If you’ve read the Rocketmen: Axis of Evil introduction from producer Robert Hamiter, or have seen some of the coverage its received on various gaming sites and blogs, you already know some of the cool things about the game. If you visited our booth at Comic-Con in July, you may have even had a chance to try out an early version of the game. If you want to know more, or haven’t heard about it at all but want to see why it’s going to be one of the coolest downloadable shooters when it comes out, then keep reading.

Note that all screenshots are work-in-progress.

First things first. Rocketmen is a simple two-stick shooter, multiplayer co-op with up to 4 players locally or online. There’s a ton of character customization and upgrading and leveling up. It’s based on a WizKids card-based game property, and should be out later this year for both Xbox LIVE Arcade and PlayStation Network.

Character customization is something that we’re starting to see more and more in games, but this new standard hasn’t really made its way to download-only titles. But I think Rocketmen is really leading the way in this regard, adding a lot more variety and value to the download model. You select your character’s name gender, race (Rebel, Venus, Mars), class (Warrior, Engineer, Outcast), hair color, skin color, and your clothing’s secondary color. And that’s just for starters.

Click through to keep reading and see a bunch of exclusive new screenshots.

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As you play through the game, you’ll be able to purchase armor/costume upgrades with experience points you grab during the game. Plus, when you complete stages you will be offered character stat and armor upgrades.

As you can see below, the character on the left and the one in the middle have been upgraded pretty extensively, while the one on the right was just started. And as you can see in the first screenshot, you will have multiple slots to create and build up different characters.

And your character will show up in the cutscenes in all his or her tricked out glory.

On top of customizing the look of your character and upgrading as you play through the game, you’ll also be able to customize your character’s stats. You start off pretty weak, but as you play through more missions, you gain valuable experience points to upgrade your traits such as speed, health, default weapon damage, as well as the power of individual weapon pick-ups (have time limits) like the shot-gun and laser cannon. You can also stock up on these weapon pickups, as well as secondary weapons like rockets, grenades, and turrets before you head into the next mission.

So you can decide if you just want to make your character run faster or do more damage, or spread it out to give yourself a little bit of everything at once.

Besides character customization, the thing that really makes Rocketmen cool and a lot of fun to play is multiplayer. As I said earlier, you can play with up to 4 players total, either locally or online. This is co-op through the whole game, and you can definitely kick up the difficulty level for that extra bit of challenge.

Below are 6 new gameplay screenshots (click on them to enlarge). I’ll talk about some of the cool things to look for in each.

In this shot we see the colored rings around each of the three characters. In the bottom left, that player has just rescued a prisoner (orange jumpsuit). In the middle are floating health pick-ups near the pile of enemies the other two players just mowed down.

Here we have the green player with a spread shotgun (powered up some) and the speed boots pick-up (notice the glowing red trail). The other two players just destroyed a nasty turret that shoots green energy blasts, and all that’s left of the turret is a bit of smoke and a few sparks. You can also see the different kinds of “experience point” pick-ups dropped by enemies on the right hand side of the screen. When you play multiplayer, just don’t hog all the goodies or your friends may not want to play with you anymore. lol

Various things going on here. Notice the spread shot and the bullet casings scattered on the floor.

Here we have one of the players calling in an air strike in the form of giant laser-like pillars that sweep across the screen, taking out all enemies in its path.

The next two are from a different stage, with Martians, crazy beasts, and more. Here enemies are charging, and you can see the disk/saw blade shots flying across the screen.

Here’s a mid-boss, with lots of stuff going on. Notice the two disk/saw blade weapon pick-ups on either side of the mid-boss, with something having just blown up on the bottom left.

There you go. With 4-player co-op, character customization and leveling up, and lots of stages, there’s plenty of replay value here to say the least.

I’m pretty excited about the game, and I can’t wait to do some more capturing so I can post some videos of the latest version of the game in action. You should see what looks like 50 or 100 Martians trying to cram through a door for a chance to kill you.

If you have any questions about the game, ask here in the comments or on our XLA/PSN title forums. Assuming it’s something I can disclose, I’ll either answer myself or ask the producer himself.

—Brian