Developer – Ace Team

Publisher – Modus Games

Platforms – Windows 10 PC, Xbox, PS4, Switch

When I first saw Rock of Ages 3 by Modus Games, I honestly had no idea what I was getting myself into. I have heard of the series, but it never caught my attention enough to give it a try. However, after the first cutscene, I knew I was going to enjoy this experience even if just for the animations alone.

The game consists of two sections, MAKE and BREAK. In BREAK, the game is simple in premise, you take control of a rock, speed through a track of obstacles, crush the gate of the opposing team’s castle and flatten the enemy.

You select a character to represent your empire from a list of leaders and memes, everything from Julius Caesar to the badly painted Jesus restoration painting (Ecce Mono) that was the source of viral news back in 2013. You can also unlock new rocks to use, such as a stone fist, the Earth, and a cluster of cows each with their own stats such as speed and destructive power. Finally, you can customize your empire’s banner with colors and patterns to give it the final touch.

In the story mode you start out in 840 B.C. escaping the cyclops Polyphmus and carve a destructive path to 1910. Squaring off against dragons and Gods with pit-stops along the way to fight the Mongols, Romans, and other historical empires. The story reminds me of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure but more destructive! The story is full of funny vignettes that are in an art style that represents the age, complete with a slapstick comedy approach. While these are short, they made me laugh quite a bit.

Your encounter with Polyphmus serves as a tutorial to introduce you to a few modes of the game. As the story progresses, you fight different historical figures like Napoleon, Caesar, and Genghis Khan. Each age has a variety of modes to play and you collect stars as a reward for your performance. The stars unlock new ages and different types of offensive and defensive structures. The different stages have a mix of modes such as tower defense, time trials, ball races, and other types of obstacles courses.

In the tower defense game mode, both teams start out building structures on the track in order to defend against the other team’s rock. You can build explosive barrels, walls, cows, humans, tigers on a balloon, and many more. These structures can either damage the player’s rock or slow it down. The first few levels are okay in difficulty, but by the 4^th age my structures barely made a dent in the enemy rock. The AI would also have fully realized tracks while I was just placing a few walls and other structures. I ended up having to focus on the other modes to unlock new structures to progress through the story, which gave the game a nice balance of difficulty and progression.

The time trials are where you try to get your rock to the finish line as fast as possible. This mode seemed linear, but after my first run I saw that the goal times were substantially lower than mine. On my second run, I noticed that by using momentum and perfectly timing jumps I could access alternate paths in the track to shave precious seconds off my time. I spent a lot of time trying to perfect my times because this mode was so challenging and fun.

The skee ball mode is very simple, and the AI might be a little broken here as well. Your goal is to make your way down the track crushing targets. The targets provide points that you multiply by directing your rock into specific holes on the skee board at the end of the track. I noticed the AI did not go for the targets, so the score it obtained was low. I focused on hitting as many targets as I could and even if I did not win the race, I was still able to win overall because my score was higher.

Every so often, there are also special “boss fights” where you square off against a creature or God to break targets and win races in order to unlock customization options for your rock.

The second main section of the game is MAKE. This is where you can build a track for others to play. You can modify the land and design of the track to make some interesting obstacles to get through. I could see myself putting tons of time into playing this mode however, the controls are a bit tough to get use to. It is hard to move the land mass exactly as I want it to move and it seems a bit more complicated than it needs to be.

After you finish your level you can post it and go back to the BREAK mode to play other community levels that have been created. Currently, there are quite a few different maps, but I am not sure how long that will last as its entirely based on the game’s community to continue creating new experiences.

For the asking price of $29.99, you get a decent amount of content. Single player and multiplayer modes and a quirky story mode that, if you want to collect everything, will last you a decent amount of time to get through. The base game is there, all the parts are functioning and function mostly well.

I did run into a few bugs involving music cutting out, rocks not wanting to respawn, and being able to completely go through some environmental pieces. The story, while funny, maybe equates to about 20 minutes of cutscenes. The second half of the game is based on the community and their willingness to provide more content to the game. This may already be problematic to the longevity of the game because the multiplayer’s players base seems lacking when I have tried to connect recently.