So yeah, we dropped the ball on Rock Of Ages 3. But c’mon, what were you expecting? Cubes?
If you’ve been living under a rock (sorry) for the last nine years, let me get you up to speed. Rock Of Ages is like if someone turned the Gloucester cheese-rolling festival into a tower defence, by way of some delightfully crude Monty Python-esque cut-out gaffs. ACE Team haven’t taken a wrecking ball to the formula for this third entry. Nothing wrong with pushing more rocks down more cliffs in more whimsical worlds, is there? This time, Rock Of Ages wants you to make as often as you break (hence the subtitle), with a new level editor and more options for crafting your own ball-rolling challenges. It’s not like the devs haven’t added some new tricks of their own, mind. Test your defences in boulder avalanche, or wrack your nerves with a super fragile Humpty-Dumpty mode. One misplaced tumble and neither the king’s horses nor men will be putting your cracked lad back together again. That’s on top of another bafflingly daft story about knocking down towers across history, knocking into the likes of Moctezuma, Krampus and the Spaghetti Monster. Sure. Thing is, I’m more excited when ACE are doing something mind-bafflingly new. These are the folks wot made Zeno Clash and The Deadly Tower Of Monsters, after all. Hell, The Eternal Cylinder should be crushing its way into release later this year. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to get excited about pushing a rock down a hill when I could be guiding a disgusting sprogling away from some truly apocalyptic geometry? Sorry. They’re good rocks, really. Good, honest, reliable rocks. Rock Of Ages 3 is set to launch this Spring on Steam.