This piece of work has taken me longer to write than anything I have ever written before in my entire life. That includes, but is not limited to, a boring as hell essay I had to write back in high school that I managed to string out for an additional two weeks before finally being ordered to hand it in. That essay eventually got written solely because my intense distaste for that particular subject and teacher drove me to weave a bit of wordsmithery that could both convey the factual points it needed to get across while still letting that teacher know just how much I detested writing it.
I was able to eventually spit that out because of those negative feelings. Emotions, whether negative or positive, are an amazing driving force for me to do something, simply to get it out of my way. It’s when something doesn’t strike me as particularly good or particularly bad that I have the most trouble. Even with the blandest of offerings I can normally find something on one side of the spectrum or the other to grasp at, and elaborate from there.
Rock of Ages did an impressive job of keeping me incredibly neutral for the whole experience. The gameplay consists of rolling a ball down a track to smash through a giant gate protecting whatever historical figure you are doing battle against. In between rolling your boulder you are placing a small variety of towers on your side of the track to prevent your opponent from doing the same to you. Unfortunately, this is practically a futile effort. The computer will hit your tower, eventually get past them, or break through them and hit your door. As long as you hit their door first, the time between rolling your boulder will end before theirs, and you can roll again. Simply repeat the process a meager three times and you will win.
And I did. Every single time. Just roll the ball, hit the door, and do it two more times to complete a level. The game has certain parts where it requires you to have collected a set number of keys to progress. There are three keys in every level, and the vast majority of them are just sitting in plain sight. You don’t even need to deviate from your singular path of door-smashing destruction to obtain enough to bypass these checkpoints.
The multiplayer is equally as baffling. You have the option to play the single-player game, save with a friend in the opposite seat. But it’s the same song and dance – hit their door three times before they hit your door three times and the game is yours. The other mode is what really could have been something amazing.: it’s multiplayer skee-ball. You roll down a track, side by side, smashing things for points and ultimately launching yourself up a big skee-ball scoreboard, which adds multipliers to your score. It could have been something hilarious and fun, but as soon as the first person makes it into one of those multiplier spots, the whole thing resets. You and your friend do it again. And then once more. Three times and the game is over.
The cutscenes in the game as probably what kept this whole thing from landing squarely on the negative side of the scale for me. They utilize the quirky animations used by Monty Python’s various programs and incorporate dozens of pop culture references. At one point the cutscenes become weirdly meta, mixing The Matrix’s Architect character, Leonardo da Vinci, and the knowledge that everything the main character is doing is all part of a video game.
I’m not a fan of Monty Python. My early sense of humor developed outside the realms of television, which in turn made me miss out on a lot of great shows that I just can’t seem to become a fan of now. On the other hand I have always been a movie guy. Rock of Ages managed to incorporate one part of something I’m not big on with a second dollop of snippets and quotes from a variety of things I know and love, which helped reinforce that same ‘middle of the road’ feeling I’ve been talking about.
In my eyes the game isn’t bad. It isn’t good. For me it was an incredibly even experience all the way through. It was also the first game I have reviewed, ever, where I knew the score before I had written the review.
Rating: 
This review was based on the XBLA version, which was provided for review by Atlus. It is also available for PC, and both versions are $10.
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