Hey Everyone!

I've been playing a lot of Rocket League lately, and have been thinking about it more than I probably should. This lead me to write a blog post about the game. I'm not much of a writer, but figured this was a perfect excuse to get some practise! I'll paste the content here, and provide a link at the bottom - just wanted to know if anyone had any thoughts or critique on it.

I’ve been playing a lot of Rocket League lately...

Sports videogames have always appealed to me, and have on occasion acted as my introduction to sports that I wouldn't otherwise have much access to. I don't follow many sports closely, and can find watching certain sports tedious. However, I've always found myself drawn to the virtual approximations of these sports. Sure, I enjoy poorly dribbling and shooting a basketball in real life as much as anyone, but I've never been destined for the NBA. The NBA 2K series, on the other hand, introduces me to higher level play. My lack of skill in real life is not a hindrance in-game, as the virtual players all meet the prerequisites to compete at a high level in basketball. This leaves me able to focus on higher level concepts - things that professional players may even have on their minds during a game. Things like how to deal with a certain mismatch, or whether I should be defending the paint, or keeping closer tabs on an outside shooter.

Rocket League is a videogame where you compete in a fictional sport, in which players pilot rocket-powered cars around an enclosed playing field/arena, in an attempt to drive a ball into a goal. If you've seen "car football" played on an episode of Top Gear, this is basically a high-tempo version of that.

Videogames based on real-life sports simulate the movement and limits of real-life athletes very well. The problem is, controlling a virtual human body doesn’t translate perfectly to a few directional axes and a handful of buttons and triggers. Sure, FIFA 15 controls very, very well, especially when compared with similar games from 5 years ago. However, this abstraction of moving arms and legs by using buttons, triggers and directional controls leaves a lot to be desired. This is where Rocket League shines.

Rocket League provides a sense of agency that virtual representations of football (of all kinds!), basketball and ice hockey cannot. While the control options for a player in Rocket League appear limited at first glance, this ultimately allows the input method to get out of the player's way. Rather than tacking on “skill moves” and other control modifiers, the player is simply left to use basic physics to put a ball into a goal.

Rarely does a game feel so fair - when you make a mistake in Rocket League, it’s immediately obvious, and it’s difficult to feel cheated at any time. This is something you rarely find in virtual approximations of real-life sports, as virtual “athlete" behaviours and ability levels are simulated (or limited based on pre-defined statistics), often creating contrived situations that leave the player feeling helpless.

Rocket League is the sequel to the 2008 Playstation 3 game, Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars. While the two games share the same basic gameplay loop, the first game released a few years before the recent “esports” resurgence. Perhaps it was a little ahead of it’s time, missing out on today’s streaming services, or perhaps it was just lacking the polish of Rocket League. Regardless, Rocket League is likely able to release as such a polished experience (ignoring server issues at launch) thanks to the base created by Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars.

TL;DR

Rocket League is available on Steam (PC) and Playstation 4.

You should probably play Rocket League.

Original URL: http://sambaldwin.org/blog/2015/7/19/rocket-league

Hope everyone's having a great Sunday! I'm looking forward to Drew and Danny's German Grand Prix in a little-under-an-hour.