With franchises like Silent Hill, Splinter Cell, and Gears of War setting the bar for tension, drama, gritty realism, and horror in video games, new games that wish to carry weight in any of those categories have a high standard to live up to. Luckily, Rocket Riot isn’t trying to establish itself for anything other than mindless, goofy, pixilated fun, and when it comes to all of those categories, it succeeds brilliantly.

Gameplay:

Contrary to what you may have heard or read, Rocket Riot is less of a Worms clone and more a Worms-Unreal hybrid, as odd as that may seem. The game takes the 2D-trajectory-slash-terrain aspects of Worms and combines them with the fast pace of a twitch shooter like Quake or Tribes (with respect to Tribes’ aerial combat). Players must navigate their tiny, armless, legless peg-man (with a rocket literally “screwed onto his butt”) around a wide variety of maps attempting to win the level by getting a certain number of kills, destroying certain terrain, or even scoring goals by carrying an American football through a goalpost. That’s really all there is to it. The controls are intuitive, yet incredibly simple – steer with the left stick, aim with the right, let go of the right to fire. If you collect a powerup, press A to use it and rain down chaos.

The powerups are varied to say the least. They can be beneficial, like heat-seeking/multi-missile/giant/speedy rockets, protective shields, health packs, or “ghost” status; whacky, like turning your rockets into baseballs, shrinking you, or making your rockets bounce everywhere instead of explode; or detrimental “powerdowns” that prevent you from firing, make your rockets sink, or bounce you off the terrain like a pinball. The terrain is all completely destructible, as well, which means that you can use it to your advantage to get away (I’ve burrowed into the map like Dig Dug to escape) or blow it apart to catch an elusive bad guy. One of the achievements even calls for you to destroy 1,000,000 blocks.

The campaign contains most of the game’s content, providing 80 levels, bosses, and tons of additional peg-men to unlock to play as (though this is only aesthetic and does not affect the gameplay or campaign), which you can do by simply scoring a kill against a character you haven’t unlocked yet. As the campaign progresses, the difficulty increases appropriately, and the number of kills/goals/requirements needed to move past a level increases as well. Multiplayer comes in the form of same-screen co-op and competitive LAN and Xbox Live play. Four different game modes are available, and if you aren’t interested in the multiplayer, you can try your hand at the Endurance mode. Endurance mode pits you against wave after wave of extremely aggressive enemies, easily making this mode the most challenging one in the game.

It should be noted that the campaign is really just a series of strung-together games with very little exposition after a boss fight to lead into the next set of themed levels. This isn’t really bad, though. What story there is is mostly there to make you chuckle at the absurdity of it. Example? Your journey begins when the legless pirate Blockbeard, in a fit of jealous revenge, steals the legs from all of the citizens from the town of Blockstonboroughcesterburyston. Not to be left without a way to move about, an inventor soon invents a rocket that you can “screw onto your butt” to fly around. You soon pick up your bazooka and fly off to face a legion of pirates (construction workers, zombies, aliens, soldiers, etc.) so you can finally have your final showdown with Blockbeard. The past few levels, I’ve been playing as “Bananaman.”

Graphics:

Visually, Rocket Riot is an unabashedly pixilated treat. The graphics are a colorful homage to the 8-bit goodness many older gamers grew up with, with blocky backdrops and levels that will remind you of everything from Mario stages to Mega Man maps to Castlevania quests. The characters are all “flat,” and when turning you’ll notice them become a thick line as they move to face the other direction. Very little of the game is given 3D substance, with the few instances of its implementation used to provide map depth to help the player determine what can and cannot be destroyed. The destroyed terrain rains down in a pixilated mess of blocks, slowly growing back over time so the map doesn’t simply become an empty slab of nothing. Be warned that the targeting pixel, a single, colored block, can sometimes be easily lost in the chaos of the gameplay. Overall, though, the game is very bright and friendly, from its easy-to-navigate menus to the in-game graphics themselves.

Sound:

The sound is simple as well, but as is the case with the graphics, it’s in a good way. The music is perfect, matching the visuals as it takes you back to games of old. It’s all very upbeat and enjoyable, and easy to listen to on some of the longer levels before a new map inserts a new song. There’s no voice acting to speak of, unless you count the quirky character noises, but the sound effects are all cartoony and well placed. Explosions sound like tumbling rubble and powerups all have beeps, boops, and old school music changes to match you when you’re “ghosted” or shrunk.

Longevity:

The biggest fault I found in Rocket Riot was the longevity. I had an incredibly difficult time finding more than two Xbox Live games available at the same time, and neither of those available had a very strong connection (if I could connect at all – I had difficulty even joining some of the games). In the games themselves, lag seemed quite prevalent, and on more than one occasion I was firing rockets point blank into opponents only to see them sail through. The lack of online co-op hurts this game a lot, as well, as does the inability to play “bot matches” in singleplay. The only way to play alone is by choosing a campaign level or playing Endurance, which is a shame when multiplayer games were somewhat difficult to come by or laggy.

Still, the campaign is long (unless you’re breezing through every level), the Endurance mode is pretty much never-ending, and every bit of the game is loads of good, old-fashioned, pixel-smashing fun. Even after finishing the campaign and growing either bored or frustrated with Endurance, you still might be able to find consistent multiplayer games online. My online success is by no means a barometer, after all.

Overall:

For 800 Microsoft Points ($10 / £6.80), Rocket Riot is a fun, chaotic gem of an Arcade game with enough unique firepower to keep you blasting blocks for a pretty long time.