Rocket Arena
Keep riding this rocket wherever it goes.
Rocket Arena is a hero shooter like Overwatch or Apex Legends. Each of the 10 characters included at launch has their own unique look, story, and special abilities. They all fire rockets as their primary weapons, but they each have different takes on the idea: there’s Jayto, who fires a bunch of fast, hard-hitting missiles, or Kayi, who can charge up her explosive crossbow bolts for extra speed, or Blastbeard, who fires arcing cannonballs. Each character also has special ways of getting around the map or repelling enemy attacks.
Though each design is distinct, I didn’t feel immediately drawn to any one character based on their looks alone - the way that I looked at Pharah or Pathfinder and knew right away I wanted to be that one. To be fair, I didn’t end up maining either of those characters in their respective games after the initial infatuation ended, and it only took me one match with Kayi to know we were going to be best friends. Grappling to the top of a rocky outcropping, floating around in her frosty field that makes her shots extra fast and everybody else’s bullet-time slow, and raining frozen death on the enemy team was the highlight of my team with
Rocket Arena.
Let me amend that thought: I wasn’t raining frozen death on anybody, because nobody dies in
Rocket Arena. You only knock folks around, and ideally out of bounds. As you get hit by enemy rockets - whether by direct hits or splash damage from impacting the terrain nearby - a meter at the bottom of your screen fills. This represents how far you’ll fly the next time you’re hit, and the only way to empty it back out is to avoid taking hits for a while. Think Smash Bros. by way of Quake 3.
Rocket Arena turns an old standby into a new take on shooters, and what’s lost in the translation is made up for with easy-to-learn fun.
Connort Sheridan