Boom Boom Rocket

"In a music game, you need more than 10 songs."

As a musician, and a fan of music themed games, I'm gone through them all, you see. My DDR pad is glued to the floor with my hardcore jumping. My DK Bongos have been squished flat through thousands of beats to the groove of Rock Lobster. The Triangle, Circle, and Square buttons of my PS2 controllers are weak from endless rounds of FreQuency. And 5 buttons, Cherry Red Gibbons have broken in my hands through the hardcore ROKK streaming through my fingers. I'm a man who now needs a new experience to tap my foot to. Something abnormal, with a concept that will blow me away, and a thirst for more. What I had was an X-Box 360, Microsoft Points, and the impulse to buy whatever was fun for the 5 minutes I spend with the trial. Boom Boom Rocket was my answer. It's a rhythm game, yes... but it's quite underwhelming.

The first thing I likely should have looked over before buying this, was the actual number of songs I'm spending my 800 Microsoft Points on. 10. Just 10. One dollar per song. The horrible thing is, I thought the songs would all be as awesome as the one shown in the trial, "Rave New World". The techno remixes of several classic symphonies are not all that awesome, but not horrible at the same time. It leaves something to be desired for. If EA throws new songs at us through Marketplace, the question will be if the songs are any good, and if the price is right. And, knowing EA...

Moving along, the gameplay itself is basic. Fireworks shoot up into the barren night sky of some city, to a purple line. Then the fireworks reach the line, you press the button that corresponds with it, whither it be A,B,X, or Y. The D-Pad can also be used, and the symbols for the fireworks can be altered to help whichever button combo you're using. Your timing will net you points. More points means a better high score. And so on, and so forth. Timing is unforgiving, and you'll need to be spot on BRILLANT with your button taps. This is very hard to do, as the bar is rather thick, and the symbols are quite large, making it hard to find the sweet spot to get that beautiful word "Perfect" to show up on the screen. Your total accuracy will determine your letter grade, but you can still hit every single note, and still get a C, making for a sometimes frustrating time when tiring to unlock achievements. Another thing to note is the learning curve. Easy is easy. Normal is hard. Hard is a bunch of weird colors lighting up the sky, while you press random buttons and hope they work. You will not be acing hard on your first try, or your second, or your 10th.

The graphics in this game are very subpar. The city isn't alive period. Buildings are flat, detail less, and dark, and there's not a single soul populating the ground. Who's watching this show, anyway? The fireworks are pretty, but like any music game, you won't be paying attention to them much. There are unlockable fireworks, 30 of them, to discover, but don't do much to add to the game, besides taking up 2 of the games 12 achievements. Like I said before, the music in the game is little, and unexciting. If I'm getting a game from EA, I'd expect, at least, one crappy licensed song from Avril Lavene, or something. (Good) Licensed music would have made this slightly more enjoyable, or even being able to use your own music, a la Dance Factory.

Besides the normal mode, the game sports an interesting endurance mode, in which you play the same song over and over again, with the song getting faster every few seconds, one BPM at a time. This was fun, and pretty frantic, a nice feature to throw in there. The game sports an offline multiplayer, but no online, which is an absurd thing to do, especially on a Live Arcade game. Visualiser mode lets you look at the city, setting the fireworks off to music. Nothing interesting about it.

If BBR was a $5 game, like almost all other XBLA games should be, this would rank much higher than the 5 I'm giving it. However, there's just not enough offered here to really let the price not be a factor, and the lack of interesting backgrounds, and online multiplayer really ties this down. If some freebies are thrown into the mix later on, then I'll be less harsh, but at its current state, Rocket is for the dedicated music game fanatic, or pyros, who need a game where fireworks are the star.

Freaks.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 05/17/07