Why get Rocket League for free when you can hop on the PlayStation Store and pay for an inferior clone?
No, we’ve no idea either. Car-based footie game Rocket League went free-to-play a while back so it makes precisely zero sense for a company to create a clone and then try to sell it. But Rocket Car: Ultimate Ball League Machines on the PS4 is exactly that.
There are car-based sports games inspired by Rocket League, games such as Turbo Golf racing. But that’s not what’s happened here. There is a gun-based battle mode but the the football mode, is basically Rocket League, a game also available on the PlayStation 4.
Available now on the PlayStation Store, it even copies the way cars explode away from the goal when you score. Except it’s nowhere near as good. How do we know this because, against our better judgement, we actually paid the $14.99/£11.99 to get our hands on it.
And.. we really wish we hadn’t. It’s a port of Rocket Car Ultimate Ball, currently available on Android, which explains why the graphics are so sub-par. What’s inexcusable is just how blatantly bad this is, the AI in particuar. Our tactic of driving straight at the ball worked 75% of the time, giving us at least a 6-1 win every time we played.
Where were the other human players? There aren’t any, since this is a single-player only game. Though, for some mind-boggling reason, it pretends not to be, with a whole “joining match” screen. Except instead of XxGazzChungus or TeaBagz42, you’ve got players named Adrian and Edwin.
It’s only been out a couple of days but we’re going to be watching developments with interest. Why? It’s not the only terrible game on the PlayStation Store. The reason is that Sony recently had a Nintendo Switch The Last of Us knock-off pulled and have gone so far as to copyright strike YouTube footage of the game.
So we’re eager to see whether, when this Rocket League clone’s release becomes more widely publicised, Sony steps up and removes it. Now, where did we put that microwave popcorn?
