If you are anything like me, there is a game you play until 3 in the morning when you know you have to be up at 7. You have no idea why you do this to yourself but you continue to tell yourself, “just one more game” or “just one more round” or “just one more kill”. Rocket League is this game. I have never had a harder time stopping myself at 2am.

Rocket League is an indie game that was developed by Psyonix that was released in July of 2015. I do not think they realised how quickly this game would blow up. The concept of this game is so easy. All you need is rocket powered cars, a giant ball, and two goals. Nobody needs an explanation when they line up on a field across from other players and a goal. However, there is so much that can be done in this game.

Now the game does have one major flaw, Teammates. When you play 2v2 or 3v3 you rely on your teammates. They remind me of the 9 year old “1v1 me” kids from call of duty. They think they are god’s gift to rocket league. They spend the entire game rocketing after the ball and hitting it every chance they get, regardless of whether that helps the team or not. I once lost 5-0, and 4 of the other team’s goals were scored by one player on my team, unintentionally. He was so bad that he kept hitting it in our own goal. There is no way to kick players so I am stuck the kid that everyone picked last for dodgeball while the other team basically got first pick three times in a row. I ended up stuck with the kid with half an arm and crutches. I just sit back and watch as his rocket powered car burns down every chance of my ever winning a game.

Rocket League does, however, look amazing. The car customization and maps all look great. The customization of your cars allows not all of the cars to look the same and allows players to add their own pizazz to the game. For most players this means making teal and pink cars that shoot rainbows out their butt. The game also offers a newer game mode. Instead of just playing with a ball, Snowday allows you to play with a puck. This game mode makes me excited to see what newer game modes they will be coming out with.

The other flaw that I have come across with this fame is loading time, ping, and lag. Although there are an average of over 70,000 players online at any given time, there still is often a significant delay in loading in. Granted, this depends on what game modes you want to play. If you only want to play 2v2 unranked then it might take a really long time to join a match. However, if you do not care what you do then you can select all of them and will most likely get in a match very quickly. The second problem with servers is ping. Because you can play with players from all over the world, ping sometimes is well over 100. This is not good at all for a game that quick reaction time is sometimes needed. I often feel like I can teleport. As I jump for the ball I am magically teleported across the map and I get to watch as the ball rolls into the back of the goal. Now weather you believe that is lag or the rocket league gods looking down on me is up to you, but I have had this problem multiple times.

Overall, this is a quality game that you can count on for hour’s worth of fun with your friends or random kids you meet on the Internet. Although I have thrown my control across the room from frustration at this game (and my controller shows that), this game has also accounted for hours of fun and rocket powered goal scoring.