It came from Uranus!

Buy: Microsoft Marketplace/PSN

Developer: A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. Games

The premise is simple: take a top-down twin stick shooter à la geometry wars. Throw in persistent RPG style upgrades, cell-shaded graphics and a tongue in cheek storyline. Season with a variety of weapons, garnish with four player co-op and serve on XBLA and PSN. Sounds like a winner, doesn’t it? Well, Rocketmen: Axis of Evil gets an awful lot right, which is as good a place as any to start the review.

You play as a Rocketman…or Rocket…woman? Rockette? Rocketteman? Anyways, you’ll start out designing your Rocketperson in a fairly basic RPG character creator, choosing from a small variety of races, classes and colours that will determine your preferred skills (being a geometry wars style shooter, the skills naturally range between making stuff explode with primary weapons, making stuff explode with secondary weapons and running faster). There’s a decent number of options to weigh up, but you won’t need to spend long creating a balanced character before wading into the action.

The levels are long, varied and well-paced, with swarms of different enemies to throw down on in a number of distinctive backgrounds. Enemies drop XP, weapon points and armour points to upgrade your character between levels—as well as a selection of weapons (the usual generic shmup menu of shotguns, rapid-fire lasers and vulcan cannons are on offer here). Unlike most games, however, the weapons have infinite ammo but have a time limit—each weapon gives you about 20 seconds of fire before you’re downgraded back to the basic P.I.S.T.O.L. (I wish I was kidding, that’s really how they spell it. Maybe it stands for Pathetic Intensity, Should Try Other Laser? Personally I Shoot Twats OnLine? If you can do better, let me know in the comments!). This actually lends a frantic atmosphere to the game, since you’ll be torn between making the most of your latest weapon and taking time collecting the copious amount of loot dropped by downed enemies.

The shooting is capable enough, and the mid-mission shopping system is surprisingly involved: each weapon can be upgraded in various ways, two new suits of armour can be purchased and your myriad stats can be boosted using your hard earned XP. This is by far the most addictive part of the game, since watching your character evolve from a slow, poorly-armoured weakling into a nigh-invulnerable mecha superman has always been a staple part of the RPG experience.

Rocketmen’s presentation is unique amongst the sprawling array of XBLA and PSN downloadable games. The graphics are cell-shaded and eyecatching, with a startlingly self-aware storyline told through comicbook-style panels. Rocketmen really doesn’t take itself seriously, and freely makes fun of old sci-fi ‘B movies’, the shoot ‘em up genre and even its own clichéd characters with wild abandon. The number of professional game reviewers that didn’t notice the (pretty obvious) humour here is absolutely staggering—maybe I’m just getting too old for this?

So after all that, what’s not to like? Err…yeah…about that…sorry folks, but I haven’t been entirely honest with y’all.

Let’s take a time out for a moment.

I’ve got a lot of pet hates. You know, those pesky little irritants that make me see red even though they shouldn’t be a big deal. For example, I can’t stand it when drivers don’t thank me for letting them through by flashing their lights. I kick off when someone pennies my pint even though they’re not drinking. My housemates are treated to a massive rant every time they use the last of my coffee without telling me. But one thing annoys me than all of these niggles put together…when a game with real potential pisses it all down the drain because of a couple of damning, easily-corrected flaws. Rocketmen manages this in spectacular style.

The greatest offender is our old fickle friend—the camera. A bad camera can kill an otherwise decent game, and Rocketmen’s camera can charitably be described as horribly broken. It can also be described as a festering, steaming pile of utter wank. Either it moves far too quickly (stopping you from picking up loot or completing subquests) or extremely slowly (forcing you to run impotently into the side of the screen as your weapon counts down to zero…and any chance of an under-par time is scuppered). This problem is increased a thousandfold in multiplayer, with enemies constantly shooting you from off-screen and slow players unable to collect any upgrades. Considering your mission ranking is based on completing subquests…and your character development is based on loot…and half the time you can’t see what you’re supposed to be shooting at…the camera is unforgivable and ruins the experience both in single and multiplayer.

Oh, and whilst we’re talking about subquests? Each and every secondary objective/weapons locker is activated by hammering the action button whilst standing on a tiny activation pad. You’ll be lucky if the dickhead camera doesn’t whisk them offscreen, but even if you manage to stand in the circle the detection is completely broken. Sometimes it’ll work, sometimes it won’t…but you’ll be completely defenceless regardless. It’s not gamebreaking, but really annoying nonetheless.

The upgrade system is also tediously slow. Your skills increase at a glacial rate—and the hours of depressing grind that you’ll need to spend levelling up will sap a whole bunch of fun out of the game. And if your mates want to join in? They’ll start at level one, need to spend a while creating a character and then get spend ages grinding away to fully get involved. This is supposed to be a casual game…and yet you can’t play it with a casual attitude.

The final nail in Rocketmen’s coffin is the online multiplayer. If you’re unlucky enough to find any players online, you’ll be subjected to a cavalcade of glitches, bugs and even crashes- I only lasted one level before bugging out in absolute disgust. This is a basic game that shouldn’t tax the PS3 or Xbox on any level; there is simply no excuse for bad netcode.

To conclude, Rocketmen: Axis of Evil has a lot going for it. It’s got solid action, a funky visual style and even an occasional laugh-out-loud moment. Unfortunately, the basic critical flaws (that should have been easily and quickly corrected during beta testing) mar the experience to the point where I can’t recommend it to anyone save the most bored of shooter fans. If you’ve blasted through every game in your collection and played most of the XBLA/PSN shooters to death then you could do worse than picking up Rocketmen…but there are far better games out there. Until it’s patched (don’t hold your breath…), Rocketmen simply isn’t worth your money.

CGI rating:

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