I was excited to hear that a game based on Rocketmen: Axis of Evil was coming to the Live Arcade -- Rocketmen is a "card game" where the cards have punch-out pieces that you build little spaceships from. Once you have your ships assembled the game is more Warhammer than Magic: The Gathering -- you face off against your opponent's fleet by rolling dice, measuring distances, and hoping that your cardboard and foam ships don't fall apart too often. It's a fun game but there's a lot of overhead -- booster packs are expensive and setting up the pieces is a hassle. That should all be easier thanks to the Live Arcade port, right? Digital spaceships to replace my fragile analog ones? Online play so it'll be easy to find opponents?

Not this time -- it turns out that the upcoming Rocketmen game isn't a port of the card game at all. It's a Smash TV-style arcade shooter:

While the standard sidearm is controlled with the right analog stick (allowing players to fire in any direction), the special weapons are exclusively mapped to the trigger/shoulder buttons. Multiple special weapons can be held at any time, and the left trigger (in the Xbox 360 version) lets you cycle through available weapons before firing with the right trigger. Based on what was shown at Gamers Day, the gameplay follows a pretty standard progression of battling through seemingly endless waves of similar-looking enemies before facing off against one of the game's many massive bosses. The settings may change (rocky planet terrain and a temple can be seen in the available trailers), but the fast-paced shooting action doesn't seem to vary much from stage to stage.

via XBLArcade