Boop the snoot [Rocket League]

Hello, my name is DHR, and I'm an addict.

The first day of August I finally decided to buy that funky car soccer game I saw a while ago, got it for Stealth and Marsu and started playing. I thought yeah, it's probably a fun game for a few rounds now and then so, why not? Oh man was I wrong... I've played 40h in the last 2 weeks...

I am very impressed by this game, let me dissect it for those who haven heard of it.  Ever played an arcade racing game like TrackMania? Ever played a soccer game like Street Football? Well, mix them together, add a little pinch of Unreal Engine and remove everything that over-complicates a game et voila! Rocket League. That's it.

Rocket League is the successor of Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars or SARPBC released back in 2008 for the PS3. Even though it received lower than average reviews it was downloaded over 2 million times, yet I still hadn't heard of it. Rocket League got released in July 2015 on both PS4 and PC making it available for a current generation console and the masterrace. In a timespan of one month it got downloaded over 5 million times and completely took the developers by surprise. Please note that both games run Unreal Engine 3, yet look completely different.

Now this is a very special title that has, in its simplicity, a ton of things I really like. First of all the concept. There's one ball, between 2 and 8 cars split into two teams and you have to bump the ball into the opponents goal, no rules apply. The one with the most scored goals in 5 minutes wins. Not so difficult, is it? Let me list up the rest of the features that make this game so awesome, rendering it ideal for competitive gaming as well:

• Picking up this game is extremely easy, getting hold of the basics will take you from 30 to 60 minutes either playing normal matches or using the very helpful training environments. Mastering the game though, that takes loooots of training.
• You have a lot of cars at your disposal, but all with the exact same statistics, so there's never that one car that sucks or the one that's blatantly OP. Same goes for the customization, tons of modifications to make your car unique, but none affect the behavior of your car.

• Clean and user friendly UI. Everything is clear and kept simple.
• Super fast loading and matchmaking, from the point you double click the shortcut on your desktop until you start a round it can take less than 30 seconds.
• Stable connection either playing on an official or dedicated server, cross platform between PC and PS4 is something you don't even notice. I've had only one connection problem in 40 hours of gameplay.
• DLC maps are free, DLC customizing pack costs 3$. Nobody should miss out on playable content or feel obligated to buy a DLC to get the full experience. Do you want more fancy hats? Those cost. I really like that philosophy.

It's an easy game that is fun from the beginning, specially with that low learning curve. Over time you start controlling your vehicle better and better, start doing tricks with your boosters and perfecting the strategies with your teammates. Shoots on goal, saves and aerials can all be trained in the training area, where even real complicated scenarios are recreated with a ball canon that shoots at you. You can also play offline against bots, but they only get good of they are set on All-Star (highest difficulty), yet they still have the tendency to score own goals.

Something that makes me want to keep playing this game is the fact that you don't really get frustrated at any time. We have lost games by 0:5 because the opponent was massively better and the only thing that goes through your head is revenge, so you vote for a rematch and you just try to do it better this time. There are no stats in your face all the time, so you don't really aim for a certain result (except winning of course) that you may miss because you or your teammates suck. All in all you only want to play, playing is more fulfilling than winning and I really missed that these days in gaming.

All in all I love how this game works, super fun gameplay, and neither developer nor publisher are trying to rip us off, probably because Psyonix is both of them. They know what they are doing and I hope to see much more surrounding this game. That's it for my impression of the game so far.

At this point I'd like to thank Stealthkilla, KingB00, Marsu and soon Titandioxid for the awesome matches we have played so far.

Cheers mates

DHR_000x