Shoot The Rocks

Shoot The Rocks is a game in which you shoot the rocks. It’s quite a difficult concept to get across, so I feel that I should explain it; there are these rocks, and you shoot them. Then after you shoot them, there are multiple smaller rocks for you to shoot. I’m really glad that the game’s title explains this difficult concept so succinctly, as the aim of the game may be difficult to understand otherwise. Good job to the person who thought of that name (and is actually in the credits under ‘Shoot the Rocks name’).

The only name I can think of that describes the game better is ‘Soulless asteroids clone’. As far as the actual game goes, you rotate your ship and thrust to move closer to asteroids, then you shoot at them if you’re lucky. I say lucky because you can only shoot 4 times in a row, and then have to wait until those shots hit something or time out before you can fire again. This means you’ll try to only shoot at rocks that are close to you, but this in turn means that the smaller rocks that spawn will probably kill you instantly.

Not only are the shooting controls a bit cock-eyed, but the actual ship controls aren’t very responsive either. It’s all too easy to send yourself shooting off into an asteroid, or just spinning around, trying to slow yourself down. In effect, this makes the best tactic to not move at all. Try taking shots at asteroids that come close, and at the times when they aren’t close enough, wonder to yourself why you downloaded this game in the first place.

Graphically, Shoot The Rocks is decent enough. The menus are very simplistic, but the in-game graphics are pre-rendered 3D images, which makes them look better than a lot of other 2D community games. The sound effects are thoroughly unremarkable, and the music consists of two notes, played slightly faster as you get closer to the end. Maybe this is supposed to increase the tension as the music gets faster, but it’d be like playing the Jaws theme while watching paint dry.

Shoot The Rocks was developed by Tackemon and is available for 200 points.

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&#038;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:c2ccf911-3970-4134-9266-91651e578920&#038;showPlaylist=true&#038;from=msnvideo" target="_new" title="Shoot the Rocks game">Video: Shoot the Rocks game</a>

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