On the surface, Codeglue’s Rocket Riot seems like a perfectly competent dual-joystick shooter that oozes with 8-bit charm and humorous design. However, there doesn’t seem to be much of a game behind the glossy finish, making Rocket Riot a beautiful, but only mildly amusing, experience. The game will have players take control of legless rocketeers that fly around block arenas, blowing each other up with rocket launchers. The game controls similar to other Xbox Live Arcade titles like Geometry Wars, but with a couple tweaks to make the game feel a bit more unique. First of all, unlike Geometry Wars, players are moving vertically, which means that gravity is what fuels all downward maneuvers. Gravity also affects rockets, making every shot arc. Players can charge up shots to prevent rockets from arcing too much, but every rocket eventually has to succumb to downward forces. These mechanics are neat in the sense that they add somewhat of a ‘Worms in real-time’ feel to the game, but they also don't fully succeed.
Rocket Riot, as this mixture of dumbed-down versions of Geometry Wars and Worms, simply feels too chaotic and out-of-control to remain fun for very long. A more robust tutorial or tactics section could have perhaps helped the game out a bit with this problem. But, as it stands now, the game only has a ‘Playground’ mode that simply pits the player against one easy enemy on a map that clearly provides all the power-ups. However, there is nothing else to help you learn about anything else in the game anywhere. Admittedly, the game’s simple mechanics don’t really necessitate much in terms of instruction on how to actually play Rocket Riot, but there are still some power-ups with effects that are still do not seem apparent, even after spending quite a bit of time with the game. Even if you spend enough time playing Rocket Riot to look past chaos—or even master it—there seems to be hardly enough to do to make players hungry for more.
With 80, repetitive single-player missions that progressively become more difficult by simply increasing the number of enemies and the amount of damage they do, a similarly infuriating ‘Endurance’ mode that throws massive streams of enemies at the player, and a fun looking online multi-player mode that no one seems to play, Rocket Riot may be enjoyable for an occasional local multiplayer session, but little more. It really is a shame that such a good-looking, crazy game isn’t enjoyed much by the Xbox Live community. With gametypes like deathmatch, golden guy (somewhat like ‘juggernaut’ from Halo), Rugby Riot (a game of rugby with rockets, of course), and destroy the object (aka attack and defend), the frenetic action and sight of legless pirates, skeletons, and robots blowing each other up could have made for a more enjoyable experience, but sadly, this is not the case. Without a healthy online community, Rocket Riot is a lifeless husk of a game.
