Quick Look: Rocket Arena

A pay to play EA game has microtransactions? You don't say Rorie.

Vinny joins me at around 15 minutes in! Sorry for the delay; he was in a meeting. And sorry to those people I talked over and muted. Also I'm really bad at this game. Also there's a lot of cussing in this one.

This...doesnt look great. Very generic looking. The voice overs sound like the developers just recorded their voice.

Maybe my memory is fuzzy, but I am sure I bought a Quake 3 spin off called Rocket Arena in the uhh late 90s? Or whenever Quake 3 came out.

Either way, I thought this was a new version of that, it was fun! This doesn't look that great.

Rocket Arena always = Quake for me.

Whenever someone mentioned Rocket Arena in the past few weeks, my brain was convinced they were talking about Rocket League.

Inquiring minds want to know who Vinny is watching for his transformer reviews

This game was DOA as far as I can tell, on release day it peaked at like 800 players and is at about 150 concurrently on Steam right now. Will be shut down within a year

"mutually megablasted each other"

is that a sex thing

When I saw "Cast: Vinny, Matt" it took me a few seconds to realize that Matt is Rorie, even though he was speaking while I was thinking about it.

@lionsy: I was kind of hoping this would be a Jeff joint, purely because I am convinced he would have said "this has nothing to do with Quake, get the fuck out of here" and that would have been the video. Rorie's version is more watchable than the concept I have constructed.

Edit: To your point, however, it was actually a Quake 1 mod first. Quakeworld for life!

Some fighting game folks are saying this appeals to their sensibilities. I can see why they might like it when people who primarily play FPS might not.

The first few minutes of this is just pure Matt Rorie surliness and I love it.

I feel like a game of this name has been out for a while and I know it's not Rocket League. How weird!

[edit] oh of course, I was thinking back to my old LAN days!

Glad we could open with Matt Rorie's favorite character

Is the bar over people's name not their HP? I keep seeing targets very low, but not dying. And death seems to happen more like in Smash.

Rorie!

The deck text DEFINITELY gave me some NewsRadio vibes ❤️

The art style is horrid.

Hmm, let's see... which game is which?

This looks like the most cynical product EA's ever produced. 30 dollars for what looks like a bad game aimed at kids on top of a battle pass and shit load of microtransactions. Not to mention stealing the name from an established thing. From the art style to the game mechanics, every single aspect is lifted from something else.

You know, I don't know if the creators or EA has said this elsewhere, but the presentation, the concept, the look - I think this is a kid's game, and I don't say that disparagingly, in fact I think that's a sector that isn't very well served and this kind of game could be very good for ~7 to 14 year olds (estimating). But if none of the marketing ever mentions it, it might not ever find it's niche

@goosemunch: Good lord. I watched Jeff play the top left one (before bailing as he couldn't match with any other players) and I thought that one was this one. What's the bottom one? Is that actually Fortnight? I hate to come off so snide about art design and UI, but c'mon y'all.

Seems like the game looks waaayyy too busy visually. It looks like you're rarely in control over your own movement as you're being juggled around endlessly. Doesn't look like a good time.

Great work Rorie! But mannnnnn does this game look bad. It looks like somebody took a mini game and are charging $30 for it.

I know this is a million miles from Rocket Arena proper, but I would be interested in hearing Jeff and Brad give their takes on this.

I remember a TF2 mode that plays like this. One of those goofy throw away modes you play once in a blue moon for novelty's sake. Think it was even called "Smash bros." or something. Pretty skeptical of it as a real competitive game tbh.

Amazing intro. Please have Rorie do all Quick Looks from now on!

Wait... Rorie got a new monitor?

GETTEMGETTEMGETTEMGETTEM

For as much as people like to defend cartoony art styles for their fun and colour, i sure am fucking tired of this art style.

Wow, this looks so generic. And I don't think it looks bad, just so overdone and boring. I'm so over this. What happened to people copying call of duty?? Remember those days? At least every game didn't have this style. Wait no I take it back. Everyone do their own thing.

@goosemunch: I actually don't know which is which. This is troubling.

this stinks

Something about this game feels extremely Xbox live downloadable game circa 2010. Strong Monday Night Combat vibes. I usually love games like this with lots of mobility and action but this isn't appealing to me.

I really don’t understand the hate towards this game. I picked it up for $5 and it seems pretty fun. Not amazing or anything but fun.

I loved vanilla Artifact. When they started trying to fix it, I started buying Pokemon and Magic cards.