I’ve recently had the pleasure of playing ACE Team’s latest venture into the Rock of Ages franchise with Rock of Ages 3: Make & Break. This was my first time jumping into the series, so I went in with an open mind. The series has a track record for having a clever and humorous tone to it. Naturally, I expected an interesting experience, and boy was I in for a ride.
Story
The story revolves around Odysseus and his crew, sailing his ship on a voyage back home. The journey takes a turn of course, as Poseidon intervenes and chaos ensues. As Elpenor (Odysseus’ sidekick), you will travel around the world to different places and time periods. Many characters both historical and fictional make their appearance on this journey, and he’ll battle against them. You’ll take on the likes of Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Krampus, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and so many more as you test each other’s boulder rolling skills.
Gameplay
The game menus from the start are very clean, precise, and informational. You won’t have any issues figuring out where to go in order to do what you want. There are two ways to play in the game. There’s “Make” and “Break”, no pun intended. There’s also a customization screen that allows you to add a little of your own touch to your boulders, team color, and banner. Firstly, I’ll talk about “break” because this is where we can experience the story mode. This mode is the real meat and potatoes of the game. Here you can select story mode or community-created levels. From story mode, you’ll be able to maneuver Odysseus’ ship on a hub world-esque screen. It’s a beautiful ocean with stars and constellations reflecting from above. On this hub area, you’ll be able to sail to each time period and pick from its handful of different activities. By completing these activities, you’ll earn stars. Earning these stars is most important, as they will help further the game along by unlocking each area and time period based on the number of stars you have. Each location’s main activity, and story mission, is called “War”.
War is the tower defense game style where you will also take control of your boulder and strike your enemy right where it hurts. At the beginning of each game, you will place different units on the playing field to block, attack, and slow the enemy down from hitting your kingdom’s gates. Your enemy will do the same, and once your boulder is ready for you to take control, you’ll navigate your enemies’ course to their castle gates and smash into them. Every time you hit the gates, the life span of your enemy will drop, and eventually, you’ll smash your way entirely through to smoosh the leader.
Other game modes include “Avalanche” which is strictly a tower defense mode in which you keep the enemies’ various waves of boulders from hitting your gates. “Unit Challenges” help unlock new units to add to your disposal and play out as an extremely shortened version of war. “Skee Boulder” has you racing an enemy down the course, hitting targets, and ending with you rolling yourself into a pocket on a skee ball board. “Obstacle Course” will let you race your enemy to the finish line. Best two out of three wins! The “Time Trial” game mode always had me hungry to beat the highest score, as there’s actually a leaderboard available to see for this one. Lastly, there’s “Humpty Dumpty” which is my personal favorite. Here you’ll play as, you guessed it, Humpty Dumpty as you hop your way to the end of the courses while trying not to crack. Be careful though, as this mode has a life counter. There are a couple of boss battles in the game that shake up the gameplay even further, but I don’t want to spoil it. The nice thing about the story mode is that it can be played completely in two-player split-screen.
Next is the community levels, you’ll be able to play levels created by people like you. You can even play them in up to four-player online sessions. An awesome aspect of the community created levels is the fact that they’re actually cross-platform. I did have a chance to play the community levels and some people do put a lot of effort into them and make it a worthwhile addition to the game. Sadly there was no way for me to test out the online multiplayer sessions as I could never find another player to get into a session with.
The “Make” category is what you’ll pick to be able to create your own courses. The course creator is pretty deep and once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to create however you want. You’ll be able to place just about everything you come across in the story mode as well as some of the modes themselves. I was skeptical of the course creator, because some games don’t make it to be very user friendly, but I can say that after spending about an hour playing around with it, that it’s fantastic. Some of the controls for it aren’t how I would’ve gone about it, but it’s impressive how they were able to simplify and tidy up the creator menu by doing so.
