Rocket League

When was the last time anyone has ever heard of race cars and soccer fields used in the same sentence? Nobody expected those two things to ever come together, but Psyonix Inc. has taken a second chance with the release of Rocket League for the PS4 and the PC through Steam in the summer of 2015. Psyonix first released the original version on the PS3 with Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars! The original game received a 6.5/10 from IGN, and a 3.5/5 from Metacritic, which indicates it received fair reviews for its unique style of game play. Teams of race cars competing together against other players did not maintain its popularity during the time the game was released because of such titles like Gears of War, Fallout 3, Assassin’s Creed, and Call of Duty: World at War dominating the world of gaming. Despite the slow start of the first title, Rocket League has now changed how gamers will spend their time in the living room with their friends!

Rocket League allows players to compete in teams against each other. The objective is simple and based on the rules of soccer, but slightly more twisted. A team must score as many goals as possible against the other in a five minute game, just like Soccer. On the field, games can range from 4 players versus 4, down to 1 on 1 match ups. Rocket League features online and offline multiplayer, as well as split-screen, allowing the action to be played at home with up to four players. The solo campaign allows you to play in a league against computer controlled teams, depending on the number of teams the player wants to compete against. However, the excitement comes with online multiplayer. Players compete in a dome-like soccer field, allowing your car to ride along the walls and ceiling of the field. On the field, boosters are located along the floor to provide rocket fuel to your car in order to get across the field with little effort, and hit the oversized soccer ball for the game winning goal! Since there must be a winner, Rocket League features an overtime phase if the score is tied after the five minute game in which a "GOLDEN GOAL" decides who wins.

Rocket League lets you choose from a selection of vehicles, each with a unique design and different abilities. A race car that looks like a Ferrari will move very fast across the soccer field, but will not hit the ball with the same power that a monster truck race car will. This allows players to experiment with different vehicles and find the right type of car for their own playing style. Every race car in Rocket League has a booster which allows them to boost across the field at any time. Once the boost runs low, the player can refuel by driving over the booster pads along the floor, or driving by sphere boosters for complete refueling.  Rocket League has included a large selection of modifications for every vehicle, such as choosing the color of your vehicle, Home and Away teams, and the type of fuel your booster will exhibit as you drive along the field, to name a few. The additions include decals, rims, toppers (hats!), and antennas which even have flags of different countries, so you will never see the same car twice!

Since Rocket League has a training mode, learning how to play Rocket League is not very difficult. The training mode covers everything you need to know about the game from basic boosting to advanced techniques, such as aerial hits and boosting aerial hits. Anyone who plays the training mode once will be ready to take on the world of multiplayer and become Rocket League elite. The more matches you play the more rewards you earn for each vehicle depending on the vehicle you use.  As you win more matches, your Rocket League rank also goes up, but the multiplayer search will match players based on their rank in order to maintain competitive matches. The game features local leader board and global leader board which allow players to see where they rank with friends or around the world. In case you do not want to play ranked matches, there are social matches to choose from.  Rocket League has been successful scoring 9 out of 10s across the board, and it is officially an E-Sport joining the Electronic Sports League this month.

If you are up for suspenseful moments with your friends or online, Rocket League is an excellent game to add to your collection of video games and things to do. From pimping out your classic race car corvette to scoring the game winning hit in overtime with an off the wall hit, Rocket League will be sure to capture that competitive feeling that we have all experienced.

Beezy