From -Alpha
Who knew a simple concept like SocCAR could be so fun and deeply competitive?
Rocket League, the sequel to lesser known Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars, is a soccer game that combines physics based gameplay with rocket powered cars, to create something that is devilishly addictive, and compellingly competitive.
At first, it sounds like a really silly concept: how does driving vehicles mesh well with playing soccer? How does a physics based game accurately allow for fine control over your vehicle? Doesn’t the novelty wear off after a few matches? Yet, when you sit down to play Rocket League, you are really sucked into just how fun of a concept the game is.
The first thing you notice is how simple the physics and controls are: your vehicle has a throttle, a brake, a button to brake into a drift, boost, and a jump. Tight controls and easy pick up and play mechanics allow anyone to jump into Rocket League and chase after the ball, score into the enemy net, and hastily play defense to protect your own. Rocket League also has plentiful options that allow you to customize things like camera angles, and key binding, which gives an incredible level of control for any player’s preference. But despite this simplicity, there is an incredible layer of depth that has fans perfecting their craft: intermediate players are able to double jump, front flip, backflip, ride walls, and side dash in mid air.
Even more advanced players woll learn to mess around with the boost ability of your car. The agility and nimbleness of your vehicle allows you to do some truly amazing things. Great players can front flip or back flip to gain small speed boosts, a subtle but important mechanic that allows you to rush from one side of the goal to the other. A nice “wind” effect on screen lets you know that your vehicle has broken into sonic speed, a max speed that allows you to get anywhere fast and demolish enemy players temporarily by crashing into them.
Even the basic boost has varying layers of depth: a novice player may use boost to move faster, but an advanced player dominates the boost pick-ups: since boost is picked up by running over various boost pads, a good player has great map control to keep opponents relatively empty on boost. Most impressive and skilled of all is using boost to literally fly in the sky, allowing for amazing aerial maneuvers. Despite the physics based nature of the game, nothing feels out of your control, as the ball goes where you expect it to go, depending on the angle, speed, and way you hit it.
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The insane layers to the physics, driving, and acrobatics allows you to take full control of your vehicle, without ever feeling like you are doing something random or mindless. It’s a grand testament to what makes Rocket League so well put together, as the gameplay mechanics just fit together perfectly and complimentarily, like a good PB&J sandwich. It’s no wonder then, that fans are calling Rocket League an eSport.
There is a very great level of meta-gameplay and thinking in these matches. Provided that you play with complimentary A.I. (or against the same skilled online players), you can expect to always find a deeply thoughtful game of SocCAR, regardless of your skill level. These features clearly allow Rocket League to be competitive, and in turn, fiercely exhilarating. You can expect to hold your breath, shout out cries of victory, and curse at your screen as if watching an actual sporting event. Rocket League is fun, in the rawest definition of the word.
A myriad of bells and whistles accompany the core competitive gameplay. A very basic season mode allows you to choose a pre-designed team, featuring a team logo selector, a colour scheme that affects the stadium colour and UI, and user generated team name. Options to select the type of game -- solo, doubles, standard 3v3, and chaos 4v4 are the de facto modes in offline and online -- the number of season games, finals team limit, the type of vehicle your teammates are, and A.I. difficulty are the barebones of what to expect. In typical fashion, you play through a series of matches, with the intent of qualifying for, and winning the finals. There is no real fanfare to any of this: if you complete and win the season, you are shown a graphic of a gold trophy as the credits roll. Instead, season mode feels like a slapped together offline mode to satisfy those wanting to avoid playing online.
The A.I in season mode, which also acts as a replacement player in online matches, plays as you would expect, depending on difficulty. At medium difficulty, you can expect some fumbles from both your partner and opponents (sometimes the A.I would accidentally score on their own net, as opposed to simply breaking to avoid hitting the ball). At higher difficulty, the A.I is more aggressive. You can expect to rely on your A.I in some situations. They will react to rebounds and play defensively when the ball is in your zone, so there is never an issue of your teammate feeling like a hindrance. If you’d rather not deal with an A.I partner, season mode can also be played split-screen.
While there isn’t much fanfare to season mode, it serves as an enjoyable context for those wanting to play offline.
There is one particular nice touch I want to mention about season mode, which will also bring me to discuss the playing fields: when you play season matches, you play through a few themed fields, with the finals being played in the two “stadium” themed fields. You can play through these stadiums in season mode if you make it to the finals, making the minimally put together season mode somewhat special. These stadiums are fully featured with chanting fans, an announcer that shouts “gooaall!” when you score, and a beautiful field of Rocket League official playing grass. The other non-stadium fields include isolated parks or train stations featuring grey concretes, or patchy, well traveled grass, adding a level of genuinity and character to the areas you play on.
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All the maps are standardly shaped. Typical rectangle shapes, with rideable walls and roofs. Gone are the variety maps from Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars and, while disappointing in number of total maps -- four at release-- Psyonix intends to support both the variety maps of old, and more standard maps, through free DLC. One other neat feature with maps is that one or two of them feature different themes. Two feature rainfall, which adds a moody feeling to the field and another map features a midnight theme, which is probably the most visually gorgeous field available. A fully starry sky and a shining moon really make the field feel hauntingly beautiful to play. Playing fields also feature other little trinkets. You can expect to hear the train station and some hip hop music in the fan favourite remake of Urban, and as mentioned earlier, stadiums feel loud and full with fans chanting the teams on. Despite the few maps available and despite the lack of variety on launch, the gorgeous themes and attention to detail make the fields feel lively, and organic.
