When games use puns in their titles, it makes telling opening paragraph jokes that bit harder. Harder. Like a rock. Urgh, see what I mean? Anyway, Rock of Ages 2: Bigger & Boulder is free to try this weekend on Steam, and is half price from now through Monday, February 5. 

RoA 2 is a tower defence-meets-strategy-meets-racing game mashup, and is the sequel to 2011's Rock of Ages. Tom Hatfield enjoyed the latter way back when, upon which last year's well-received follow-up duly improved. Expect destructible environments, smiley-faced rocks, and Monty Python's Flying Circus-esque artwork aplenty. 

Look, see:

Onto the nitty-gritty: Rock of Ages 2 is free to try on Steam now through Sunday, February 4 at 1pm PT/9pm GMT. And if you like what you see there, it's also subject to a 50 percent discount till 10am PT/6pm GMT on Monday—coming it at £5.49/$7.49.

More information on Rock of Ages 2: Bigger & Boulder can be found via the game's official site.    

Rolls out a free weekend, is that better? Probably not.

The original Rock of Ages was a tower-defence-y, and very silly game that mixed strategic base-defence with a second phase where you rolled a giant boulder into enemy territory. The giant boulder wore a really happy expression it just loved bouldering, and who could blame it? In his review, Tom Hatfield described it as "quirky, fun and characterful", but questioned its longevity and depth.

That was in 2011, and to be honest that's the last I expected to hear from ACE Team's nascent series. However, there is to be another. Rock of Ages 2: Bigger and Boulder (groan...no actually I love it) was seemingly announced in early June, but a rebranded trailer to coincide with E3 brought the game to my attention yesterday. Here it is. It's very fun:

Due this autumn/fall, publisher Atlus explains how RoA2 will expand on the original game:

• Up to 4-person Multiplayer - A little friendly competition never hurt anyone, so that's why ACE Team decided to up the gate-smashing stakes by beefing up the multiplayer features of the game. Play with up to four players online in a 2v2 match to the crushing death with the ability to customize banners and colors for your "units." Plus, the tracks now intersect, so you can knock the enemy rocks to get an advantage!
• Utter Chaos - Expanding on the first game with a more diverse selection of units and a larger focus on rock-smashing strategy in Bigger and Boulder, chaos reigns supreme! Just don't take each turn for granite!
• Improved Physics and Destructible Environments - Developed in Unreal Engine 4, Rock of Ages II has upgraded physics and even more things to be cracked, crushed, flattened, and slammed. It's the most fun you can have rolling rocks down a big hill!
• ACE Team's Trademark Quirkiness - With humor is turned up to 11, players will literally rock and roll through the ages. Famous historical figures beware!

We like cheap PC components and accessories. But you know what we like even more? Expensive PC components and accessories that are on sale! We ve partnered with the bargainmeisters at TechBargains to bring you a weekly list of the best component, accessory, and software sales for PC gamers.

Some highlights this week: Western Digital has a dual SSD/HDD for only $120 on newegg. Green Man Gaming and GamersGate are both having large New Year sales, and we have a code to bring Green Man Gaming's $5 games down another 22%. Lenovo's y40 laptops are a few hundred dollars off for each model. You can get a EVGA GTX 980 for $550 that comes with a free Ubisoft game or, if you are looking for a slightly more modest GPU upgrade, the MSI GTX 650Ti is all the way down to $60.

— The NZXT Technologies Kraken G10 Liquid Cooled GPU fan is only $9.99 on TigerDirect after a $10 rebate.

— The Ultra Gladiator Mid-Tower ATX case is $19.99 on TigerDirect after a $20 rebate and with the code BFG150772

— A stick of PNY Optima 4GB DDR3-1333Mhz RAM is $29.99 on TigerDirect after a $10 rebate and with the code OGW150793

— The Dell UltraSharp U2713HM 27in 1440p monitor is $521.99 on Dell s site with the code 78M4SHHJ4JC9WW

— The Lenovo Y40 14in laptop with an Intel i7-4510U CPU is $699 on Lenovo s site with the code DRBUSTER22

— The My Passport Ultra Anniversary Edition 1TB Portable hard drive is $59.99 on newegg with the code EMCAKAS26

— The Western Digital Black Dual Drive 2.5" 120GB SSD/1TB HDD kit is $119.99 on Newegg with the code ESCAKAS25

— The Kingston HyperX Fury 120GB SSD is $57.99 on Newegg.

— The EVGA 04G-2983-KR GeForce GTX 980 is $549.99 on Newegg after a $10 rebate and comes with a free game: Your choice between Assassin s creed: Unity, Far Cry 4, and The Crew.

— The ASUS R9290X-DC2OC-4GD5 Radeon R9 290X is $280.19 on Newegg after a $30 rebate and with the code EMCPWPW37

— The MSI N650Ti-1GD5/OCV4 GeForce GTX 650Ti is $59.99 on Newegg after a $30 rebate.

