User Review : Rocket League

A Future eSport?

Soccer has been in the news a bunch over the last month or so. The Woman's Cup just ended with a dominating United States victory, and FIFA is getting investigated left and right for corruption charges (Qatar, seriously?). And in what is probably the smartest timing ever, Rocket League now hits the spotlight as soccer is fresh in everyone's minds. The twist? We're playing in cars.

Yes, just like that episode of Top Gear, but this time with nitro, flying, and pizzaz. Does the game take soccer to the next level in the video game world, or does some horrors exist under the hood, like those deep with Sept Bladder's mind.

The game is simple: it's soccer with cars as said before. There's a giant ball that each of the teams need to hit in any way they can into the opposing team's goal. The game's simple nature takes a hold here, and the simple idea of putting a ball into goal becomes ever so complicated by the additions of the cars and the arena themselves. There's a variety of game types here at the core, from a one on one competition, to a 4v4 chaotic free for all. You've got a season mode, online mode of course, and exhibition and training options. I want to focus on the core gameplay. The whole put ball in goal thing.

You have a couple of major tools to help in your goal (literally) at your disposal. First. In your car, you have your typical controls that you'd expect, with the ability to accelerate, break, and do sharp turns. Your car does have a nitro boost as well, as you can use it to speed down the arena toward where you need to be by spending the boost that you've gained by driving over certain sections of the field. Most of the segments toward the middle of the field give you small points of boosts, while the large glowing circles towards the corners of the field will fill up your boost entirely. You also have the ability to jump as well, and double jump if necessary. This can give you some necessary height in a bouncing ball situation, but does not come with the timing needed to use it properly.

You also have two major tools at your disposal, the ability to flip your car forward at any time, to gain not only a small boost of speed, but to cause a force on the ball to hopefully drive it toward the goal. Your positioning is key here as how you hit the ball will determine its direction of travel, and is the main tool in your arsenal not only for attempting to score, but defending your goal as well. And this is where the core of the game lies, as you see cars flips and jetting around in an attempt to move the ball the way you want.

Now you technically also have the ability to fly by combine your jump and the boost, but the situations that you need this in are limited, and good luck getting it to work the way you want in the first couple of hours, mostly because you need an understanding of the physics of the ball, and the way it's moving in order to compensate for the balls movement in order to hit it. Needless to say, you'll be cursing at yourself for the first several hours as you keep on repeatedly missing over....and over....and over.....and over.....you get the idea.

You'll quickly learn that the game rewards a couple of ideas at the core. First is your positioning in combination with timing. You'll quickly learn that the game is not the demolition derby, and throwing your car around with reckless abandon, despite how fun that can be, won't get you the results you want. Putting your car in the right position to speed forward is key, and that does NOT mean being directly in the pack and waiting for the ball to fall down on your head.

And then comes the concept of timing. Using your positioning, speeding forward and understanding how Isaac Newton is going to ruin your attempt this time around is massively important. Understanding the way you are hitting the ball with your vehicle and the angle your car hits the ball, that's important to succeed. Get the timing right: and you'll feel like a million bucks. Get it wrong, and well you'll feel silly.

But that's the fun part about this. The game is still fun even if you don't have full control of that, and that's what's great about the design here. Newbie players even if they are losing can still have fun learning the game, getting involved, and letting luck sometimes allow a lucky bounce to give them a goal that'll make them feel like a champ. When I talk about simplicity in game design and how over design can hurt games, Rocket League is the prime example of enough design around a simple concept can go do so well to bring tons of players in. It's the kind of game that you can get a couple of friends, and just a nice party night. Smart decisions were made all over the place to make an experience that encourages fun. You know, that whole fun thing? Remember that?
This is where the key understanding of how the game was designed from the ground up comes into play, as every key decision that was made was made for a couple of core concepts in mind: balance, fun, and skill versus luck.

