Rock of Ages III: Make & Break

Genre: Tower Defense / Arcade

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local Split-Screen), 2-4 Competitive (Online)

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Review:

Rock of Ages III, released on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2020, follows in the footsteps of the first two games, combining two very disparate genres. First, players will be managing resources and constructing a gauntlet of towers, traps, and other defenses to protect their path from an attack by a giant boulder. And conversely, they’ll be rolling a boulder down the enemy’s path, trying to avoid obstacles until they can get to the bottom, bash open the gates to the enemy’s castle, and squish their leader under the weight of the boulder. This time around, that core formula has been expanded in two key ways – a greater variety of game modes, and a new level builder for players to create their own maps and challenges.

The presentation this time around is much improved over the prior games, save for one massive problem that I’ll get to in a moment. Once again, you have some delightful Monty Python-esque cutscenes featuring pieces of classical art manipulated in a paper doll fashion to make for absurd and silly situations, while the gameplay itself features 3D levels that take those classic art styles and expand them into three dimensions, complete with line art sketches at the margins and other nice touches that make this seem like historical art come to life. There’s quite a lot of detail too, although this detail comes at the cost of some ugly dithering in places.

That’s not the big flaw here, though.

This time around, you even have some nice background elements like a blazing fire, and the excellent soundtrack has fun rock remixes of classical music that fit this game’s irreverent take on classical art wonderfully. What’s more, important tutorial instructions are now also conveyed with voiced lines, which helps to alleviate the fact that the game’s text uses a font that’s sometimes difficult to read, and sometimes too small to boot. I should also mention that this game’s menus are pretty poorly laid out overall as well, and might make more sense if this game supported touchscreen controls at least in menus, which it doesn’t.

None of that is the big flaw, either.

No, Rock of Ages III’s biggest problem on Nintendo Switch is that every once in a while, without warning, and without any noteworthy cause I can see, the game freezes up for multiple seconds at a time. These are not minor frames skipping, either – this is long enough to make me truly worry that the game had crashed. And it’s not a “once or twice” thing, either – this problem came up time and again as I tried to play it. In fact, it happened seemingly at least once per level.

It’s a real shame too, because if it wasn’t for this major flaw, this could have been the best game in a great, original series. I’ve already spoken about the great blend of Tower Defense strategy and ball-rolling Arcade-style gameplay in my review of the second game, but this game takes it a step further by providing players with quite a few different game modes to shake things up and add variety, such as races, and even a mode involving this game’s take on Skee-Ball. It’s all really creative and a blast while it’s working… and absolutely infuriating when this game’s freezing issue butts in.

The level creator here also had some potential, giving players a decent amount of tools to work with, though the control interface is a bit odd and once again I’ll say this game really could have used an option to utilize the Nintendo Switch’s touchscreen controls. Even so, there’s a lot of potential here, and players can even share and download the levels of others. Unfortunately, by this point it looks like the online lobbies are deserted so you won’t really have anyone to play against other than computer-controlled or local opponents, but I can still appreciate what was attempted here.

In the end, Rock of Ages III is one of the best examples I’ve seen of one major, horrible flaw bringing down an otherwise great game. I’ll be having a blast with this game… and then have a moment of panic and worry as I wonder if the game crashed before realization sets in… then I’ll be having lots of fun with all the variety on offer… and then feel that fun instantly evaporate as the game freezing forces me to restart the level…. and then it happens again… and again… and again. And if this were a new release, I could still hold out hope that a patch might fix this… but this game has been out for two years now, so I think that hope is a lost cause. I am so very disappointed.

tl;dr – Rock of Ages III takes the series’ combination of Tower Defense and ball-rolling Arcade-style gameplay and adds in a healthy amount of variety and a level builder, giving this game so much potential to be the absolute best in its series… potential that is completely destroyed by this game’s terrible freezing problems. As a result, I cannot in good conscience recommend this game, despite how fun it is when it works… because far too often, it doesn’t.

Grade: C

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