ROCKET LEAGUE
Don’t like it. Never tried it. Every month we force one of our team to play their most feared game
We go back a while, Rocket League and I. When it first popped into the OPM inbox many moons ago, smiling politely and ready to be reviewed, I felt an immediate bond form. It was car football! That’s a good thing. I said so in my review. In that same review, in the fateful pages of OPM #113, I postulated its short-term appeal and imminent obscurity. It would all be over by the end of the summer, I was fairly sure.
And now here we are in 2017, Rocket League having made a stratospheric success of itself while I, the old and bitter writer, cry over my stale bread in the drain I inhabit. I’ve simply avoided the game and its obvious Phil-WasWrong-ness since filing that review to avoid the sheer pain of losing face, but when this page comes calling, there’s simply no silencing it.
There are two equally bitter pains about diving back in two years later. The first and most inevitable is that everyone else on the multiplayer servers has two years of experience, and long ago graduated from the ‘just arsing about near the ball’ phase. People are capable of making bumperto-ball contact with the precision of a laser-guided David Beckham set-piece. People who aren’t me, that is.
And then there are the new modes, the DLC, the corporate endorsements Rocket League is dripping with. Oh, there’s a Deadmau5 hat, is there? And both ice hockey and basketball are now represented annoyingly well? Good for you, Rocket League. To the nonmadman, it’s all evidence of an evolving, beloved platform with the ability to punch out into mainstream culture. To me, it’s a towering monument to my shortsightedness. Ah well – at least I gave it an 8. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a match to lose convincingly.
ROCKET LEAGUE MADE A SUCCESS OF ITSELF WHILE I INHABIT A DRAIN.