When Jared asked me to review Rocket League I responded with snark and skepticism. Granted, anyone that listens to our podcast knows that antagonizing the boss is something of a past-time here at Enemy Slime, but I was legitimately wary that Rocket League could be a good game at all. Most of that comes from the fact that it sounds super silly, and while I do enjoy cars and soccer, I was pretty sure that I didn’t want them together. What a fool I was! Rocket League is the automotive soccer experience I never knew I wanted.
Rocket League puts you in charge of an RC car in a smaller version of a walled in soccer field. The objective of the game is to use the car to knock an enormous soccer ball into a goal. This is harder than it sounds. Your RC car can drive the usual ways, it can jump and drive up walls, and it has a limited boost that you can recharge by driving over specific spots on the map. The physics of the RC cars, while consistent, are designed to be fun more than realistic. They are very easy to maneuver, which cuts down on a lot of the frustration that a game like this may have had. The cars can jump on command, stick to walls, and have a limited boost capability which is replenished by driving over yellow circles around the field. You can even boost during a jump to get more air which really helps with spectacle. There are several cars, with different shapes, and while they largely handle the same there are subtle differences to how the play. For example cars with lower chassis are more likely to send a ball flying in the air.
What makes Rocket League fun is that the game only stops when someone scores. There is no set up, no switching players, no formations to manage, its all non stop gameplay. Despite all the chaos there is strategy to consider as well. Positioning is important for starters. Just driving at the ball like a cheetah on a gazelle will get you nowhere fast. Rather it pays to know where the ball is likely to go and position one self in a way that would allow you to take advantage of that. The physics of the ball are questionable at times but for the most part it behaves largely as you would expect a gigantic ball to behave, which means that it pays off to use the whole body of the car in certain situations, and to make sure you position yourself correctly when hitting it so that it goes to the desired place. There are no formations, no team building, just five minutes of play with sudden death if there is a tie so finding the a good position during the chaos of the matches is easier said than done.
The game has different modes to keep you entertained. Matches can be 1-1, 3-3 (the standard), and 4-4. You can play against the CPU in a exhibition match, create your team and lead them to victory in a season, and take your talents online and play against other players. A nice touch is that the bots are not random. There is a finite number of them and they all have different styles of play and personality, as well as their own names. It won’t be long until you learn who they are, and even get happy or concerned as you see them on the field. It is a lot of fun to nurture your imaginary feuds with them, and it does bring an interesting dimension to picking your team during the season matches.
My only real complaint about the game is the AI difficulty. There seems to be no middle ground, they are either too easy, or they dominate completely. After about a week of hard playing I’ve evolved to the point where I can put up a fight but there certainly was a hard curve to it. The fact remains that where AI difficulty is concerned, they are either much worse than other players, or they are better than most of the people playing the game. This can be an issue in multiplayer too, since the game uses bots to complete teams if there are not enough people to start a match. It can feel kind of cheap to be beaten or to snatch victory by the actions of an AI, but I suppose that’s better than not playing the game at all.
Online is my favorite mode, since playing against human players always offers endless variety. The game ran very well for me, even when it had determined that my connection to the specific server was less than ideal. However, during the first days of the game it was very hard to find matches, or to even connect to a server. This had nothing to do with the number of players playing the game. Rather it was that the servers seemed to be down. On the PS4 I have not experienced since the weekend after it was released. However, on PC I hear that there are issues with the servers still.
Rocket League is a game that only aims to be fun, and it absolutely succeeds in that regard. It doesn’t pretend to be realistic, and it doesn’t have a lot of the trappings of other sports games. It is smart enough to focus on what it does well, and add some small, and subtle details that help to support its strengths. It is one of the most fun games I’ve played this year, and well worth the $20 price tag. If you have a PS4 and a PS Plus account, you owe it to yourself to pick this up for free while its still the free game for July. Recommended for everyone.
This review was done on retail code provided by the publisher.