Speaking of sound, Rocket League features the standard revs of vehicle engines and screeching of tires... but most exceptional is the soundtrack. The main theme is a standard instrumental, but most of the soundtrack consists of beautiful female vocal tracks from electronic and trance genres. These tracks, and the vocals themselves, are really great and they really help the presentation of the game come together.
Outside of season mode, a more basic exhibition mode lets you play a single level to your content. If you are wanting to be punished, there is also an “Unfair” mode that pits you 1v4 against bots. A well designed training mode allows you to do a tutorial, which is divided into basic and advanced. In addition, you can freely play a track without any bots. Best of all, you can also test your goalie, striker, and aerial skills in a 3-tier difficulty system that really helps you learn the most advanced tricks to saving, scoring, and mastering aerial acrobatics. The training mode does a fantastic job of serving you a series of 10 scenarios to test your skills in the three available categories. Depending on the difficulty, these scenarios place balls in different areas of the map, at different speeds, and at different elevations, to best help you learn scoring, saving, and aerial techniques. This is a very well appreciated mode, as the only other way to learn the mechanics is to play an actual game against A.I or online players.
My favourite extra feature, the stat tracking, is also included and features a myriad of accomplishments that you can earn in-game, such as number of assists, bicycle kicks, saves, epic saves, and so on. In addition is an average breakdown of your performance, with a win/loss ratio.
Any match played can also be saved to the replay theater, which features everything you can expect to find in a replay editor.
Perhaps the biggest change to Rocket League is the addition of customization. At launch, there are over 150 mods to unlock, including a variety of vehicles from big to small, hunky and sleek. PlayStation fans can even expect to find good old Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal fame. As if the gameplay wasn’t rewarding enough, every game played unlocks a random one of these 150 mods, so you can always expect to find a new decal, paint finish, wheels, boost effect -- featuring various colours and effects like smoke, fire, and even dollar bills -- hats, and antennae. In addition, you are always gaining XP when finishing matches, which levels up your rank.
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The constant rewarding, and the variety of these unlocks adds a lot of personality to your vehicle, but it’s important to note that these mods are all cosmetic. This allows Rocket League to remain incredibly competitive without feeling unfair, since no one unlocks a faster car, or a car that jumps higher than anyone else’s. The only difference here are the differently shaped vehicles, which have very small hitbox differences.
The online play is the real star of Rocket League’s gameplay. At launch online play is distinctly divided into casual modes (ranging from 1v1 all the way to 4v4), and ranked modes (featuring 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3). Ranked modes additionally rate your performance and skill rating, allowing you to move up from the starting rookie status. You can expect to find a variety of leaderboards that allow you to track ranked modes, casual modes, find players who have the most wins, goals, MVP awards, saves, shots, and even assists. Dedicated servers help Rocket League feel smooth and fair online, and matchmaking that lets you select from one of four regions (US East, US West, Europe, and Oceania) gives you control over how you decide to search for your games.
The interface is very slick, as you can actually accurately see how many players are playing each mode, and more impressively, you can even do things like play practice mode while the game match-makes in the background. An in-game chat also allows you to communicate with all players, while a quick chat lets you shout out 16 different phrases ranging from apologies and compliments to even private plays for just your teammates. Quick chatting 'Defending', for example, let’s your team know that you intend to play defense. This provides a quick but easy way to strategize without using a microphone. The option to disable this feature is also available for those who want to rely purely on a microphone.
It’s also important to note that Rocket League features cross-play with Steam, a feature that can also be turned off in case you don’t feel like playing against other systems. At launch, there does not seem to be a way to party up with friends on other platforms, but apparently, Psyonix intends to support this post-launch.
Online and cross play aren’t the only available options, as split-screen for up to 4 players is also included. It’s as easy as connecting a controller and instantly being included in the party. I have to commend Psyonix particularly with how great of a feature this is. While you can play split-screen offline, you can also take your split-screen friends with you online, playing against the rest of the world, and even allowing you to team up with you and your split-screen buddies. Season mode also supports split-screen play.
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Psyonix has done a fantastic job with making Rocket League so incredibly flexible, as not only do they provide content that is rarely supported by traditional developers, they also allow you to turn off or tinker with their settings, ensuring accessibility for a wide range of players. At a technical level, the game runs at 1080p and 60 frames-per-second, with slight framerate drops on rainy maps. Loading times are fast, for both online and offline modes, as you won’t have to wait for more than 5 seconds when starting a match. The game is also polished, with no noticeable bugs or blemishes.
Rocket League really has cultivated into something special. Accessible and competitive, easy to pick up and hard to master. Psyonix has launched a sport that has easily become one of PlayStation 4’s best multiplayer experiences, complete with bells and whistles, traditional split-screen action, and modern competitive matchmaking. Psyonix has taken its magical combination of physics based soccer and super-sonic acrobatic rocket powered battle cars to create a truly memorable experience.
Available on Steam and PlayStation 4 on July 7th, Rocket League will eat hours of your life and rob you of sleep as you whisper to yourself “just. one. more. match."
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saw some gameplay video of this game. Looks like it could be a fun experience with friends.
This game looks incredibly fun and best part, no more waiting. Thanks PS+ and also nice play on the word - socCAR.
i was sooo happy when i saw this on the PS+ Free games
this looks so fun and i need a split screen game
Downloading now through PS+, I can't wait as everybody seems to have good stuff to say about this game.
And its free on PS+. :D