One would be tempted to start this review by paying homage to the Elton John classic Rocket man; I’ll resist that temptation. Rocketmen Axis of Evil is a new XBLA game by Capcom based on a WizKids property. It’s an isometric 3d shooter with light RPG elements and enough bad design decisions to make you wish you saved your valuable store points for something more worthwhile like a Remo Williams Theme.
The story if you care, and frankly you won’t, is that there are scheduled peace talks between the Free Planets Alliance (Venusians, Mercurian and Rebel Terrans) and the Axis of Evil which consists of the Martians and the Terrans. You’re aboard a ship that has tailed the diplomatic party from the Free Planets because you didn’t trust the bad guys and your block head boss has a thing for one of the diplomats.
The story plays out in a bunch of comic panel like cut screens with some of the worst voice acting I’ve ever heard. The Martians sound like a cross between some Russian soldiers from the movie Red Dawn and Borat. The script does the voice actors no favors as it attempts to be humorous in a B movie kind of way and fails miserably. Luckily with enough button-pressing you can skip the cut scenes all together.
You start off by creating your character which consists of picking your sex, your Race (from one of the Free Planet Aliiance races) and a class which consist of Warriors, Outcasts and Engineers which barely alters your starting stats. It really doesn’t matter which you pick as there is no discernible difference when starting the game. As you complete each level you can spend experience to improve skills and credits / materials to buy weapon or armor upgrades. While in theory this sound like a nice rpg element to the game, it is nothing short of window dressing. Maxing your characters stats or weapons doesn’t make a whole lot of difference in the end result.
Controls themselves are very simple, left thumb stick moves and the right one shoots. You can change your secondary weapons as well. If you’ve played Geometry Wars or Smash TV you know the control scheme. The biggest issue with the game is the camera controls or to be more precise the lack of any.
Rocketmen is a game where you go from point A to point B and you shoot pretty much everything in your way. You’ll also be able to pick up dropped loot and open containers by mashing the A button. The downside is if you go too far to one side of the screen you can’t go back. So if you passed up that loot container because 35 Martians appeared out of nowhere and forced you to move too far to the right, too bad.
Dying has no real consequence because when you die you lose experience points, and you keep losing more each time you die. But since you can get pretty much through the whole game whether your stats are maxed out or not there is no real penalty except frustration.
