Rocket League Review - Enjoy the Thrill and Excitement of Playing Soccer With Race Cars

Written by Brandon Hofer on March 13, 2016

Reviews: Rocket League is a really fun and interesting concept that was executed well by the development team and is a great game to play with friends.

Rocket League is a really cool concept that is a lot of fun to play with friends. Essentially it can be boiled down to being soccer with cars. You play in different stages against another team and the person who scores the most goals before time expires is the winner. As you begin to get used to and master the controls you quickly find out that you aren’t simply driving around the stage trying to get the ball into the net. Your car can jump, dive forward and even “fly” for a few seconds if you hit the buttons on your controller just right. It is a tremendous amount of fun and a great idea by the development team.

You can play Rocket League either by yourself or online against friends. There is a tutorial that you are going to want to play first to try and get the hang of the controls and then you can jump into an exhibition match to really see what the game is like. After that you can to go through a season or jump online and test your skills against other gamers. As I was getting used to how everything worked I was really enjoying how my car controlled and the different maneuvers that I could perform. You don’t just have to stick with the default car either. As you play you will unlock different items that you can use to upgrade your car. You can change the body, change the tires you use, change the topper (I liked the cake from Portal), change the color of your car and more.

Going through the season mode I was able to pick the difficulty I wanted as well as the teammates I wanted. You can also choose how many weeks are in a season and other things along those lines. Once all of that is done you’ll begin your season and be paired up with your first opponent. As you progress in the season you’ll be able to look at the standings in-between each game and see whether you are good enough to advance past the regular season.

Going online my experience was really smooth and I didn’t notice any lag at all. There were a couple of times where it seemed to take a few moments to find an opponent but it wasn’t bad at all. Playing against others is definitely a lot more chaotic than playing against the game’s AI and there were many times where I would plow into someone as we were both racing to get to the ball first or spinning around trying to block the opposition’s shot from going into the goal. The game’s can be really tense and features some frantic action that provide some moments that would be great so share with friends by saying “Xbox, record that!” Or double tapping the button on the controller to tell the game dvr to record the last few moments so you can show the world your skills. There is also a replay function as well where you can save replays and rewatch them if you had a great match filled with a lot of drama or there was simply a lot of cool things that happened.

Rocket League is a lot of fun to play. It is a cool concept that was executed well and the development team at Psyonix unquestionably have a hit here. My only small issue was that going online to find a match would take a little longer than it should at times but it really wasn’t all that bad. I would definitely recommend you give Rocket League a chance as it is just simply a lot of fun to play and gets even better once you master the different maneuvers and how the physics in the game work.