Rocket Arena

Rocket Arena is a good game, a good shooter, but it suffers from what could be considered essential within the genre in which it is included. This does not mean that it is not a fun and totally enjoyable game.

I’ve enjoyed my time with Rocket Arena on Xbox One, especially in terms of the short, sharp games that suit the game composition. My immediate concern though is just how busy the servers will be in a few months and whether or not those who are already dominating the scene will put off any newcomers.

Rocket Arena’s retro rocket romanticism aesthetics, playful music and cute and fun characters (super-freckled Rev being my favorite!) go a long way to make it easily approachable. However, despite the four main game modes, the nature of the gameplay feels limited. It’s easy to play and fun in short bursts, but that’s just it; in short bursts. Quite literally, too, as matches are over very quickly. I can’t imagine the game having the same lasting appeal as something like Overwatch with players devoting a long-term commitment to it. There’s a solid roadmap for the game with seasonal events, new free characters, and maps by each ranked season and cosmetics to be bought either with in-game currency or real money but I’m afraid it’s not enough. The game may grow outside but inside, the limited gameplay might prove too repetitive in the long run.

In the ever-shifting hero shooter genre, Rocket Arena makes a name for itself as the family-friendliest of the bunch without sacrificing its competitive spirit.

Rocket Arena is a fine hero-shooter with a novel twist on the formula, and I absolutely dig its "World of Tomorrow" aethestic, but unless it drops the box price and goes free-to-play the competition will knock it out of the arena; that's just the nature of today's market.

By stuffing the title with content to justify its unattractive business model, Final Strike Games loses sight of what makes its game salt. It’s nice to chain clashes in Deathmatch, but the rest of the content goes astray and transforms the experience in chaos that is often unreadable and sometimes frustrating. Too bad, because its concept and its mixture of influences hit the target when the stars align.

Cross-play doesn’t work because of it — getting paired with Steam players using keyboard and a mouse mean you’ll get crushed. Pairing with Xbox-only players, I found long gaps in matches. I’m happy to go with my gut and chalk it all up to the problem of price. It’s a shame, because First Strike really was on to something here.