Straight out of Atlus comes a charming game where you play as Sisyphus, the doomed king whose personal hell includes pushing a boulder up a hill to just have it roll back down. One day Sisyphus decides that he has had enough of his torture and uses the boulder to escape from Hades. Soon after his escape he rolls his rock across time and space taking on some of history’s most infamous conquerors and generals. It is up to you to make sure that Sisyphus is victorious against all of his foes.
The gameplay is a fun mix of tower defense and action platforming. In Rock of Ages you control the boulder of Sisyphus 
and you must guide that boulder down a set path. It is up to you and your opponent to set up defenses for each other and to try and prevent your opponent’s boulder from reaching your castle gates. As you progress through the story mode, you will gain access to more and more items to defend your gates. At the start of each round you will use coins to place your defenses on the map. Once a period of time has passed you will gain control of the boulder and it is time to start navigating the maze and dealing with the defenses that your opponent has placed. While you are navigating the level you can aim for a number of targets which give you more coins to beef up your defenses in the next round. Once you get to the end of the level you take a hit on your opponent’s castle. It usually breaks down to the first person to the bottom 3 times wins the match. Essentially that is how the game works.
Rock of Ages is an intriguing game to say the least. It manages to mix two different styles of gameplay and together they make up a game that is fun to play for a while. The real problem of this game is the balance of the two different genres in one space. In other words the balance between it being a castle defense game and a platformer. In this game you are given the ability to jump when controlling your boulder. The problem is that you can very easily jump over almost
anything your opponent places in your way. This renders the defenses almost negligible. If you didn’t want to jump over everything in your path, you can take it down rather easily by just crashing into the object so even expensive defenses will go down without much of a fight. Between these two issues the castle defense game becomes rather limited in scope and it almost becomes a racing game. The problem this game being a racing game is that the boulders you control are not very responsive and they control like boulders. The other issues lie within the multiplayer modes. Most of the multiplayer modes require some form of racing and since the boulders don’t handle well, this becomes more cumbersome than fun. These modes tend to exaggerate the issues with the game rather than downplay them and that was a shame.
However, Rock of Ages does a lot of things rather well and all is not lost to the balancing issues mentioned above. The art 
style, reminiscent of Monte Python, is excellent and adds a whimsical feel to the game which works rather well. This game is also full of pop culture references and little quips and side jokes that give this game a ton of personality. It is also a lot of fun in the beginning when the gameplay elements are new and refreshing. This game is very unique and there aren’t many games like this on the market today. If you are looking for something different this may fill that void. The game is certainly worth playing for the humor alone and I am sure most people would laugh several times while progressing through the story. The boss battles, though a touch on the easy side, still broke up the gameplay and I enjoyed them as a reprieve from the relatively repetitive single player levels.
All in all, Rock of Ages has a number of issues that bring the game down to a middle of the road position as a whole. The balancing issues really hurt the play-ability and fun of the game after the first few levels. In its current state it is difficult to recommend this game at full manufactures suggested retail price. If the balancing issues were addressed I would give this a much stronger recommendation but all in all this game has a lot of potential that ultimately falls short.
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“it is difficult to recommend this game at full manufactures suggested retail price”
The game is only 10 dollars… 800 Microsoft points.
???
Considering the issues I felt the game had, I don’t believe it is a $10 dollar game. I would pay the $10 myself and I felt torn while reviewing it considering the fun I had. I did enjoy certain aspects of the game which I highlighted in the review but it is just way too easy and extremely repetitive. I don’t think someone would feel like they got their money’s worth and for that I couldn’t give a full MSRP recommendation. Each level is about 6 minutes long and there are 23 levels so that is about 2 hours to finish the game and the multi-player doesn’t add much value considering how it controlled. When you consider a full release will give you 20 hours of gameplay at 60 dollars that is $3 an hour while this gives you 2 hours for $10. If the price were say $5 I would be more comfortable giving the all clear to buy it because even if you didn’t love it you’d get enough gameplay to support the price. At its current price point you don’t get the value you’d expect and the value you do get is flawed despite its high points. I stand by my original assessment and I hope you see why I said what I said.