Rochard is a game where manipulating gravity and using the G-Lifter (a gravity device used to easily move weighty objects around) are crucial elements for success. With the help of his sci-fi mining tools and taking advantage of the laws of physics, the protagonist John Rochard will carry you through a game packed with puzzles, action, humor, great music, excellent level design and a story rich of twists.
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I originally bought, and beat, this game back in 2012, obtaining all the achievements except challenge DLC ones, thinking they would be too tough. So I started playing this a few days ago, went through the first few stages again to remember how to play this... and took on the challenge levels.
Two of them were extremely easy, but I had to resort to video guides for the other two because I had forgotten how some mechanics worked (and one of the challenges involved grabbing an item that was not visible.)
It's a shame this game was lost to bankruptcy. It was something really special, the music was great, and while simple, it was still challenging enough to be entertaining. I keep hoping this will be brought back, especially since the game ended on a cliffhanger of sorts... but that probably won't happen.
6th game cleared in 2024. Time to clear: 17.6 Hours across 13 years according to Steam. 18/18 achievements obtained (challenge achievements completed this week.) Laser-powered weight loss sessions: Too many.
Two of them were extremely easy, but I had to resort to video guides for the other two because I had forgotten how some mechanics worked (and one of the challenges involved grabbing an item that was not visible.)
It's a shame this game was lost to bankruptcy. It was something really special, the music was great, and while simple, it was still challenging enough to be entertaining. I keep hoping this will be brought back, especially since the game ended on a cliffhanger of sorts... but that probably won't happen.
6th game cleared in 2024. Time to clear: 17.6 Hours across 13 years according to Steam. 18/18 achievements obtained (challenge achievements completed this week.) Laser-powered weight loss sessions: Too many.
It was okay for its' time. Lost to bankruptcy.
grinders blues is an absolute bop
This feels remarkably similar to Headlander, and not just because it's a puzzly shooter sidescroller. The semi-humoristic atmosphere, the retrofuturistic ambience, the back-and-forth progression - it's less memorable than its counterpart, but for some reason feels better. Probably because all the shooting and puzzling feels more direct and without too many supposedly whacky things getting in the way. Huh, maybe being a bit more boring can be good sometimes.
A pretty neat if simple puzzle platformer with a big emphasis on throwing physics objects around. Besides chucking objects around to solve puzzles, you can also chuck boxes at enemies (or just shoot them, alternatively) which is pretty neat! There's not much here beyond that, but what is there satisfies. That's plenty good enough.
In Rochard, you play as John Rochard, a miner on the mega-corporation space program Skyrig. Your team hasn’t found anything in a long time and is about to get their project funding cut when they come upon something strange. This just so happens to be some weird alien artifact, but the story pretty much stops there. You find out there’s a bad guy, then you run off to stop him. That’s as far as the story goes and it’s completely forgettable and uninteresting. The ending doesn’t even make any sense. Rochard also has unwieldy controls and terrible dialog.
You get one weapon, but this is also your gravity gun, or G-lifter, that you can use to move stuff around. You can switch to your rock laser which is like a gun, then you have grenades. Things seem pretty easy for a while, then when you get 3/4 through, the game gets really tough to combat wise. The controls are not fun because the game requires you to use this G-lifter in combat as well. If you have 3 bad guys, 2 robots, and 2 turrets shooting at you which leaves you pretty much screwed because you can die in just a few hits in this game. If there’s a heavy crate nearby just turn on zero-gravity to move it in front of you as cover. This completely sucks because you have to switch to the G-lifter and be completely vulnerable. You can shoot grenades at any time but you have to aim them.
The G-lifter is mainly used for puzzles that require you to move circuit breakers around, boxes, and laser cutters. Very rarely are the puzzles challenging, but when they are you really have to think. Sometimes you are flipping the room up and down, using gravity, and jumping skills. The rest of the game is usually a breeze if you aren’t getting killed 20 times by the same set of bad guys. The main challenge is figuring out how to get through different force fields because these are what the puzzles are wrapped around. Blue ones mean you can’t put crates through them, red means you can go through, white means nothing can go through, and yellow means weapons can’t go through. Remembering all this is important, but in the end, the puzzles are pretty uninteresting.
Jumping around the world of Rochard is pretty boring thanks to the terrible story, bad dialog, and unlikable characters. They are cheesy, corny, and just overall bad. There are only a few interesting moments in Rochard, but the overall game is a decent puzzle/platform run. If you can stomach the bad controls, poor combat mechanics, and lame story then you will have a few hours of fun here.
You get one weapon, but this is also your gravity gun, or G-lifter, that you can use to move stuff around. You can switch to your rock laser which is like a gun, then you have grenades. Things seem pretty easy for a while, then when you get 3/4 through, the game gets really tough to combat wise. The controls are not fun because the game requires you to use this G-lifter in combat as well. If you have 3 bad guys, 2 robots, and 2 turrets shooting at you which leaves you pretty much screwed because you can die in just a few hits in this game. If there’s a heavy crate nearby just turn on zero-gravity to move it in front of you as cover. This completely sucks because you have to switch to the G-lifter and be completely vulnerable. You can shoot grenades at any time but you have to aim them.
The G-lifter is mainly used for puzzles that require you to move circuit breakers around, boxes, and laser cutters. Very rarely are the puzzles challenging, but when they are you really have to think. Sometimes you are flipping the room up and down, using gravity, and jumping skills. The rest of the game is usually a breeze if you aren’t getting killed 20 times by the same set of bad guys. The main challenge is figuring out how to get through different force fields because these are what the puzzles are wrapped around. Blue ones mean you can’t put crates through them, red means you can go through, white means nothing can go through, and yellow means weapons can’t go through. Remembering all this is important, but in the end, the puzzles are pretty uninteresting.
Jumping around the world of Rochard is pretty boring thanks to the terrible story, bad dialog, and unlikable characters. They are cheesy, corny, and just overall bad. There are only a few interesting moments in Rochard, but the overall game is a decent puzzle/platform run. If you can stomach the bad controls, poor combat mechanics, and lame story then you will have a few hours of fun here.