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jp's Rock of Ages III: Make & Break (PS4)

[November 23, 2021 06:27:04 PM]

I was really excited to try this out because it looked weird and strange and interesting. And it is weird and strange and looks absolutely amazing. I love the Terry Gilliam-era Monty Python-inspired art and animation. It really makes the game feel special and different and unique.

I am curious about it being the 3rd in the series - the tagline is "make and break", where making refers to the fact that there is a level editor and you can share your levels with the community and so on. Pretty neat stuff even if it took quite a bit of getting used to the interface for the level creator. I wonder if the designers used their own tool for making the games' levels? (this is what I understand Media Molecule did with Little Big Planet and more recently Dreams). The break refers to playing the actual game which is hard to describe (in part because there are different modes).

I think the main mode is sort of a Super Monkey Ball meets Tower Defense game. In this case, when you're the ball (or rock) you need to navigate a circuit to ultimately knock down a stronghold's door. Do enough damage (destroy it) and you win. It might take multiple ball/rocks to get there (depending on what rocks you have unlocked and which one you chose). The tower defense part comes in that your opponent (usually AI) is trying to do the same thing (roll their rock towards you stronghold) and you need to lay down obstacles in the path to disrupt, slow down, etc. their progress. You can't ever really stop the enemy - if the roll off they just respawn (same as you) but slowing them down can really change things. So, if you're really good at the rolling you get more "hits" than your opponent - and you can make it easier by being more effective in slowing them down. You have a budget of gold to purchase obstacles with more gold slowly accruing over time (there are also mines to quicken that, etc.). The levels really are like Super Monkey Ball ones in that the path is usually a bit narrow, there are turns, twists, jumps, etc.

The feature that most surprised me was that once you've destroyed an obstacle (with your rock) - nothing can be built in its place! This also applies to your obstacles. So, there is a certain amount of foresight/planning that goes into playing this well.

The other modes include a time-trial and a skeeball (try to land the ball in the skeeball thingie after rolling down the level for more pts than your opponent). And, I might be forgetting a mode?

Anyways, I played them all and was starting to wrap my head around the interface (I was often confused as to which direction the enemy ball was coming from - which is important in order to orient your defenses correctly). I also started to learn about how not to deploy some obstacles and so on. I even cleared the first "world" (age?)...but I got to the Roman one...and the game hard crashed on me (blue screen) too many times for me to want to continue playing. I also had a few hard freezes.

I definitely LOVED the main campaign interface - you're ship sailing around a beautiful map with water and...nice music/sound. It's hard to describe, but I thought it looked SO neat.