Game Review: Rocket Riot (XBLA)

[fg-54]

Developed By: Codeglue
Published By: THQ
Genre: Action
Players: 1-8
Console: Xbox 360
Price: 800
ERSB:
Cartoon Violence.
________________________

Overview: Rocket Riot is one of those titles that seemed to have pooped out of nowhere, Until the review code came up, I hadn't heard about this game at all. After playing this game, I realize that I am not the only one who is unaware of its existence.

Gameplay: Rocket Riot controls much like Geometry Wars. You move your player around with the left thumb stick, and shoot by aiming with the right one, except the longer you hold the stick in any direction, the more momentum the rocket will have. There are many different enemies to fight against such as zombies, robots, monsters, aliens, ect, but they all die in one hit so you are pretty much fighting the same enemy with a different skin, "Hey look! I am in a room full of zombies! OH LOOK! NOW I am in a room full or robots!....and they are behaving exactly like the zombies did on the last level...".
You can "Customize" your own character which is nice, but this only goes as far as choosing a character, its primary color, and its "Detail" color. Every enemy you kill is unlocked as a playable character aside from bosses, and there are PLENTY of these, you can really get picky with what character you end up with because the guys who made the characters really made a wide range of them.

Even tho there are 80 "different" levels in this game, most of the stuff is incredibly repetitive. Level one, defeat ten guys, level two, defeat fifteen guys, level three, defeat twenty guys, ect. Then there are also the levels where you have to search and destroy a character. Level four, find him, level five? find him again...... Twice. There are a couple of other game variations that you will have to do throughout the main single player story mode over and over and over again with a slight change to "justify" that it is a new level *sigh* and those tedious football mini games, why don't YOU take a guess before reading huh? Level one, score one goal....Level two, score TWO goals! WHOA! This is a brand new experience! NOT! After level thirty five I had to force myself to come back and play the game so I could review it.

Lets not forget tho, this game supports online multi player! well...no, not really, even tho the mode is available, there is absolutely NO ONE playing the game, and if I didn't have to review this game, I would have stopped long ago myself. I tried going into quick player and rank matches, custom matches, ect. But every time I searched I would, to my surprise find that there is no one else interested in having a go at it online. It is a shame too, I would have loved to complain about this game with other people who bought it and ask "So why did YOU buy the game?".
To be fair tho, I can see how the online mode would be fun, but as of now, since I haven't been able to find anyone else to play against, my guess is just as good as yours.
Everything you see can be destroyed because it is made with "Pixels" that act as individuals, this is probably one of the funnest things to do because it just feels great to destroy, they made it work and they made it fun.

This image only shows a fraction of the characters you can choose from.

There are a couple of power ups in this game that you will find by destroying the environment. These are split up into four sections: Green power ups improve your fire power by adding faster fire rate, or increasing the size of your rockets etc. Blue power ups increase your defense by giving you upgrades such as health recovery. Yellow power ups are useless but "fun"; They turn your rockets into game balls or increase the size of the explosion that your rockets create when they collide. And lastly there are red power ups, or rather, power downs; These are harmful to you and should be avoided at all costs unless you wanna be a rocket magnet or you want the ability to shoot rockets to be taken from you.
Aside from the main single player campaign and the multi player mode, there is the "Endurance Mode" where you fight wave after wave of enemies (Much like in the single player campaign); And the "Play Ground mode" where you will be able to use any power ups you want and will be presented with only one enemy at a time.

Graphics: Rocket Riot has a very unique visual style. From far away, you may think that the environment in Rocket Riot was made with sprite sheets pixel by pixel, But it is actually a 3-D game that succeeds at having a rather "old school" feel and look to it. The characters are built the same way but they look much sharper then the environment, sometimes it is even hard to tell where the pixels are at when you look at the them.
Sometimes as you are rocketing across the level, you may be confused by what is a wall and what is not, I found this to be a problem every now and then; The only way to really be sure is to ether throw a rocket at it or try to look at it from a slight angle so you can see if it has depth or not. This got me killed a couple of times as I hindered myself from throwing a rocket at an enemy while low in health, to throw a rocket at what seemed to be a solid object blocking my way for my desperate escape. The objects that confuse me the most are the ones that have some depth, but not enough to block your path.

Sound: Throughout the game I only heard a couple of songs, luckily this isn't a music game or else it would be awful....well...It would be worse. The few songs that I listened to seemed ok, there is one specific one that caught me ear because of its quirky lyrics and high pitched robotic like voice that sings in it; It reminded me a lot of the "Ben Ten" theme song for those of you who watch Cartoon Network (Don't ask me how I know this).

Replay Value: The game play is simple so I found it easy to multi-task while playing this game. And just why would you want to multi-task as you play this game? Because you are really gonna wish you were doing something else; There are 80 levels total in the game and once you go through them (even tho I don't understand why you would want to) you are gonna wish you could forget it all. After playing this game the only contemplation I have is that I did it so I could write a review on it, I did it so that I could warn you readers about this game and hope that you don't have to go through what I went through.

Hmmm... His are bigger then mine...

Conclusion: The first few levels may have been fun, but the last ones are nothing more then a frustration machine. Do you know how fun it is to kill 75 enemies without dying? my greatest moments are when I had only a couple left and some good for nothing son of a rocket would take me out! Then what you ask? the level re-starts and the count goes up to 75 again, try doing THAT 5 times in a row so you can get to the next level; Oh hey! Guess what I need to do on the next level? kill 80 enemies! Doesn't THAT sound fun?
Boss battles are too few in between and even when you DO have them, they are not fun at all; It feels like I am fighting any other enemy except it took steroids so now it has a bigger body, and it takes more then one rocket to kill.
If you are looking for a fast paced shooter then save yourself from this awful experience and please allow me to re-direct your attention to Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 and Galaga Legions. That is about twenty times the fun for the same price.

Overall Score:
.:Skip It!:.

[Darksaviour69]

shame, it looked fun

[fg-54]

Yep, it did look like fun lol. But I think the demo may be funner then the full game, so if people wanna try this out, they should get the demo which comes with all of the fun and none of the frustration :P