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PlayStation Mobile Review - Rock Boshers DX | PSNStores

Review: Rock Boshers DX

Posted by on November 5th, 2012 | 0 Comments | Tags:

The second PlayStation Mobile game brought to us by TikiPod, the first being the very fun Aqua Kitty, comes in the ZX Spectrum inspired Rock Boshers DX. The game turns the clock back to the 80’s as it aims to look, feel and sound just like a ZX Spectrum game. The result is a very fun and challenging adventure featuring just fifteen colors and some seriously awesome music.

Rock Boshers DX takes place in the 1880’s when Victorian explorers travel to Mars in hopes of finding fortune. Naturally things go wrong and it’s up to you to find your ship and escape the dangerous landscape of Mars. Throughout the game’s twenty two levels there’s an occasional dialog bubble which amounts to some funny bits of dialog as well as setup for your goals throughout each level. Every level in the game features a few different goals for you to complete. Other than finding the exit of each level you’re also challenged with completing the level as fast as possible as well as finding all three snacks hidden throughout the level.

Played from a top down view you’ll find keys and switches to open up new areas of a level as well as three different gun types to aid you in battle against endless hordes of zombies and numerous other deadly enemies. Each level lasts just a couple of minutes and the game itself can be cleared in a little over an hour if you’re good enough. That said Rock Boshers DX gets very difficult as you’ll soon find yourself swarmed with dozens of enemies chasing after you among other traps that the Martian planet plays host to. It’s a challenging game but, especially the final boss, it’s very rewarding and just a lot of fun to play. I can easily see myself going back to this trying to perfect each stage, get faster times and find all of the snacks throughout each level. Just as in TikiPod’s previous game the controls are snappy and just feel right.

As much as I might love this game there are two things that bugged me a little throughout my adventure. Due to the ZX Spectrum inspired look the game displays in a resolution that takes up just a small portion in the Vita’s screen. This means there’s some pretty large black bars around the game screen. I didn’t really notice this after playing for a while but I do kind of wish more of the screen could have been used in some way. Secondly, and this potentially is a bigger deal, the game would periodically freeze for about half a second every few levels. I didn’t keep track but to make an educated guess I’d say this happened once in about a third of the levels (out of twenty two). It was just a half second pause in the action and then things would continue playing as usual. Ultimately it didn’t take away from the amount of fun I had with the game but, considering that Rock Boshers DX probably isn’t pushing the Vita hardware to its limit, anything that keeps gameplay from being smooth is a little disappointing.

Rock Boshers DX is a fantastic game that’s both challenging and loads of fun to play. The game should take you a little more than an hour to beat on your first playthrough but there’s plenty of reason to go back through each stage for completionist sake. With some seriously great 8-bit music and sound effects provided by Electric Cafe to round out the package; Rock Boshers DX is yet another PSM game that anyone who owns a PS Certified device needs to check out.

A copy of this game was purchased for review purposes. For more info on our review policy click here. This review is for the PlayStation Vita version of the game.

General Info

  • Players:
  • Small portion of the Vita screen used.
  • Random half-second pauses in action once every few levels.