— Green Man Gaming is having a sale with a selection of EA games for $5, including Crysis 3, Mirror s Edge, The Command & Conquer Ultimate Collection, and more. You can take another 22% off with the code HAPPYN-EWYEAR-22OFFG

— GamersGate s End of Year Sale has massive price cuts on games from Square Enix, Deep Silver, Nordic Games, and more.

— FTL: Faster than Light is 75% off for only $2.50 on Steam. Another dollar will get you the soundtrack as well.

— Rock of Ages is 80% off, down to $2 on Steam all week.

For more tech deals, visit techbargains.com.

A note on affiliates: some of our stories, like this one, include affiliate links to online stores. These online stores share a small amount of revenue with us if you buy something through one of these links, which help support our work evaluating components and games.

ACE Team, the developer behind the delightfully punchy Zeno Clash series, today announced a new game. Abyss Odyssey is a 2D action platformer flavored with the fine spice of randomly generated levels. The new game will also feature a deep fighting engine, along the lines of those normally found in competitive fighting games.



Abyss Odyssey s most interesting trick, though, is letting players explore the game again and again as conquered enemies. Since most of the enemies in the game have a level of depth comparable to the player characters, we developed a special powerup that allows players to capture enemy souls which allows them to later turn into the enemies and play the campaign as those, ACE Team s press release says. Being able to play as dozens of different characters adds a huge level of diversity to the game, since each enemy features its unique moveset and special attacks.



Fighting these NPCs looks like it will be a white-knuckle affair. In the game's reveal trailer, above, an encounter with a skeleton a pushover enemy in every other fantasy world flows back and forth as the player and the NPC trade strikes, blocks and special attacks. Fascinating.

ACE Team will release Abyss Odyssey during 2014. Check out the developer's website for more details.

Everyone's going to be running around as zombies and vampires this weekend. Why not spend Halloween as an enormous rock? Nobody will complain about your costume because who can argue with a big round rock? PLUS you get to crush your enemies beneath your big rolling body, as long as they're standing slightly downhill. Rock of Ages can fulfil these dreams, and can be played against humans for free until Sunday. Visit the Rock of Ages Steam page to download it and have a read of our Rock of Ages review while you wait.

Nothing is sacred to Rock of Ages. Priceless Greek urn? Smash it. Beloved historical figure? Squish them. Tragic Greek myth? Illustrate it by having tiny demons poke a man in the bottom. Anything that stops you from rolling your rock to the end of the course is there to be flattened.

Sessions of Rock of Ages have two phases. In the first you construct towers and catapults on your track to keep the enemy’s rock away from the gate protecting your squishy leader character. In the second you roll your boulder along the enemy’s heavily defended course and batter down the door to the opposing general. You use your defences to try to destroy or slow the enemy rock while taking the shortest possible path to your own target.



The rolling is the most fun by far. You’re in direct control of the rock, which feels incredibly weighty and substantial as it skips, jumps and crashes through obstacles. Carefully guiding the boulder around, over or through defences, is where the real challenge lies – and crushing catapults, cows and elephants beneath your mighty boulder is just smashing. Occasionally you’re interrupted by a pointless boss fight, which is nowhere near as much fun as the rest of the game. Still, it’s hard to complain when you’re defeating an animated version of Michelangelo’s David by repeatedly hitting him in the stones.

Where the artistry of Rock of Ages crumbles is in that first, strategic-defence building phase. In theory it’s the more thoughtful, tactical side of the game, with a whole variety of towers, animals and siege weaponry for you to deploy. The problem is that there’s a very narrow window of opportunity in which to place your defences before your boulder is unleashed, so there isn’t time to do much but scatter these things at a few key chokepoints. Multiplayer opponents are smarter and require more thought, but more often than not games end in a straight race between two rolling stones.



What keeps you coming back is the brilliant silliness of it all. Rock of Ages takes you on a tour through art history, having boulder-based battles with a variety of historical figures, from King Leonidas to Leonardo da Vinci. Each is represented by a cutout model based on famous paintings, dancing around and gibbering unintelligibly. The mix of highbrow art and lowbrow humour is clearly inspired by Terry Gilliam’s classic Monty Python animations, and even if you know nothing about art it’s hilarious to see that one picture of Vlad the Impaler that everyone uses starring in an impromptu Castlevania skit.

Rock of Ages provides a few hours of great fun, and the unique flavour and hilarious cutscenes are worth the budget pricetag. Don’t expect it to hold up to repeated playthroughs, but this is a game about smashing up artwork with a big rock, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

 
Rock of Ages is out next week, a little later than consoles, but with extra stuff to make up for it. PC versions of the game will come with the soundtrack, and the exclusive trollface boulder, which you can see below. It's available to pre-order now on Steam at the slightly reduced price of £6.29 / $8.99.

Rock of Ages has you smashing a series enemy castles across various eras of art history. You have to roll through their troops and defences to get to the gates of each fortress, and prepare defences against your enemy's orb of destruction. Along the way you'll have to fight dragons, topple little medieval men, and catapult your rolling ball of justice right into the statue of David's ... crotch area. It's out next Wednesday.