Poor Sisyphus. For his trickery and arrogance, he was sentenced by the gods to roll a boulder up a hill, only to see it roll back down. Then he had to repeat this grueling and pointless task over and over again for all eternity. At least, that's the official version. But who could endure such a fate? Surely, the temptation to harness the power of that rolling boulder and break free of captivity would be too great to resist. In Rock of Ages, Sisyphus makes lemonade out of lemons, using his giant rock to escape the underworld and set off on a journey that sees him clashing with some of history's greatest leaders and conquerors. In this spirited game of assault and defend, it's enjoyable to smash into and roll over the opposition. But the defensive elements of the game don't pull their weight, making this boulder's journey throughout history a woefully uneven one.
Some battlefields offer a smooth, easy ride to the enemy gates.
The tale Rock of Ages tells is gleefully nonsensical, with cutscenes before each of the game's 23 single-player stages that thrust Sisyphus into conflict with another personage, either historical or mythical. These cutscenes irreverently weave historical events and pop-culture references in ways that are always lighthearted and may occasionally make you chuckle. The game's visual style, which takes obvious inspiration from the work that Terry Gilliam did as an animator for Monty Python segments, uses images taken from classical paintings and other works of art to represent Marie Antoinette, Bacchus, the Great He-Goat, and everyone else you encounter on your adventure. This look gives the entire game a whimsical vibe that's an ideal fit for the goofy gameplay in Rock of Ages.
The main mode, which you play again and again throughout the game's story, is called War. It takes place on long, narrow, frequently winding battlefields with castles on either end. In one castle resides your chosen commander (Sisyphus, if you're playing through the story), and in the other hides the enemy leader. During one phase of play, you take direct control of a boulder. Your goal is to roll the massive rock right into the enemy castle's sturdy gates, damaging and eventually destroying them. Once you destroy the gates, you can use your boulder to unceremoniously "defeat" the helpless enemy commander before he or she defeats you. Navigating the twisty path to the enemy castle can be a bit tricky, but if you fall off the edge due to your own clumsiness or to an effective strike from your opponent's defenses, the hand of God (or a god, anyway) places you back on the field. Still, the few seconds this costs you can mean the difference between victory and defeat. The boulder has an appropriate sense of weight to it; it's slow to get moving but can build up tremendous speed and momentum when it rolls downhill. It can also leap into the air, which is useful--a little too useful--for avoiding the defenses your enemy has placed in your path.
Each time you crash your boulder into the enemy's gates (or your boulder gets so damaged that it crumbles to bits on the way down), your workers get busy hewing a new one out of a giant stone cube. During this downtime, you can set up defenses to make the enemy boulder's path to your gates more treacherous, while your opponent establishes defenses on the other side of the field. The problem is that these defenses often have little or no impact on your opponent's assaults, and the defenses you encounter on your runs rarely do much to hinder you. Defensive units cost gold, which you earn by destroying domiciles, vases, and other objects on your destructive tear toward the enemy castle, and, later in the game, by building mines. The units take up a certain number of tiles on the field as well, turning the lighter tiles on which you're allowed to build defenses into darker tiles on which you're not. For instance, a siege tower only uses the single space it's placed on, allowing you to build a solid row. But war elephants, which can charge into and damage enemy boulders, take up 21 tiles, preventing you from placing them too close together.
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