Rocket Riot
It is rocket science.
Inevitably, however, things start to get a little threadbare as you ping from one mission to the next with only a change in surroundings to really look forward to, and, once you pass the 70-kills deathmatch mark, the game becomes a little unforgiving. I'd absolutely love to tell you that this is where multiplayer pops up to save the day, but I can't. At least, I don't think I can.
I'm hoping that it's broken. I'm hoping that the reason I can't seem to get any online multiplayer action going on Rocket Riot, despite connecting again and again over the space of the last few days and seeing the same empty lobbies, is because somewhere amidst the thatch of wiring and pipework connecting Xbox HQ in Redmond to the poky East Sussex street where I live, someone has clumsily booted a cable out of its socket, cracked a vital bit of solder, or accidentally toggled a switch with their elbow. Maybe it's Codeglue's fault, and a patch is coming, or maybe the answer's more local, and deep inside the dark, humming innards of my first-generation 360 there's a piece of vital social hardware that's finally red-ringed itself into oblivion.
None of that's not particularly likely, however: I've tried the game out on a few different machines now, and besides, I can connect to all sorts of other titles with no issues, and download expensive Premium wallpapers because I'm insane and don't deserve to have any money. I'm even able to cue up that nice Chobot lady to give me a few pointers on Street Fighter II while her sad, sad eyes tell me that, really, she's wishing she'd stuck with studying gene-expression bioinformatics like her mother told her to. And despite all this, the Rocket Riot lobbies still echo with emptiness.
I suspect that's bad, then: it's bad because it means that, a little over a month after its release, Rocket Riot's multiplayer is a cracked and dust-addled riverbed, and the hulking, migratory audience of Xbox Live Arcade has already waddled off into the distance to look for other more hospitable environments - probably involving the Pacific Theatre.
I'm considering organising a telethon. Rocket Riot deserves better than this. There's four-player local multiplayer available, but it's restricted to the Horde-like waves of Endurance along with traditional Deathmatch and Golden Guy (a form of asymmetric warfare that pits everyone against the lone player in a special suit), whereas the online offering promises additional modes like Rugby Riot and the imaginatively entitled CTF variant "Destroy the Object".
It could be worse, though: this kind of explosive shooter is uniquely suited to housebound rumbles, where you can reach over and upend a hot cup of tea into the lap of whoever's just blown you to pieces, and at least your own couch hasn't decamped to Battlefield 1943, never to return. And there's something else, anyway: somewhere, in amongst the clouds of pixellated chaos erupting in whichever direction you look, Rocket Riot gives birth to a few entirely distinct moments. Moments like shooting your way into a wall before waiting for it to build itself back behind you, moments like chasing a spinning power-up as it drops through an entire level from one shattering perch to the next.
These kinds of thing arise from a game's limitations, from the fumbling interactions of a small group of rules. In a time when Xbox Live Arcade seems to be lurching towards bigger and slicker titles, Rocket Riot takes you back to the early days of the service, when colours were bright, goals were simple, and the score meant everything.