Genesis ~ Chuck Rock Review

Overview

Chuck Rock is about a dirty old caveman called Chuck Rock, who embarks on a wonderful, yet dangerous journey to save his wife, Ophelia who was just recently captured by another dirty man, Gary Gritter.

This game is exciting, colourful and prehistorically mad!

Gameplay

Gameplay is very general. You try and make to the other side of the level without dying. Along each level, include wierd monsters, dinosaurs and harmful organisms, like slime and prickles.

Chuck Rock's arsenal of moves include picking up rocks for protection or for chucking, jumping, kicking in mid air and by far the most interesting, bellying! And certainly bellying enemies is fun!

But it would have been nice to have several prehistoric weapons. Level after level it gets way harder!

After level 5, the place seems to be cluttered with monters, and just bellying around won't do.

So the game is very fun, just far too difficult (for me anyway!)

7 out of 10

Graphics

This is the absolute strongest point in Chuck Rock, because the graphics so wonderfully detailed, colourful and very cartoonish. The animations are lively while still maintaining an incredibly fast and smooth framerate.

5 out of 5

Sound

Excellent music tunes and it really suits the prehistoric theme. The sound effects are cartoony but it seems as if there isn't enough of it.

There aren't any monster or dinosaur grunts. There really should have been sound effects for Chuck landing after his jumps, because this game does involve alot of jumping.

4 out of 5

Game Design

It starts of nice and easy, but after the fifth level, it gets way hard!

Once you die, you're back to square one on that level and that's too bad, because it's already hard enough to make past level 5. This is a challenging game indeed.

It would've been much better if could carry on from where you died or have some sort of checkpoint.

Most levels do require some srategy to pass it, such as using animals and dinosaurs to assist you and using rocks for protection.

The startup screen is a real bonus. You get to see Chuck Rock's rock band, playing their awesome Chuck Rock tune. Awesome!

3.5 out of 5

Longevity

With this game being so hard, and without any save option, you'll always come back for more to figure out ways to finish levels faster, by knowing where monsters are, where the energy replenishing hearts are and how to use the rocks.

3.5 out of 5

For: Very fun, easy controls, cool startup screen, superb music and graphics, good use of colours and weird monsters

Against: Too hard to clock in one go and not many good sound effects

Storyline (external)

Seeing the intro is not shown in the Genesis version, this is how it goes:

Chuck Rock is at home naked, drinking beer and watching the daily news on his TV set with a bird acting like an aerial! (of course no TV's existed back in the BC)

Chuck's wife Ophelia is outside hanging up the washing.

Gary Gritter hiding in the bushes, sneaks up behind Ophelia, knocks her out with a club and carrys her away. Chuck hears the incident, goes outside naked and find that Ophelia is gone!

His clothes are still in the wash and a little pterosaur tells Chuck "He went that way!"

Embarrassed, he wraps his private bits up with some bush and off he goes to save Ophelia!

Why couldn't Chuck put on his own clothes of the washing line, or is he a daily nude freak?

Why on earth would Gary Gritter want Ophelia when there are millions of other unmarried girls?

Does Chuck Rock have any past history with Gary Gritter?

All is unanswered, so you're left with you in control of Chuck Rock and not knowing what the hell you're doing during the game, because none of the plot is resolved during the game.

Seeing this game was only meant to be sort of like a cartoon, I do suppose the storyline is OK!

3 out of 5