Rochard is a man, a man with a job to do, space miner, with a boss to please, Maximilian, and with a major problem. A plot is afoot that he must help solve and get things back on track. Oh, and on top of that, he might even lose his job. Talk about a bad day.
In reality, John Rochard, voiced by Jon St. John, is a platform title with some shooting action and some environmental puzzles that involve moving blocks around, fending off enemies, unlocking or activating doors and force fields and even a level that has reverse gravity. It must be platformer week on PSN I guess.
The graphics are sort of 2.5D where it’s a side scrolling platformer but all of the models and much of the environments look rendered in 3D. It’s not bad looking and reminds be of some other games I’ve seen. However, the art style overall is not overwhelmingly fascinating and I think they could have thought about another way to go about it. I suppose it works for the game setting but it just sort of left me when an ambivalent feel toward it. It is a game built on the Unity platform and it does go to show how far that particular platform has evolved in a short time. Maybe it is just the characters that have some jagged lines because a lot of the effects and the environment themselves look really great. It might also be simply the size of the display as I’m using the 720p Optoma GameTime 750 projector with about an 8-foot diagonal image.
The game offers you some minimal control over gravity. Pulling the L1 Will give you a low gravity environment which allows you to jump further and pick up heavier objects with your gravity gun. The G-gun in Rochard can also act as a cannon launching whatever it is you have at the moment and can be upgraded to shoot energy bolts and explosive charges. Very handy and versatile that.
