Rocketmen: Axis of Evil
By Will Bartos
Wednesday. May 21, 4:48 PM
Smash TV meets level grind? I’m not so sure…

Xbox Live Arcade games will always be a nice distraction for me. Whether they are small new excursions like Heavy Weapon or trips down memory lane like Streets of Rage 2 or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, I will always be glad for the hoard of gaming goodness known as XBLA. Capcom recently released a new game on XBLA called Rocketmen: Axis of Evil. Axis of Evil? Doesn’t that subtitle belong with Bionic Commando?

The story revolves around your unnamed character running around in different environments shooting things. There's supposed to be some sort of alliance forming between Earth and Venus, and the Martians have gone and screwed it all to hell. With two people talking in your ear in a comic book-like fashion, you get your gun and run off into the fray. Players can pick race and profession, which adjusts the boost at the start.

The game advertises itself as a shooter with RPG elements. This is true, as you can upgrade your character, weapons, armor, and buy secondary weapons. The shooting element takes a page out of one of Midway’s more popular games, Smash TV. Left analog stick moves, right analog stick shoots. This works really well to keep things fast paced. The RPG elements come from killing enemies for experience and collecting the crap they drop. Each of these elements can be used for buying better armor, the upgrading of weapons, or the buying of secondary weapons. Experience boosts different stats.

Unfortunately, the game becomes very unforgiving VERY quickly. The difficulty level from stage one to stage two was extremely surprising, going from enemies that died in one hit (save for three) to almost no enemies having less than one hit. The only saving grace is that you can go back and earn more experience, but going from stage one to two is such a giant leap that players may end up staying in one level for LONG periods of time just to level up the character. Since the experience earned is so limited in stage one, people may spend a ton of hours just on stage one, just to munchkin out the character enough to be able to survive stage two. I assume that it’s easier to play in multiplayer.

Rocketmen: Axis of Evil is another example of good concept, weird or poor execution. If the level progression weren’t so unbalanced, the game would be more interesting to check out the later levels, but it takes too long to get the character to the point to merely survive. If you like fusion-style games, and don’t mind the experience grind, then check out the game.

Will Bartos

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