Review: Rock of Ages
Throughout history, countless lives have been lost in the many battles and wars brought forth from man’s universal pursuit of power. From the Battle of Thermopylae to the Thirty Years’ War, these bouts has always involved two opposing sides going at it to prove whose army was stronger. Historians won’t tell you, though, that all this blood shed could have just as easily been avoided if man had a giant boulder on his side.
While war is an arduous experience, the many battles you’ll fight through in Rock of Ages are anything but somber, especially because they don’t involve fighting at all. Based on the Greek myth of Sisyphus and his punishment of rolling a rock uphill for all eternity but taken one step further, ACE Team has developed a game that blends history, mythology, and a few different genres and gives you a uniquely entertaining experience.
Spanning several time periods, this game will give you a condensed history lesson without making you remember bothersome facts or precise dates. In other words, Rock of Ages isn’t historically accurate at all, but it takes famous people from history and mythology and makes them be your adversaries in a fight for dominance. Rock of Ages gives you a world where dominance can be achieved simply by rolling a boulder over your enemy. The ill-fated Sisyphus doesn’t want to rule the world, but once he rolls over a few Spartan generals, he feels its rush and can’t stop himself.
The humor and unique art style are two of the game’s strongest assets. Each historical character you will encounter appears as a cut-out in the art style he or she is most known for. You will see Agamemnon looking like a Greek vase painting, the Angel Michael looking like a watercolor painting, and even David’s famous nude sculpture appears, equipped with cannons, of course. The music that plays through each level has been wonderfully composed to give you a sense of its time period, and you will hear the choir rejoice as you get closer to victory.
Rock of Ages plays like a tower-defense game as you will be have to destroy your enemy’s base with your boulder while setting up defenses to protect yours from his onslaught as well. It also plays like Super Monkey Ball and any other ball-rolling game since each level will have you guiding your wrecking ball through various curves and corners until you reach your enemy’s castle at the bottom of the hill. Some parts of the game even make it seem like a racing game as you will have be quick to defeat your enemy before his boulder tears you down.
Each level has both a defense phase that lets you set up slow down to prevent your opponent and an offense phase that lets you control your boulder and guide it to the enemy’s castle. Both your and your opponent’s side of the stage is identical, and your boulders start rolling at the same time. The only difference is the traps each of you have laid out for each other on your maps. This, coupled with the obstacles that stand in your way, makes each match become an insane race.
The game controls well, so making your way down the “finish line” is quite easy as long as your boulder doesn’t take too many hits. You can also give your boulder defense upgrades before releasing it. If your boulder gets hit too much or if you use it to run over obstacles and buildings, it will crumble and lose strength and speed. However, you will discover that you only need to hit your enemy’s castle three times, regardless of your boulder’s size, to win the stage. Even if you fall off the stage, the hand of God, perhaps, will appear and return your boulder to the stage. The only damage falling off a stage does to you is to your time.
While your followers are building your boulder, you get a short amount of time to create defense structures using money you get from running over buildings on your enemy’s side of the map. These structures range from towers that act as walls, catapults, and even mammoths that will bounce the enemy boulder off course. Playing through the game’s story mode, you will discover that the enemy isn’t that smart at laying down traps, so making your way to his castle will be as easy as jumping over towers and avoiding his barricades.
In fact, while the game goes into a mandatory defense phase after you attack the enemy’s castle, you can actually decide not to build anything if you want. I found myself putting down my controller and doing something else during this part of the game. My map may have lacked any traps, but I still managed to beat the computer opponent every time. Of course, if you play against another person, the way you play the game changes dramatically and becomes a lot more interesting.
The game also offers an incredibly fun Skeeboulder mode which has you racing another rock, smashing targets until you make your way to the finish line and into designated multiplier holes. Think skeeball, but with giant rolling rocks. Again emphasizing the need to be first, you need to put your rock in the hole before your opponent to receive any multiplier bonus.
Though you might finish the game’s story mode in a few hours, Rock of Ages also offers a few extra modes that really add to the game’s replayability. The game supports both online and split-screen multiplayer so you can replay all the maps from the main game with someone who actually may know how to set up traps effectively. You will discover that humans can be mean sometimes, so some of the more troublesome traps like explosives and aerial bombers can be deadly in the hands of a skilled strategist.
Score given: 8/10
Published August 2011 | Fraggs.net
Giancarlo Saldana is a freelance writer and Gaming News Editor for Blast Magazine.