“What the hell is up with this camera?” were my first words and words I continued to use whilst I played Rocketmen. The fact is, I actually know what is up with the camera, but it’s highly unlikely that I’d be allowed to write it for you to read. You see, of the mind numbingly perplexing and puzzling things in this world - no one has yet explained; How do obviously terrible cameras in video games, make it through play testing and onto our consoles? Do developers genuinely not know? Sure, maybe there’s a rush to get a game finished and I know it’s still not acceptable, but hell, these guys probably have kids to feed - so what the hell. Rocketmen, isn’t a major release though, there’s not more than 12 people who even knew it was coming out.

Rocketmen; Axis of Evil is a top down on-foot shooter. Think Super Smash TV and to a lesser extent Loaded and ReLoaded. There are also RPG elements. Levelling up, upgrading weapons and the ludicrous create a character. Now, regardless of the fact that the amount of options in create a character are more limited than an original copy of the Bible, you can create a character, male or female - that looks naked. OK, there’s no nipples and other such things, but a skin tight - what I assume to be - lycra body suit, which is flesh coloured. It’s quite remarkable - in an I enjoyed boobies in Conan kind of way.

After creating your naked character (and you know you will), the fun just about stops. I won’t go into immense detail about the story, but basically some evil Martians kidnap the leader of a group of good guys - who fight for justice and peace and other nonsense. The story unfolds via some rather kooky but eye popping and amateurish comic book like cell shaded cut scenes. There’s barely any animation in said scenes, but they are voiced. I will shamefully admit that some of these voiced scenes did make me snigger, but I couldn’t possibly recommend them to anyone who likes their humour a little more complex. Remember the stupid bits they had at the end of Thundercats? You know, where Snarf would do something silly and inevitable end up soaking wet? Well, it’s that kind of slap dash humour - all the way through Rocketmen. If you stop and think you’ll slap yourself for actually taking the time to stop and think. Props though, this is the first time I have ever heard someone say “buggered” in a video game.

The cel shading from the cut scenes is also used in the main game. Aside from the camera - which we’ll get to in a minute, the visuals are broken. I lost count of the doors I went through before I had the animation of the doors actually opening. And quick time action skits where you’re required to hammer the ‘A’ button to activate something - just don’t work very well. No matter where I stood on and around the A button icon, things never happened as smoothly as I think they should have. The pace of my character was frustratingly slow. With 15 or 20 evil Martians gunning for me, I just couldn’t move quick enough to avoid their fire.

Armed with a standard pistol to begin with, weapons can be picked up regularly. Unlike most games where the weapons life span is decided by the amount of ammo you carry, in Rocketmen, every weapon you pick up gives you unlimited ammo, but a time limit to use it in. An assortment of weapons are available with the Razor being my favourite. The Razor you see - fires circular saw blades. Unusually the right trigger is not used to fire, but rather the right analogue stick. This gives you easy and fast 360 degree fire power. There are various secondary devices to pick up as well, grenades, rockets and the like. These are operated via the right trigger (and a right click).

Now, finally on to that camera. It’s awful. It’s so gut wrenchingly annoying and rather than causing outbursts of foul language - it’s a constant flow of obscenities. There are tons of pick-ups in Rocketmen, some of these pick ups go towards your final level rating and others are cashed in for upgrades - the thing is, the camera tries it’s best to stop you getting them. Completely out of your control, the camera works against you. There’s no back tracking whatsoever, once the camera moves on - you’re screwed. Hundreds of pick-ups missed and oddly hundreds of enemies still attacking you - even though you can’t see them and have no way of knowing if attacking them back is doing anything. Oh look, a door. Well I’ll just have a look up here first and go back to it in a minute - but wait! It won’t let me WTF!?

There is an online co-op mode, which doesn’t fix any of the issues that you experience playing on your own. The only thing that changes is that instead of having just one person complain, you have up to 4. Rather than the camera spoiling what could be a good game, the camera just adds to a long list of gripes that make up a barely average game. Even if I ignore the camera issues, the gameplay is so spectacularly dull and repetitive, not even the best camera view could save it. Avoid at all costs.