David Sanders
David Sanders“Gunter glieben glauten globen.” These are four arguably well-known gibberish “words” which, when originally spoken by Robert John Lange, were used as an introduction for the seventh track from British rock band Def Leppard’s 1983 album Pyromania. The album in question is not what I’m here to review today. However, the title of the track in question, “Rock of Ages,” leads me fairly nicely to the game I intend to discuss.
Recurring readers may recall that I’ve previously reviewed the first title in the Rock of Ages franchise, and thoroughly enjoyed everything it had to offer. In an effort to spite the concept of chronological order, I shall now discuss my thoughts on the new, third entry in the series. Rock of Ages III: Make & Break expands quite a bit upon the foundations put in place by both of its predecessors. Allow me to elaborate.
The game’s main single-player attraction is its story mode, wherein you control Odysseus on a journey through time. I was quite pleased to see that the story campaign retained the franchise’s unique sense of humor intact while expanding the normal gameplay present within the series. For example, the first tutorial mission sees Odysseus and his crew escape the cave of the cyclops, Polyphemus. They do so by fashioning a “boulder” of sorts out of twine and a particularly unfortunate flock of sheep.
This is done in order to dislodge an actual stone boulder which blocks the exit to the cave. That boulder leaves Odysseus and company trapped in the company of an angry cyclops. The process of the first tutorial level will teach players the basics of controlling a boulder and rolling it down a track in order to damage the target; in most cases, your target is the enemy’s castle gates. The second tutorial mission, serves to instruct you in the art of constructing defenses to slow down, damage, and perhaps even destroy the incoming enemy boulder which seeks to break through your castle gates.
These two missions are the entirety of the instruction you get in the form of a formal tutorial. From there, you’re essentially left to your own devices as you explore the story map looking for challengers. This leads me to one of the few gripes I have with Rock of Ages III. Ordinarily, I would commend the game for having such an open map that allows me to explore at my leisure and possible peril.
However, the reason I take issue with this mechanic is that as far as I can tell, the story map is so large and non-linear that it’s entirely possible you’ll have no idea which areas are actually available to you until you’ve made significant progress. To elaborate, as you win matches (called “wars”) against noteworthy mythical and historical enemies and complete additional challenges, you earn stars. These stars are based on your performance in each war and other types of game modes within the story. In turn, these stars are used to unlock new areas of the map, which grant access to new wars and challenges.
Considering that you start the story mode with a single star after the tutorial, you have very few unlockable areas on the map at first. You might think, as I did, that the areas which only require a single star to unlock would be on a more linear path. In my experience, though, this wasn’t the case. I started out by traveling to Rome. The resulting “war” against Julius Caesar proved a bit too difficult for me because I hadn’t yet unlocked certain things by earning more stars in different areas of the map. I had to explore the story map further in order to find where I suspect I was actually supposed to begin.
Having said all that, I readily admit that it’s entirely possible I was just consistently misunderstanding what the game was trying to show me. Alternately, perhaps I was not paying enough attention to what I was meant to do and where I was intended to be at any given point in the story. To expand upon a point to which I alluded a moment ago, the stars you earn from playing the story can also be used to unlock certain things that can then be used as much as you like in many game modes throughout the campaign.
For example, once you have an additional handful of stars from winning a couple of war matches, you can unlock “the fool,” one of the aforementioned defenses intended to interfere with your enemy’s incoming boulder. You can also unlock new types of boulders as you play through the campaign. In the original Rock of Ages, you could spend in-game currency once per match to upgrade your boulder by doing such things as outfitting it with iron spikes or setting it on fire so that it would deal additional damage to your foe’s gates. These upgrades were temporary and would be lost if your boulder sustained too much damage on its way to your target.
By contrast, within Rock of Ages III, you can unlock entirely different types of boulders that do different things without the need for such temporary, conditional upgrades. As an example, you can unlock the “Block of Ages,” which is much harder to control due to its shape, but always deals the maximum amount of damage to your enemy’s gates regardless of its speed or how much damage it takes on the way there.
Another example is the standard-issue boulder, for the sake of comparison. This proper boulder deals average damage provided it hasn’t been too heavily damaged, but is easier to control and travels sufficiently quickly. I would strongly advise any beginners to the Rock of Ages franchise to stick with the standard boulder until you feel comfortable enough to experiment with other types so as to avoid frustration.
Overall, I quite enjoy Rock of Ages III, as I did the first game in the franchise. My only lament is that I haven’t been able to try the game’s multiplayer modes with any of my friends to see how I fare. Thankfully, though, the game is compatible with Steam’s Remote Play Together feature. That means I could rectify the issue of having no one to enjoy the game with me quite easily. I look forward to conquering the story mode as I spend more time with the game.
A PC review copy of Rock of Ages III: Make & Break was provided by Modus Games for this review.
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🔥159Rock of Ages III: Make & Break
$29.99 USD
Pros
- Builds Upon the Franchise's Best Aspects
- Unique Sense of Humor Remains Intact
Cons
- Story Mode Could Be Too Open-Ended
- More Tutorials Might Have Been Useful
- Gameplay Can Be Frustrating, Especially For Beginners
