The July lineup of free games for PlayStation gold members is actually really good this month. They are all rather small and simple in retrospect but have a lot to offer. On the PS4 there is Rocket League, the game of soccer reimagined with rocket powered cars that can drive on the walls and even the ceiling for a bit. A sport game that isn’t just about sports but sports with rockets, so it sounds good so far. It is not that hard to get into the hang of either, something I have found difficult in more current sport games. You either move forward, backward, really fast or in the air and the only goal is to put the ball in the net. Playing offline is kind of boring though since it only took me a moment to find the exploit and win almost every game. Of course if you crank up the difficulty it just becomes frustrating because the AI can control the ball with exact precision. Online is actually really fun because with full teams there is little chance that a single person can just dominate an entire match. It almost requires you to work with your team as a unit and most games are fairly fast paced.
I did have a few issues online though. I found at certain times of day I couldn’t even get online and play for reasons I could not tell. Getting in and out of lobbies though was generally fast and easy though which is always a plus. While the stage music was energizing and really felt like you were playing a game with rocket cars the stages themselves were very bland. You can’t put a semi-different backdrop on the same arena every single time and expect people not to notice. That’s like The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct where supply stops can start you at different ends. Just because you start at a different point does not mean it is an entirely different area. Customizing your car is probably the major highlight of the game where you can earn cool skins, hats, tires and antennas for your car even if some take forever to get. I especially enjoyed the money smoke trail. The most intriguing is that you can actually unlock the Sweet Tooth car from Twisted Metal. Oddly Twisted Metal already did a RC car version years ago. There are other features like a level system but it doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the game and is a non-factor.
