Get it? Boulder? If you don’t get it, I would assume you have never played Rock of Ages.
Should you play it? Read on to find out
So imagine you are the historical Atlas and you live in a Monty Python-esque universe. You accidentally drop the world. When you go to pick up said Earth, you accidentally grab a giant boulder. Then for some strange reason you decide to bring the boulder to Earth and challenge historical figures to a rolling boulder fight. That is the basic premise of Rock of Ages 2: Bigger and Boulder. You control the Boulder and you roll around and visit Ancient cities. At each city you are greeted by a low quality ripoff version of a historical figure. This historical figure wants to fight you, but with boulders.
The first level is a tutorial so even if you haven’t played the first iteration of this series from 2011, you will quickly get accustomed to the controls and goal of the game. Your goal in WAR is to roll your giant boulder through a series of obstacles on the tile set and smash it into the gates of Van Gogh’s screaming man’s castle (Yes. That is one of the villains.) The opponent places a veritable arsenal of towers or traps or elephants in your way to slow you down or damage your boulder. The more damaged your boulder is, the less damage it does. As you progress through the single player mode, you unlock different boulders as well as different defensive items. Each boulder has different speeds, strength and special abilities. One jumps higher, another can double jump to clear over obstacles. One is slow and weak but leaves tar on the ground and the opponent can not build anything on those spots.
The game supports up to four person multiplayer, both local and online. The versus modes are very similar to the story mode, but with different ways to play. WAR we already talked about. There is an obstacle course mode where you pit your boulder against another’s. There are traps and impediments along the way you must avoid to beat the other boulder to the finish line. The other mode is TIME TRIAL. A lot like obstacle course, but without the obstacles. Each level is very different and it can be difficult to navigate the holes in the ground as well as the cliffs and twists and turns.
The game surprisingly uses the Unreal 4 engine and although the cut scenes don’t necessarily utilize this very well, the game looks quite fantastic while playing. The gameplay does get a little repetitive at times, but with there being so many levels and different ways to play, it leaves room for a ton of playing time.
