Wow!
Wow!
Wow!
What a save!
What a save!
What a save!
[chat disabled for 3 seconds]

Ah Rocket League. At first it’s just a silly car football game and then you are 100s of hours deep screaming when your team mates don’t know how to rotate back post.

Mechanically the game has so much depth it’s insane. From fundamentals like aerials to advanced moves like wave dashing.

Although the game hasn’t seen any crazy overhauls since it’s inception, it’s stayed relevant, fun and engaging.

The community content after several years has made the game more accessible than ever but this has also come at the price of the skill floor being raised considerably as the game has gone on.

Monetisation is there but it’s not as sinful as other games.

The real reason this isn’t 5 stars is because the developers have boxed themselves in.

Other than cosmetics, and maybe some forge style tools, the game has no other content to offer.

The devs can’t change the core gameplay without invalidating several years of muscle memory and therefore the most we may ever get is some meme game modes.

How do you make soccer more appealing to a wider audience? You let them drive cars on the field, have the ball erupt in a massive explosion with every goal, and allow players to literally demolish the competition at high speeds. Making it free-to-play also helps.

That last thing does open the door for a little microtransaction nastiness, but nothing too bad. There's a battle pass system similar to Fortnite where buying a season will grant you unique rewards as you rank up and certain blueprints for things like cosmetic items require a purchasable in-game currency to build. You never need or feel pressured to actually buy anything and it's pretty good at doling out freebies every now and then. Still, if you want the really cool stuff you're going to have to part with some cash.

While accessible to even the most casual of gamers, there is a lot of depth here for those looking for a demanding competitive experience. Mastering your hydraulic fueled jumps to direct shots midair and learning how to best use the boosts scattered across the arena allows for a surprising amount of complexity to come from such a simple concept.

If there's one area where the title suffers it's in the amount of content. There are a few variations of the base match type that do things like give you randomized power-ups pulled straight out of a kart racer or replace the ball with a puck in riffs on other sports. Not to mention some great social features like cross-platform support that allow you to play with your friends regardless of their console (or PC) of choice. Still, at the end of the day Rocket League really is just soccer with cars. So while it can be very addicting not everyone will be hooked long-term.

Should you go for the Switch version you get a few bonuses in the form of some Nintendo-themed skins and cosmetics, on top of the option to play it on the go. It's also a wonderful choice for financially challenged gamers as you don't need the online subscription to join a match. All of which help make this a game that, while I'm perhaps not totally crazy about, will be part of my multiplayer rotation for quite some time.

7/10