Rocketmen: Axis of Evil

March 6, 2008 - Rocketmen: Axis of Evil is
one of the strangest games to hit Xbox Live Arcade in a long while.
Developed by the annoyingly-named A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. (love typing that one
out, fellas) and published by Capcom, Rocketmen is a top-down
arcade-style shooter based on a license for a kids' constructible
strategy game.

What's a constructible strategy game, you ask? Don't worry your pretty
little head about it. There's no strategy in Rocketmen: Axis of Evil
and nothing is constructible. The core gameplay involves moving your
character around linear levels, shooting with the right analog stick
and moving with the left. It's a mechanic as age-old as Robotron: 2084
and it largely works well.

Behind the action is a paper-thin sci-fi story involving Martians,
Venusians and superweapons, all told through odd comic book-like
cutscenes that include dialog bubbles, captions and static but colorful
characters.
Unlike most shoot-em-ups, Rocketmen begins with a character creation
screen, and I was able to make mine appear nude completely by accident.
I picked a preposterously busty female warrior, and her outfit
defaulted to a flesh-toned bodysuit that made more than one IGN editor
blush. Sure, she was completely covered by her skin-colored war
leotard, but at a glance, she looked like she was preparing to do
battle in her birthday suit.

The first thing I noticed about Rocketmen after I created my boldly
nude space warrioress was that the cutscenes are extremely primitive
for a presentation on an HD console. They look like Flash animations --
the characters' lips don't move, they gesture woodenly and the text in
dialog bubbles is sometimes out of whack. To add insult to injury, the
writing in Rocketmen is painfully corny in parts, and most attempts at
kooky humor fall flat.

But once I made my way out of the painfully long intro and into the
game itself, I was encouraged. The environments look sharp, and the
developers did a good job of adding a look of depth to the levels.
Fighting the Martians and other foes that came my way was fairly
rewarding, especially once I started picking up lasers, shotguns,
razors (guns that shoot sawblades) and other weapons along the way.







Armor just slows us down.

Weapon pickups are plentiful in Rocketmen, and each gun you grab up
will deplete over time (with unlimited ammo). After getting a shotgun,
for example, you'll have about 30 seconds to use it as much as you can
before it disappears. There are also secondary weapons such as rockets,
grenades, proximity mines and turrets throughout each level. Each time
you pick them up, they'll be placed in your inventory for use at your
discretion.

Rocketmen gets some core shmup stuff right, but it also gets some of it
horribly wrong. For starters, there's the camera, which is even more
aggressive than the Scorch Dragons you'll encounter about halfway
through the game. Rather than centering on your character wherever she
goes, the camera fixes itself in predetermined ways, often resulting in
cut-off pathways and maddening missed opportunities.

One of the things A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. did right was to include secondary
objectives in Rocketmen aside from the standard grinding through
levels. By hitting the action button at certain key points in each
level (think Lego Star Wars) you can uncover secondary weapons; gather
the elements titanium, newtonium and carbon for later use in the shop;
or even free political prisoners aboard an enemy ship (long story).

Unfortunately the camera system is so unpredictable and unforgiving
that I ended up missing several of these secondary objectives in every
level I played. That's because there's no backtracking in Rocketmen,
not even an inch. Even if you can see an objective, weapon or power-up
winking behind you, it's usually irretrievable. This wouldn't be so bad
if the camera tracked in a predictable way, but it doesn't. It moves
vertiginously around corners, shifts oddly and makes it impossible to
plan ahead.

These issues are especially frustrating because, at the end of each
level you're awarded medals (gold silver and bronze) depending on,
among other things, how many secondary objectives you completed. So
basically I'm given a task, forced to fight the camera to complete it,
then told how poorly a job I did of it at the end of each level. It's
almost more than my fragile ego can take.

Rocketmen features four-player co-op, and it's actually a nice feature.
Playing through the levels with friends makes the camera problems a bit
more bearable, as you can each spread out to cover all the angles. You
can set up your own match or jump into anyone's game via the Quick
Match option.

Connectivity seems solid, as I didn't notice any lag or slowdown in the
levels I played online. Overall, Rocketmen runs smoothly, humming along
nicely at a respectable framerate, both online and off.


You might see Rocketmen described as having RPG elements. That may be
technically true, but it's really only a nominal addition to the game.
After each level, you'll be able to spend your experience points
(gained from killin') to upgrade your character's stats, which include
speed, damage, demolition, engineering, evasion and life. Although I
spent liberally on all of the above, I didn't see much of a change in
my character's abilities along the way. If there were changes, they
didn't seem to matter much in my everyday Martian killing business.

As far as I could tell, the only penalty for death in Rocketmen is a
loss of experience points. So if you don't care about increasing your
character's stats all that much, dying probably won't prove an
insurmountable obstacle to finishing the game.

I was underwhelmed by the skill leveling in Rocketmen, but I was
impressed by the weapon upgrade system. Gather elements dropped from
consoles, destructible items and fallen enemies, and you can spend them
on upgrades in the shop between levels. Each weapon type has four
slots, many of which are specific to that weapon. If you're partial to
the razor gun, put some points into the bounciness of its sawblades. If
lasers are your thing, bump up their damage level for maximum lasering.


Despite its basic arcade-style gameplay, there's a lot I don't
understand about Rocketmen: Axis of Evil. Why the Axis of Evil
subtitle? Are Wiz Kidz and A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. intentionally implying the
regimes of North Korea, Iran and Iraq in an attempt to make an
allegorical statement via a shmupped kids' strategy tabletop game? If
so, it was lost on me. Why use this license at all, and one so random
at that? Were the assets, such as they are, already available and thus
an easy upload between levels? Why is there a talking security camera
that quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson? I could go on.

Rocketmen's problems are unfortunate because it had a lot of potential.
The actual gameplay is basically fun, the weapons are fine, the enemies
are interesting enough, and the developers seem to have a feel for
pacing. Just when I was tiring of the indoor levels at the beginning of
the game, they threw an outdoor level my way. But the positives get
bogged down in the frustration of the camera, the inexplicable
cutscenes and the general schizophrenic feel of the whole package.

Closing Comments
Rocketmen is
a game in search of a center. The half-hearted RPG nods, quixotic story
treatment and frustrating camera detract from a core of solid gameplay.
The basics are there, but Rocketmen's problems overshadow the basic
shoot-em-up beneath. If you're dying for a Smash TV wannabe right this
minute, give this one a try. Otherwise, wait for something that gets it
all right.
IGN Ratings for Rocketmen: Axis of Evil (X360)



RatingDescription

out of 10
5.0	Presentation Playing Rocketmen is like buying a DVD on the street in Malaysia. It looks interesting, but you're not quite sure what you're getting.
5.0	Graphics This one's tough. The actual game looks good enough, but the cutscenes are just inexplicable.
7.5	Sound The music is great, and the sound designers paid close attention to details like bullet ricochets, etc.
6.0	Gameplay Walking around and shooting is fun for a while. But a misbehaving camera and some odd design choices detract from the core shoot-em-up experience.
6.0	Lasting Appeal Co-op play may be Rocketmen's most redeeming quality. It runs well, it's easy to hop into, and you'll have fun laughing at the cutscenes with your friends.
5.7 Mediocre	OVERALL (out of 10 / not an average)