Over the past few weeks I’ve been playing a ton of new games, or games that are new to me. The most recent acquisition for me has been Rocket League (hence the title of this blog post), which is now also probably one of the biggest threats to any of my further productivity.
There isn’t much else I can say about Rocket League that hasn’t already been said. It’s an excellent “sports” game without really being sports. Since instead of human athletes you have cars driving around trying to knock a ball into a goal in a massive game of soccer. There also exists a hockey game type as well, and they just recently added 2-on-2 basketball. I’d say the basketball mode is probably the most difficult since with the other two modes you’re mostly dealing in horizontal shooting, Basketball (or Hoops, as they call it in-game) requires you to master being able to get the ball into the air so that it goes in the hoop.
The nice thing about Rocket League aside from its relatively quick matchmaking and match runtime (5 minutes per match not counting OT), it’s that the game is simple to learn but difficult to master. I’ve only played it about 3 hours but I’ve already definetely got a good grasp on the basics and even some more advanced stuff. It’s easy to see why this became a breakout hit especially in the context of eSports. I highly recommend it to anyone. It’s usually $20 which is already a good deal but it also goes on sale fairly frequently so if you want to save a bit wait until Steam’s Summer Sale hits.
I’ve also been playing another competitive multi-player game, The Culling. The Culling is basically your standard Hunger Games/Battle Royale scenario, a bunch of people trapped in a given space (in this case a portion of jungle) forced to scrounge for supplies and fight against one another until one person lives. You can craft weapons, gear, and armor but for the best chances of winning you’re better off finding weapons either in crates or just looting them off people unfortunate enough to get killed by you or by others.
The game is still in early access so there’s a lot of jank, combat still isn’t quite locked down but it’s still a lot of fun and definitely worth the $15 it retails for. There’s both free for all and team battles, and so far I’ve only won one of each in about 14 hours of play. But you’re still guarenteed to unlock a cosmetic item no matter what so even when you lose you still win.
Next up is Dodge Roll Games Rougelike Bullet Hell Twin Stick Shooter “Enter the Gungeon”. Tough as hell (which is why it’s only 5 levels long I suppose) and I still haven’t had a clear run. Then again in terms of Roguelike-ish games I think the only one I’ve really beaten was FTL. The game is a lot of fun though. It controls really well, the graphics are nice, and the nice referential touches for the massive number of guns and enemies in the game is really on-point.
Lastly I’ve been playing Star Fox Zero, the much-awaited (at least for me) next entry in Nintendo’s Star Fox franchise. This game is understandably polarizing due to things like the controls being too complicated and the controls not being complex enough. As well as things like it being too much like Star Fox 64 and not enough like Star Fox 64. In case you haven’t figured it out yes I am making fun of people for fans of this series being really fickle and having no idea what they want (and people who play games in general, really).
As someone who tried and failed to grasp the gyro aiming controls of Splatoon, I had no such problem with Star Fox Zero’s controls. Yeah it kinda sucks that gyro aiming is mandatory but I dealt with it because damnit I care about this series and as long as the controls aren’t the actually unnecessary garbage that was Star Fox Command’s forced touch controls I will deal with it. The game plays great, looks great, and the people who dump on it unnecessarily are the same kind of people who already hate Platinum’s games so why do you even listen to them?
That said it’s not perfect and I definitely think that while it’s probably an 8/10 for me it’s most likely a 7/10 for most people. I do hope it does well enough to get a true sequel and hopefully move the story in a direction that isn’t “directly off a cliff” like Star Fox Adventures did.