Rock of Ages is a weird game. It is developed by the same people who made Zeno Clash. If you know about Zeno Clash you know that ACE Team is not opposed to making weird games. Now if I were to just explain this game to you it is likely that you will not play it. To get the understanding of Rock of Ages you must at least watch a video of it being played. This is really like nothing else I have played before.
Now after that I am going to explain the game to you. Rock of Ages is a puzzle/strategy game where you control a rock. Yes a literal rock. In the story mode you are Sisyphus, and you go through out time taking on famous people through out time. Leonidas, Charlemagne, what I think are zombie versions of Plato &Aristotle and da Vinci, to name a few. All of these characters are in the art style that was popular during their time period. Each character has their own opening sequence. Leonidas, for instance, is him walking to the front of 300 troops, get it 300, and kicking Sisyphus in to what he thought was a pit. The best one is in da Vinci's level. I am not going to spoil it, but it breaks the fourth wall WAY more than and Metal Gear Solid games does.
The game-play is split into two categories,playing as the rock and the strategy portion. I'll start with the rock portion as it is the most straight forward. As the rock you use the left analog stick to move and get momentum. The main goal is to break your opponent's gate faster than they can break yours. Now the strategy portion is the crux of the game-play In this mode you get an overhead view of the map. Here you place items to mess up your opponent. These range from catapults to TNT to War Elephants. These all cost money, which you get through destroying your opponent's buildings and damaging their gate. There are two additional modes in Rock of Ages,multiplayer and skee ball, called SkeeBoulder. I could not participate in the online multiplayer as I could not find any games, but the multiplayer is the same as the story mode but you are playing a human. And SkeeBoulder is what it sounds like.
As mentioned earlier the art style of the opponents changes based on the time period they are from. This is not like the difference of characters in “Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing”. The art style is literally straight from a history text book. All the characters are cut-outs and they flail around appropriately when you are about to crush them. Along with the progression of times comes the progression of the craziness of the levels. This is where the puzzle part of the game come in the most. The game here is pattern memorization. You must memorize where the AI will place its buildings and where it is advantageous to take short cuts. There is also the choice you have to make as to which rock you want. There are five different types of rocks,regular, spiked, and flame are the main three. Each of the latter two have a price associated to them, the flame rock being the most expensive.
Rock of Ages is a really weird game. At times you must just stop playing and take a break. I feel that there were a couple points where the game could have ended and I would have been fine with it. Through out the game you fight four bosses, and that is the worst part of the game. The fine control needed to get those done fast is not available to you. In the xbox 360 version that I played it was difficult to place the buildings exactly where I wanted, so I found myself placing buildings randomly to get around that fact. Rock of Ages is a game that should be seen played, but not necessarily played.
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