Yes. It's this game again. But I'm glad it's getting a lot of word-of-mouth buzz and feel the need to contribute to that, because, well...

When I first saw Rocket Riot on XBLA I was greeted with the above image. I didn't give it a second glance. I mean, look at it - kind of a cheap looking logo, a fairly generic sounding name and a tacky Flash-style design, the whole thing just screams 'filler.' Which is an incredible shame because when I tried it following Topher's recommendation on Retroforce GO! the story in game couldn't be more different.

I'm not sure whose idea it was to let this game slip in quietly, without fanfare, among two other fairly high profile releases, Magic: The Gathering and Sam & Max when in fact it's one of the best games released on the platform so far but it seems to me that they just didn't have the deserved confidence in this game.

So, the game then. It's a bit like if you took Worms, made it real time and then made it so everyone had jetpacks all the time and could only use the bazooka. And made the arenas much bigger. With different play styles like a capture-the-flag style rugby game and the occasional boss battle. And added Bomberman style powerups. And made it a sort of retro-styled 2.5D.



Yeah. A bit like that.

More than anything it gave me the feeling of playing a re-make of an long-forgotten-but-awesome Amiga game. I thought perhaps I was alone in this until I listened to them talking about it on Giant Bomb and they said exactly the same thing. I've played about 55 out of 80 single player levels so far and dabbled in the multiplayer (which is sure to be incredible) and there are really few bad things I have to say about this game. Perhaps there are too many deathmatch-y levels compared to the equally fun other styles of play. Maybe it takes a few too many easy levels before the difficulty starts to feel right - but by halfway through the challenge is significant. Apart from those fairly minor nitpicks, though, I can't imagine what Codeglue could have done to make the game they made better.

Except perhaps change the name and make the cover art better so people wouldn't pass it by, like I did at first. Get it. Now. The game deserves to be played.