Let's take a look at the arena in particular and notice the edges of the arena in question. Notice that unlike a typical indoor soccer field, the wall themselves are curved upward. This changes things in a variety of ways. First of all, it changes up the number of ways the ball can move. Now in most games with an arena on the outside, it'd act as what you'd see in those old lessons of physics and light reflection, taking the same angle it came on the way in. But with the curved edges, that makes a huge difference, as it multiplies the number of possible angles and allows the ball to travel up it, which adds a level of unpredictability, and something that players have to react to. It's hard to get it to do the same thing twice off these walls without complete control: which is probably something you won't have considering the whole other team breathing down your neck thing.

And notice the positioning of the boost pads in particular. What was cleverly done here was the positioning and the amount that the boost pads gave. In particular, zooming down the arena can be made more effective in the middle with hitting these small yet significant boost pads, but doesn't give enough to just allow for the reckless use of them. They are spaced out just enough to allow for those who get a hold of the controls of the game enough of a boost to take an advantage of them in terms of positioning, but not enough to cause an overwhelming advantage to that particular player. Again, that's the great thing about it: it's all about the subtle advantages that you can get. It has more competitive balance then several of the major sports can claim, that's for sure.

It also helps that the visual elements of the game never work against the gameplay as well. In a game like this, where it has enough attention to be eSports like, I could have seen the designers being over the top with the ball, effects and the visuals. And while you have customization of your car and small elements regarding it: it never detracts from the game itself. The different stadiums and color choices complement gameplay, rarely ever going against the blue versus orange color scheme, and even though there's stadiums I definitely prefer, overall it does a bang up job of supporting the game in question.

But beyond that, what's the downsides of the game? I've basically been giving this game nothing but praise from the get go here. Well unfortunately, a key element of it for several people may be it's undoing for the time being: the networking. Now it's gotcross play between the PS4 and the PC. And when I've been in games, the games netcode has been great. Game has run smoothly in fact. The problem? Let me let the game show you.

Yeah, beyond the problems of the PSN that seem to be plaguing the service over the last several weeks.....months......years... ..Rocket League also had several problems, with it indicating I was offline when I clearly online, and not having servers available. Now note, the guys over at Psyonix are on the case and attempting to bring more servers online, but I can't sit here and say that it hasn't been frustrating to find a game online. The game has gotten a lot of attention, and for good reason, but if it's going to keep it going, it's got to take care of this....now.

I've noticed it improve over the last two days in particular, but who knows if it can scale with any more increased presence from the gaming community, and whether it can keep up with it. They did do beta periods, and I don't think they were ready for as many people being in the game that there were, but I will point out that the fact that it was free on PSPlus, which in the end was a very smart move on their part, probably should have been taken into account on the necessity of the servers.

And let's face it, the game is a lot more fun in multiplayer, mostly because of the AI. Now don't get me wrong, the AI can do some reasonable things and can be fun to play against at times, especially at higher difficulty. And surprisingly, I'm a kind of person who wants to play a lot with an AI and single player before I even dip into the Multiplayer scene. And they did an ok job of testing me.

But on the flip side, the AI can do some incredibly silly things. Now note, to program AI in a game like this can be difficult to give the idea of human flaws, so was I expecting an own goal at times? Yeah, I was, that's going to happen, it happens to the best of us. And even collisions when attempting to score with seemingly no one in front of me. But no, I”m talking about when the AI literally pushes the ball from the other end of the arena, toward the middle area of your goal. That's more then just silly, that's just idiotic, and something that while I'm forgiving of some of the smaller things, seems like should be avoided at all costs from the AI. You will curse the AI, mostly because the fact that you'd seemly want better from it. It's not the worst AI I've seen, not by a long shot, but trust me when I say you will get frustrated with it, mostly because you've seen it be competent.

But overall, this game does what I believe it set out to do: create a balanced and party like game that is easy to pick up, hard to master, and yet allows for different skill levels to come together and enjoy themselves, even when they are losing. I'm a person who can get frustrated, especially in MP expereiences, but this one was the exact opposite. I enjoyed myself during the entire time, even when I was playing more seriously then some of the people around me. That's a sign of a game that at its core knows what it's doing, and that's why I'm giving it a 9 out of 10. The games server problems and AI silliness don't take away from a strong design core of the game, and the fact that it's free on the PSPlus and a cheaper game at its core that you can get hours of fun out of means that you should really be looking to play this, and hell watch it to. I can see this game picking up as an eSport, I really do.