Rating: 4/5
You may remember a segment from Top Gear involving cars, a large soccer ball and an attempt to play soccer. Entertaining in its own right, it wasn’t enough for the developers over at Psyonix, who figured it would make a more entertaining game if you added rockets. Welcome to Rocket League, a game that can be simply described as soccer … with rocket-powered cars. In its simplicity comes the challenge; it is easy to learn but difficult to master the skills needed to take on the many AI opponents, as well as your local and online multiplayer competitors.
The core of the game is pretty bare bones. Your job is to get the large illuminated ball into the other team’s goal. The team with the most goals at the end of five minutes is the winner. You can jump, or even double jump, your vehicle in any direction, giving you more control to intercept, pass and kick the ball.
You also have a limited pool of rocket boost, accelerating your car in the direction it’s facing, which can be replenished with respawning pickups. It’s easy enough to learn how to use them in the game’s tutorial and practice modes, but very difficult to get the hang of — being able to hit the ball in midair is usually more about luck than skill. Don’t get me wrong, some people have practised for hours on end to do such feats, but the best bet for the rest of us is to wait for the ball to hit the ground.
Don’t worry if the other team keeps clustering around the ball either; you can momentarily destroy your opponent’s cars by ramming them at speed. There’s not much else to the game, but it’s grown quite popular, even becoming the latest game to become an official E-Sport with an official MLG tournament.
There’s only a handful of game modes, including the exhibition matches against AI of varying degrees of difficulty, online matchmaking and local multiplayer. You can select up to four players on each team, with empty slots filled by AI players, whose skills range from “scoring on their own goal” to “perfect aim every time”. There is also a league mode that allows you to play against the AI in your own league, which feels more like an online practice mode but is a good opportunity to gain experience, both in your own learning and in your profile, which helps the online matchmaking set you up with similarly skilled players.
Your profile experience also contributes to cosmetic unlocks for your vehicle. You can pick between several paint jobs, bodies, colour palates for the two teams, hats, aerials and what your boost looks like. You can also purchase more through DLC, with one pack released so far.
The game’s graphics feature a near futuristic visual style, with many shiny or glowing surfaces supplementing each stadium’s unique look. Action takes place in a dimly glowing hex-shaped mesh dome that keeps the ball in play, and provides a surface for your car to climb. The ball has highlighted segments that glow in the colour of the last team to touch it. When it crosses the goal line, the ball is illuminated as if it were passing through a force field before exploding, confirming your score.
Rocket League is worth playing if you are looking for simple fun. It’s easy to pick up, play a few rounds, and put down again. It also makes for a great local multiplayer party game. But if you are interested in something with complexity and variety, you might want to look elsewhere as the current game modes are limited. If you like the idea of flinging yourself around a futuristic soccer pitch in a rocket-powered car, look no further.