Game On: Rock of Ages

Today's offering is Rock of Ages, by Ace Team, available on Steam, the PlayStation Network and XBox Live Arcade.

In a Nutshell
Sisyphus is tired to pushing his boulder up his mountain and decides to escape Hades with and and squash historical characters with it.Build defenses against your opponent's assaults and evade their attempts to defend themselves as you control the boulder's descent to their fortress.

Story
The story is quite simple, Sisyphus, the greek character cursed to push a boulder up a steep hill only for it to fall down the other side decides to escape Hades using his boulder and then starts attacking various historical figures and characters in several eras. That's the extent of the plot, but each level starts with a charming vignette in a style reminiscent of Monty Python where we are introduced to the various characters which range from Leonidas to Plague to Napoleon, including the zombified corpses of Aristotle and Plato. it's very tongue in cheek, very entertaining and very charmingly told.

Gameplay
The game is evenly separated in two phases. First, the building phase, where you place defenses ranging from static towers to barrels of TNT, flying spotters to mammoths that stop and push away the enemy boulder. Secondly, once your boulder has been carved, you can enter the rolling phase in which you roll down the hill towards the enemy castle, dodging or destroying their defenses and picking up as much speed as possible to do as much damage to the doors between your boulder and your enemy. Now, this balance of tower defense and racing genres works out very well, allowing you to succeed through a combination of strategy and reflexes. You get a nice variety of possible strategies for every map, and the map themselves are all rather interesting to hurtle through, with each map hiding 3 golden keys for you to find and collect. Additionally, certain areas end with a Boss, changing the dynamic entirely in order to challenge your reflexes and platforming prowess rather than your strategic thinking. The bosses are all rather charming and interesting, offering something new to the game.Lastly, the game does also contain a few multiplayer modes, but I did not try them at length.

Presentation
The game is rather gorgeous. Separated in eras, the game gives a distinct feel and art style to show the passage of time. Starting form antiquity with artwork reminiscent of ancient Greek vases to a more realistic art style from the Napoleonic era, it really succeeds at giving a nice variety of themes. The music is also very fitting,and helps you to immerse yourself in the era and in the action. A lot of the world looks like paper cutouts, which is reminiscent of Monty Python animated shorts and it works very well. All in all, this game has top notch presentation. in fact, the presentation may be the high point of this game, above and beyond the gameplay.

Verdict
Rock of Ages is a very original game melding two genres that seemed as far as possible from one another. It succeeds at merging racing and tower defense wonderfully and ties it all up with a great flourish of charm, wit and art history. This game manages to obtain a score of gorgeously funny and while it might not offer the deepest of experiences, it offers a thoroughly fresh one.