You know sometimes you get an idea which, on paper, seems so wrong and yet through some happenstance or a large injection of lunacy the actual end result just works, well that would be a good description of Rocket League for the PS4. I kid you not, it’s football with cars.

Obviously as it’s a football game, this is multiplayer all the way. You play in either co-op or online against the opposite team and unsurprisingly the idea is to score more goals than your opponents. The physics are, shall we term, liberal as your car is highly mobile, able to jump, double jump whilst engaging in flips and rolls, and all aided by the boosts found embedded in the arena floor. You’re not just confined to using the floor as you can drive up the arena walls and even bounce off other cars; if you’re strong enough you may even get to completely destroy an opponent’s vehicle. Add the game world’s most bouncy ball and you have the makings of some good multiplayer fun.

Although you start with your basic car, the game allows a high level of customisation; apparently ten billion combinations are available. I’ll have to take the developers word for that, but you can change pretty much any visual aspect of the car, from the colour of the smoke, billowing out the back to wheels, the paint job and general car furniture, which start as a modest flag progressing to more esoteric items.

The car does take some getting used to and initially I found it a little difficult to control. It seemed over sensitive, tricky and not easy to steer. Perseverance pays off, with practice needed to get the best out of the game. In other words this is an intuitive game which is easy to learn, but harder to master and even at its most fluid still feels like barely controlled chaos.

Up to four players can be in a match at any one time and getting a game was easy. It’s difficult to describe the level of amusing mayhem which will then ensue, with cars crashing about the place, flipping and jumping in an effort to score that elusive goal. There is a single player mode, which is useful for practice, but the AI is too conservative compared to some of the loons you’re going to meet in a real match.

Overall, a great game, all the fluffy tosh which may have gotten in the way of playing the game has been stripped away to leave a fast, furious highly enjoyable example of fun and addictive game play.

9

Charles Packer