Rocketmen: Axis of Evil

March 25,2008 - Though most of Capcom’s downloadable game offerings feature remakes of classic games or franchises, their latest game takes a stab at bringing a licensed property to life in the videogame realm. Rocketmen: Axis of Evil is based on a strategy tabletop game but has been turned it into a top-down shooter that feels like what you’d expect if this were one of Capcom’s old-school remakes. That means that it mixes old-school gameplay with dual-stick controls and RPG elements into a game that unfortunately includes both the bad and good of old-school gaming.

Most Xbox 360 and PS3 owners probably don’t know that Rocketmen is a licensed game. The game is based on a war between the terrestrial planets aligned with either the Axis of Evil or Alliance of Free Planets. This game starts with your friend Alec Mink being kidnapped by the Martians that are trying to take over the space station you’re on, so you must shoot your way through the masses of enemies to try to save her. Quite frankly, the story is filler for some old-school shooter action. Luckily, if you at least watch the cutscenes, which are presented like comic book panels, you’ll be treated to a story that doesn’t take itself seriously, making fun of the many clichés it uses throughout its 10 chapter-long campaign.

Before you do anything, Rocketmen asks you to create a character to control. You can get some variety by picking one of three races, two genders, three classes, and altering skin and clothing colors as well. From there, you start playing through the first chapter and learning how the game works while collecting four types of experience points from either the act of killing enemies or the experience points they drop after dieing. After you complete levels you’ll see how much of each EXP type you’ve collected and if you’ve earned a medal for completing up to three goals for each level. The four categories that you collect experience points are for shields, weapons, power-ups you start each level with, and attributes. The first three are fairly explanatory once you play the game, but the attribute part of the game will be the thing that will most likely turn off gamers after trying the demo.

Because Rocketmen has this RPG system where you gain experience points by killing enemies that can be used towards building up attributes like speed, life, damage, and other things, the demo’s one level only gives you the feeling of what the game is like when your player is slow as molasses, easily killed, and a total noob. It’s just not the best first impression that the game could offer to those that downloaded the demo. This is luckily only a concern for the first few levels of your first playthrough with a character, as building up your character makes the later levels easier and more fun to play through. 

Building up weapons also has the same effect, so that the different weapon power-ups you pick up become more helpful and powerful as you progress through the game. The other thing that hampers the game is the camera, which until your character is quicker, you have to worry about the camera pushing you forward whether you wanted to or not. That is where the old-school feeling falls a bit flat, as we’ve gotten used to a camera that moves with us and doesn’t push us around anymore.

Outside of just playing through Rocketmen by yourself, you can bring along three friends, local or online, to add to the old-school fun that the game offers. Not only can you work co-operatively, you can work competitively for the highest score for each level. Otherwise, four-player co-op works exactly as you’d expect. The whole aspect of building up your character is made just for playing through the game multiple times, so if you don’t plan to play with friends, this game is probably not for you. The game offers leaderboards for the best scores for each level on each difficulty and overall through the entire campaign for the few people that bought the game so far.

Visually, Rocketmen has a nice comic book style to it, cel-shading and all, but it’s hard to say that the game really looks all that great. The characters you create look nice, and so do the enemies, though they are pretty much animated on the level of the old-school games that have come before Rocketmen. The environments are really not that impressive at all, featuring ugly textures that remind you that you’re pretty much playing this game for the gameplay. The weapon effects look nice, similar to the effects old-school shmups are well-known for, the more you earn experience to build them up.

In the audio department, Rocketmen is fairly average, with decent voice acting during cutscenes that you will probably end up skipping after your first time through the game. The background music is forgettable space drama filler to go along with the sarcastic story that makes for a fairly clichéd game. Thankfully, the developers recognized that and made sure the game doesn’t take itself too seriously. Sound effects for the various weapons include standard lasers, shotgun blasts, and other effects that you’d expect from the game.

While Rocketmen: Axis of Evil doesn’t give off the best first impression, those that take the plunge and buy the game will find a good game that worships the old-school shooters a bit too much at times. The game’s presentation makes it feel like an homage to the shooters of yore with its cheesy story and presentation. It’s unfortunate that most will skip this based on where your character begins and not be willing to consider how it may end, which will only limit the amount of players available for the co-op mode, where Rocketmen is at its best.

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