Rocket Arena is a very young battle arena shooter. It is off to a decent start, though the pain points of the game are blatantly obvious. Its intentions are to capture that Fortnite crowd with its personality but definitely falls short with its delivery in certain gameplay areas. There is hope for this game and I can see it succeeding with updates and expansions, but right now it’s a tough sell when compared to its competition.
A developer takes a real chance when it comes to creating and releasing an arena fighter. There have been so many released over the last 5-10 years that getting it right is more about offering up what you can do differently. Repeating a formula over and over again can lead to a missed opportunity to redefine a genre that desperately needs a change.. This week, I have dived into Rocket Arena, an EA Original, that tries to offer up a different meal, but ends up short and leaves you wanting more. Maybe there will be more, but it’s tough to see it.
The idea of this multiplayer game is to just have some wacky fun led by cartoon-like characters. Such personalities include a man named Boone, a young Allan Quartermain look-a-like, that flies around a map thanks to his pterodactyl friend. Other personalities include a perceived over-powered pirate named Blastbeard, and a futuristic badass named Rev, who sports an exhaust-ridden hoverboard that she rides around on. Rocket Arena does its best to add more personality and panache to its line-up of playable characters, which certainly helps to sell the playful personality of its gameplay design. That will certainly bring in a younger audience that might adopt it.
The goal of Rocket Arena’s gameplay is to lead these wack-a-doodles through various modes that equal out too fast and furious gameplay. The ‘fast and furious’ part is a delivered promise in these modes, which are as follows:
Arena – This is a 3v3 with various types of matches. There is a capture the flag game where you retrieve a ball and try to dunk it into the opponent’s side. There is also a mega-rocket game, which emulates a game of control, where you try to capture a fallen rocket from the sky. The games are competitive and somewhat interesting, but the time with them is small and the gameplay is intense due to map size, which we will get into later in this review. From what I can tell, gamers usually populate this mode the most. That’s a good thing and if you dive into this game, then you will probably follow suit.
Knockout – This is a 3v3 deathmatch, although named a bit more innocently. You battle against three other opponents and the first to 20 KOs wins. This is complete insanity when it comes to gameplay. There is so much going on that it is hard to keep up with, mainly due to the map size. While the intensity and insanity might be the driving point of this mode, it’s tough to enjoy the game when there is virtually little strategy to the process. I’m sure some people will take this in and love it, but I found it tough to enjoy and adopt.
Robot Attack – You take a team of three competitors and go fight robots. This is essentially your survival mode.
Ranked – This is a mixed bag that starts you in a current pre-season ranking and takes you through various types of gameplay (usually a mixed bit of the above). It’s a rank mode, so you’re going up against the best. I felt like this offered up a lot of good competition and, while difficult, felt the most satisfying when I won.
Outside of the Private Match (for practice) and Practice modes (practice), the above is the current state of the game. Does it all work? Well, there is a variety of modes to choose from, which is a plus, but the overall body of work can be a bit restrained and unexciting. I think that if they had expanded the maps a bit, then you would get more from the game, at least in terms of strategy. As it stands, the gameplay is small and a bit bland because you can’t really stop and think how you’re going approach the battle.
Rocket Arena is helped by the artifacts system it has in place. As you level up and accomplish daily/weekly challenges, you gain access to more artifacts. These are items that help you improve your gameplay and offer up some abilities, as well as some advantages. For example, I played as Boone for the majority of my review experience and I unlocked several artifacts. One was called Supercavitator, which helps to reduce cooldowns through knockouts. If I knock out a competitor, my cooldown time diminishes. Artifacts help to improve the gameplay, but not enough to improve every aspect of gameplay. It certainly didn’t help pacing.
Gameplay pacing is probably the biggest issue I have with Rocket Arena. While the game offers up a great backend design that encourages you to do more through the above modes, so that you can earn artifacts and compete better, the gameplay feels like it runs in mud. It has the same type of pacing that PvZ Garden Warfare sports, where it just moves in a slow and steady pace, and prevents any kind of advantage with moving, shaking enemies, and finding any sort of successful structure. Hopping around and going through multi-tiered levels do help to alleviate some of the pacing problems, but for the most part, seasoned gamers might find this a bit blah. Younger gamers might take to it, which I’ve witnessed at home with my kids.
Anyway, to make matters a bit worse, the maps are restricted in size. While they do go ‘up-up-UP!’ in construction and contain beautiful visuals that are a cross between Fortnite and PvZ with a cartoon feel, there just isn’t enough elbow room to maneuver properly because of limited girth. That last part limits the amount of strategy you can implement during gameplay, which makes the repetitiveness of the gameplay a bit dull.
Rounding back to the discussion of visuals, this is a solid part of the game’s design. The maps, while not big in scope, are creatively put together with varying themes. For example, there is a snowy old castle city that has lots of bridges, buildings, and height. The map allows for you to hide from others or jet down a claustrophobic street trying to hunt or elude enemies. You will certainly find a lot of creativity in these maps (10 in total), but, again, not enough elbow room.
Overall, Rocket Arena is a very young battle arena shooter. It is off to a decent start, though the pain points of the game are blatantly obvious. Its intentions are to capture that Fortnite crowd with its personality but definitely falls short with its delivery in certain gameplay areas. There is hope for this game and I can see it succeeding with updates and expansions, but right now it’s a tough sell when compared to its competition.
