The 2000’s called, and they want their FIFA Street back. Kepler and sloclap (who you might recognize from the excellent fighting game Sifu) brings back that signature cell shaded feel to their arcade action soccer title, Rematch. The game takes the ‘easy to pick up and play, hard to master’ approach that made SIFU so effective, and applies it to the game of soccer. There’s also a lot of compare and contrast to address here as what gameplay aspects Rematch does well, others have done much better in the recent past. Does sloclap end up with an engaging ‘Rematch’ or merely a good enough ‘Rehash?’ Let’s corner kick into this review.
Booting Up
If you’re coming at this game from a Rocket League past, you’ll be right at home with the idea. It’s fast paced arcade soccer, with humans though this time. The controls definitely took some getting used to. In Rocket League, R2 is held down 95% of the time. In Rematch, R2 is the shoot button, and R1 is speed boost. Little things like that threw me for a loop, but nothing that killed my enjoyment of the game. The game starts players off with training in the Prologue. After that it’s off to the races. There’s a character creator to customize your footballer but it is sparse at launch.
Players control a Footballer avatar and play on squads of 3, 4, or even 5 to battle it out with opposing players online. There’s excellent in game voice chat, and it was easy to communicate with complete strangers and strategize. There’s similar quick chat options here as most online games offer and cool goal celebrations that are unlockable through a battle pass. Scoring is as easy as the goalie you are playing against. One thing Rematch does well is goalie controls. Players automatically dawn goalie gloves when they cross into the six-yard box. By holding down L2 near the net, you assume a much more focused stance to block goal attempts. While it isn’t as fluid as expected, it was certainly still very fun to play in net and was rewarding to save shots through dives and quick movements.
Rematch does a lot well with the arcade soccer experience and iterates on the Street style game experiences of the past. It’s clear to see these influences from other games of the genre, but most of those current games are free to play.
Rocket Rematch?
The last arcade soccer game to take the world by storm was Epic’s Rocket League. While this is not soccer with cars, it has a very similar setup to the arena based automobile anarchy title. Players take the pitch in relatively fast paced squads of 3-5 avatars to put a ball into a net. This isn’t a Rocket League review but it is impossible to play this game and not compare it to the free to play juggernaut. That’s the key thing here, Rocket League is free and Rematch is 38.99 CAD. After spending hours with Rematch it is impossible to strongly recommend at the current build and price point. It is worth noting though that players can play Rematch on Xbox Gamepass at launch.
While the gameplay is fun, the bugs online are so frustrating. In the course of an hour for example, the ball would occasionally not let anyone gain possession. Everyone would run up to the ball, but it would just stay there, laughing at our efforts to pick it up. The ball magically teleported into the other team’s net in the next match, and the starting kick off occasionally would glitch and give it to the wrong team. One match featured so much jitter that it was impossible to time slides and digs when the other player was dribbling. For a game that heavily relies on mastering finely timed skills, the online jitter needs to be improved.
Passed the Post Presentation
This would be passable if Rematch featured other modes other than strictly online battles. Save for a brief training Prologue single player intro, Rematch is a strictly online game. So, that is a $38.99 price tag to play, plus/or a subscription to your preferred platforms plan. When it works, it’s a very engaging gameplay experience. When it doesn’t, it’s impossible to simply blame player skill. It’s not all bugs though, overall surprisingly, the biggest obstacle in presentation was the choppiness of the animations. Rocket League flows really well. The ball physics are part of the fun. But Rematch overall misses flow entirely.
Rematch is a different beast. The ball is stuck between “free moving” and “stick to the player to make the animation work.” This left me watching some very janky exchanges in each match. It’s very apparent when you’re the keeper watching the chaos unfold. The ball sticks to players, flies off the wall, rolls freely, then gets sucked into a player, all in one fell swoop. Perhaps patches can iron this out, as sloclap’s last effort in SIFU looked fantastic, and the movements felt consistently satisfying.
Injury Time
The final question for players to ask in this review is a simple one. What are players getting in Rematch that you can’t get for free with Rocket League?
Let’s break it down: More variety in controls to take the ball away from the opposing team, dedicated Goalie controls and actual humans playing the game of soccer.
If those are aspects that get you excited, this is your game. Again, if this were free to play, it would be very worth everyone’s time. As it stands, you’re paying $38.99 for a pretty good rendition of Rocket League gameplay.
Rematch runs the danger of all current games as a service titles. Remember that historically non-rememberable game? An essentially created to be free to play (online only modes, success hinging on an active and thriving online player base, a new IP, digital cosmetics, a one note but competitive game mode etc.) game that came out, lasted a few weeks to months and then ended up losing the players? There have been a few games that have stood the test of time, most recently Helldivers 2. Can Rematch iterate enough to stay online? Time will tell.
Rematch is a budget title in an increasingly expensive video game market. It has the lasting appeal of Rocket League “but with humans” (AKA Soccer) which is an activity that has been popular since the dawn of time.
Rematch Review
Summary
Rematch is a well-made arcade soccer experience. Where it suffers is game breaking bugs, games as a service elements, and lack of variety for the cost of entry. While the gameplay experience is engaging enough to pick up and play, the current online only environment roadblocks player growth at the time of this review. With some fine tuning, Rematch could be a striker worth drafting into players library of games. There’s just a $38.99 cost of entry for an otherwise free to play like experience. Right now, it’s safe to say Rematch really is easy to play, hard to master, and difficult to recommend unless you already have Xbox GamePass.
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