The way the gameplay is executed is done extremely well. Each boulder has its own stats that translate to how it handles in the game. Some are stronger, some feel more weighted, and some feel as if they’re filled with helium. Each is unique in its playstyle and how it can be used to your advantage. It was always a rush for the boulder to pick up speed while it was going downhill, then suddenly, I’d have to figure out instantly how to keep it on the winding track as it flew through corners. The physics here are top-notch.
Visuals
The art style in the game always kept me entertained. To me, it’s like if South Park did a crossover with Little Einsteins. It uses art styles from throughout history and brings them to life by giving them funny gestures, sounds, and even some voices. The main menu and the hub area are done so beautifully, that I would just stare at them in awe with how eye-catching they are. Intertwining the 3D and 2D models in the game are presented just magnificently here. The game worlds are done beautifully too. All locations had their own parts added to make each feel unique. The engine that the developers used for destruction made it feel as if I was actually crushing through the objects on the courses.
Audio
There is a lot to unpack in the sound department. There is ambient music that was created for just about every section of this game. The main menu, hub area, and each location have their own music track, and they sound fantastic. All of the music in this game is done in a classical style, but some have rock elements added to drive up the action. In some instances, how you progress in a game mode, not only will the music get heavier, but it’ll start to be played faster and faster up to the end. The music just adds a cherry on top to the Monty Python inspired world, and completes it. The levels actual sound from the smashable characters and units are all done exceptionally. The sounds are crisp and clear in all aspects. The sounds of crashing into the objects littered on the course became almost an ASMR type of experience.
Replayability
The game has strong replay value to it. You can complete the story without earning all of the stars, units, or boulders. Unlocking the rest of the playable boulders and units for tower defense alone, make it irresistible to continue playing. The fact that there’s a leaderboard for the time trials activity, and that you can play the entire story with another player, gives its story mode more than enough replayability. This isn’t even including the course creator mode, community courses, or the online multiplayer aspects of the game. The game is designed to have a lot of replayability to it, and it doesn’t let you down.
What It Could Have Done Better
Although most of my time with the game was enjoyable, there were some times when I said “Oh no” out loud. Bugs seem to plague some areas of the game. Some are game-breaking and some just made me a little upset when I had been doing so well on the course, until then. On the first mission of the game, I experienced a game freeze, which made it so that I had to turn the game application off and start it back up. This happened again very frequently when finding a game session on the community levels screen. On the main war activities, after the cutscene, there’d be a frozen still image on the screen for about five seconds, and then it would move to the screen it was supposed to go to. I know the image wasn’t supposed to be there, because it would be clipped in at a weird point on the screen.
Some of the menu buttons don’t feel responsive at times. When I wanted to quickly restart a match, I’d pause and click restart but at times I had to click it twice because it just didn’t recognize that I’d already clicked it. Once I was playing a match and some of the asset crowd characters weren’t loaded in. Sometimes if I chose to restart the match, it would spawn me off the course and I’d fall immediately. Some parts of the castle that waits at the end of every course, would show up but would allow me to go right through them as opposed to them deflecting me.
Very frequently I’d respawn from a fall, facing the opposite direction that I was supposed to be going, which got really confusing. The camera in the “Construction Mode” that you’d use for course creation and placing units during matches was a little finicky. It would at times, lower itself into the map if I were to position it at a certain angle. This made it hard to properly place certain items or move the course terrain the right way. Framerate was almost always consistent but it would tank severely on levels that used a lot of the firework types of units. Graphic quality in some aspects of different locations could have been executed better in my opinion. While they did stay on theme, sometimes I felt like there could’ve been more effort put into what they decided to do.
Verdict
Even with its technical missteps, I had an absolute blast with this game. The sound and art design help in creating a unique and humorous world. The gameplay was addictive, and an adrenaline rush at times. It’s a light and a really fun game, that I sunk so many smile filled hours into. With the ongoing pandemic plaguing the joy of the world, this game shines bright and reminds me of the enjoyable aspects that still exist in the world.
