Rock of Ages was introduced to me in a Youtube video with the sentence: "Rock of Ages has got to be one of the weirdest games I've played in a while." I couldn't have put it better myself, so I won't.

It's a fun combination of tower defense and kind of a racing-platformer. The latter is played as the rock trying to roll to the end of a track and smash down your opponent's gate which will take several runs. When you are not rolling (i.e. waiting for a new rock to be built) you spend time in the "planning" mode, or tower defense, placing obstacles to hinder your opponent. You gain money by rolling on and destroying things like your enemy's obstacles.

So that's the basic gameplay and while it sounds simple, it's not so much; there's actually a bit of depth. You want to destroy obstacles to get money, but everything you hit damages your rock, both making it smaller (which will do less damage to the enemy's gate) and susceptible to being completely destroyed, which needless to say is really bad. So you can either try to rush through the course to try to beat your enemy by being speedier, or you can take your time smashing things, amass a large amount of money and place a ton of defenses. Or anything in between, which is where it gets tricky. There are some things I realized pretty quickly that made it somewhat simpler (like putting obstacles closer to the gate to rob the enemy's momentum when hitting your gate, or always buying the fire rock the first round since that's when there's the fewest defenses), but I genuinely kept learning and toying with new strategies the entire story mode. Most of the levels I was able to breeze through but a few had me really having to revise my strategy, not because the level was unfair but because it was designed in a different way that nullified my usual approach. Basically: it was mostly casual, sometimes darn challenging, but always rewarding. (That feeling when your rock hits their gate: priceless.)

Believe it or not, the gameplay (as good as it is) may not even be the most memorable thing about this game. It's visual style is very reminiscent of Monty Python as is the humor which is just downright hilarious if you like that sorta thing. There are multiple references -mostly to historical figures but sometimes to things like books and movies- all of which were just executed perfectly for MAXIMUM HUMOR. The gameplay graphics are also good, kind of cell-shaded but with little 2D Monty Python people manning the obstacles, which helps this game's charm of being all-out silly. The music and sound effects were well crafted and appropriate; the music quickens in pace when either gate is low on health which adds instant urgency, either defensely of offensively, and the "AAAAHHHHH" sound combined with its text when the rock falls off the edge is one of those defining moments of a video game that is forever etched into my mind.

The only real downside I see to this game is that the boss fights are just awful. Not only are they just completely different gameplay-wise, they just aren't compelling in the slightest. I can easily let this slide though; they aren't a deal-breaker, they just seem really out of place and don't provide what I generally expect from a boss fight.

Rock of Ages was just fun through and through, enjoyable on every level. And I got my butt kicked horribly a few times too, which is always good for the self esteem. If you like the idea of controlling a rock that smashes stuff, you'll love it and probably find some challenge.