I hardly remember any of Rocket Arena's characters by their names or even looks, for example, but I remember them by their abilities. This again feeds into the idea of matches being purposefully fleeting in Rocket Arena, and although it's a good design concept for the game itself, it makes the characters themselves ultimately less memorable. The countdown timer for individual abilities varies, but it's never too long of a wait at the most, it's 30 seconds. | EA/Final Strike Gamesīecause these abilities are used so frequently, they're not that impactful on players or the overall game itself. The maps are generally designed with verticality in mind. These two abilities are all you've got outside of your ranged weapon, and they vary to a pleasant degree: one character batters enemies with her hoverboard, another fighter drops a barrel bomb on foes, and another summons a tornado-like spiral out of the ground to throw enemies up into the air. The lack of a game-changing, all-powerful ultimate ability signifies this all-around speedy design.Īlthough there's no domineering "ultimate" ability, characters in Rocket Arena are equipped with two abilities that each have cooldown timers. A typical game of Rocket Arena should be done in right around three minutes-rounds are engineered to be quick and easily digestible. None of the Rocket Arena characters have any major ultimate ability that's charged over the course of a game, like Tracer's bomb in Overwatch or Bangalore's airstrike in Apex Legends, because single games of Rocket Arena are so short. Nowhere is this more indicative than in the lack of an "ultimate" ability for any characters. No one "dies," they just get transported back into the arena. Not just horizontally, but also vertically. It's a design concept that speeds up how a match plays out: Rocket Arena wants you to constantly be moving. It opens up experimentation for scaling to new heights in any one of the multiplayer maps, or even for rescuing yourself should you fall off the edge of a map. It's a neat concept, bundling traversal abilities into the sole weapon you're carrying throughout the game. Just fire your launcher underneath you to propel yourself up into the air, or fire it underneath your position next to a horizontal ledge to climb the surface itself. You'll use these rocket-based weapons as a form of traversal in Rocket Arena. In 2020, First Strike's Rocket Arena keeps the rocket-based projectile weapons and level playing field for health, but adds in colorful heroes with unique abilities, shaking things up just enough to give the game its own identity, while also maintaining the level playing field the original mod established. It's quite literally inspired by the fan-made mod that made its way to four Quake games over eight years, stripping away player abilities, weapons, health, and armor in favor of a rocket-fueled survival deathmatch. Rocket Arena sharing the same name as the Quake mod originating from 1997 is no accident. Dealing damage to an opponent, I build up their "Blast Meter" with ranged projectiles and ability-based attacks, until said meter is full and I can deliver one final, decisive strike to send them shooting out of the arena like they've taken off on a rocket. The game itself is a 3v3 hero shooter, where characters try to send each other flying out of an invisible wall all around the arena. It's easy to play and perfectly accessible for anyone as a basic entry point to your average hero shooter, with a brightly appealing color palette adorning basic character designs. But I like it still, because in the moment it just feels really damned satisfying. I know I'll scoff it down and then immediately move on to thinking about something else. I know it won't be anything particularly special.
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