Topic: Rocket League

[K-man]

My friend asked me yesterday if I had tried it out since it was a PS+ freebie for PS4 this month.  "It's like soccer with cars, guys at Giant Bomb thought it was great".

Well guess what, it is great.  In fact I wish I was playing it right now.  It's just plain fun.  GET IT.

[Quemaqua]

I will concur that this game is super fun and you should get it. It doesn't sound fun. "Soccer with cars" initially did not appeal to me even a little bit. But I watched the Giant Bomb guys attempt to play and man did it look fun. I downloaded it since I accidentally continued to pay for my PS+ subscription that I started to play Bloodborne, and now I don't feel too bad about having done so, because this is a great little gem of a game.

[scottws]

I downloaded it but haven't played yet. It'd be fun to play with you guys sometime, though I rarely have any free time these days.

[K-man]

You man about town, you.

[Quemaqua]

Rookie-level bots are pretty dumb, but they're not bad at medium difficulty. I found I could basically just one-shot them from midfield on kickoff every time at the easiest difficulty. I had one game that was like 18-2. Ridiculous. But yeah, can't do that when you bump the difficulty, and I started to learn a lot more about how to play the game well after I did so, since I had to sink or swim.

Online is even better though. I played probably 20 games, and the dumbasses eventually quit and the good people stayed, so it was really fun, and super heated. I wouldn't mind having a couple of those guys on my friends list. Was a super fun time. We absolutely need to get more people on this and play some games together.

[K-man]

I also found out that it is cross-play with PC for matchmaking with plans to make it completely cross-platform down the road.  So, within reason, we could all make this happen.

[Quemaqua]

I rarely get into games of this nature just because they aren't fun enough. Competition is fine, but if the game isn't fun, why am I competing? Most sports games or esports games get into this territory. Not that they aren't fun fundamentally, but that once people get to a certain level of competitiveness, the game gets far too mechanical. That could happen here also, but even when I played some ranked games and got my ass kicked by better players, I felt like the fun factor was still there because the core concept of "drive fast into the ball" remains constantly engaging and thrilling.

Also, the more I play of this, the more I think the "soccer with cars" analogy is way, way too limited. I feel like this is a mix of racing, demolition derby, soccer, volleyball, and billiards. You often do have to literally race opponents to a position or to the ball, you can do much good on defense or offense by slamming into other cars and preventing them from getting where they want to go (especially useful as defense if your teammate is about to take a shot), you have to line up shots by angle like billiards and similarly have to get speed before you can make a decent hit (unlike soccer, where you can kick all the way downfield from a standstill), and I have routinely seen long volleys between teammates or airborne back-and-forths between teams which often resolve themselves in a "spike" type shot, where someone gets in the right position and careens into the melee at just the right time to knock the ball downfield or into the goal.

[scottws]

I played this last night online and had a blast. I would absolutely play with you guys.

[Quemaqua]

I was disappointed to see you and Kman both on and playing while I was, but here we were all playing separately!

I played some last night too. It's a very addictive game, I intend to just play a few rounds and play for an hour and a half or something. Was doing quite well last night. Only lost I think one match, and was MVP in a good 75% of the matches I played. I'm not sure how the ranked (versus the unranked) games work, but I've been playing an even spread of both. You definitely see consistently better players in ranked, though you see decent people in unranked as well.

[Cools!]

Guess I need to get a PS4 now...

[gpw11]

Sooooooo I'm absolutely addicted to this on PC now.  Is there a way we can all play together?

[ren]

I am several years behind but this recently came out on Switch and I thought I'd give it a try. Holy shit this is game is great. I haven't had this much fun online since playing Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 as a kid.

[Quemaqua]

I wasn't into Rocket League when it first dropped on PS4. I loved the shit out of it for like a few days, then got super bored and never wanted to play it again. Didn't until years later (like maybe 6 months ago?) when kams (now shorthouse) joined the discord and convinced me to pick it up and try again. Turns out it's super fun with friends, and then I actually started getting good at it. The skill ceiling on the game is absolutely insane. Playing against noobs, I feel like a god. I'm playing on a level they likely don't understand at all. Playing against people sort of generally better than me, the difference is less pronounced now, but they're still clearly better able to do certain things. I can see it, but can't pull it off. Then watching pros in the RLCS ... there's no comparison, it's like they're playing a different game entirely.

Great game. Switch version is pretty sub-par, but I bought it on a whim. It was a novelty being able to play in a coffee shop and such. I'll probably boot it up every now and again for fun, but it runs a little poorly compared to what I'm used to on PC. Still totally playable, though, and the portability is a nice perk. It's mostly fine, just a little low-res and hitches a bit/loads assets a bit slow at the start of matches. I didn't really have any big issues playing it, though I found unlike many games where it doesn't matter, I play much better with the joycons attached to the grip. I wasn't nearly as precise when they were separated.