be there for the sake of extra points, as they do not count toward the number of enemies you need to destroy to progress to the next level.

Once you've unlocked a certain number of levels, the next series of levels opens up. The game is savable at any time, but if you restore your game, you'll only restore to the earliest level available to the most recent series you've unlocked. This can be troublesome, as it seems to reset the number of transfer points you'd accumulated up to that point.

Finally, there is a superboss droid that's much faster and displays more firepower than its compatriots does. The superboss will follow you around the level and defeating it requires careful use of cover, as even your best-armored droid can take only a few hits before being destroyed.

In all, Droid Assault is addictive as much as it is frenetic, and you'll find yourself trying to get just a little farther, trying to unlock that next series of levels. At $9.95, it's more than worth the price. Download the demo for Mac or PC right here on Big Download!