How to Watch Rocket League
By Nickolas Carroll
Getting Started
Unlike many other major Esport titles, Rocket League is directly based on the world’s most famous sport, soccer. Think soccer except the players driving supercars with rocket flying capabilities. This simple idea has allowed Rocket League to remain popular for over 5 years and grow bigger every day.
Field of Play
Rocket League is played on a wide variety of fields ranging from a desert wasteland to a deep-sea field circled by fish. Each field is a complete dome allowing players to drive on the wall and ceiling as well as giving the ball more surfaces to bounce off of. Each field also comes with 34 boost pads that provide players with a little extra speed when deployed.
Boost and Movement
These boost pads help fill up one’s boost pack to 100 boost opening opportunities to make an epic save or insane aerial shot. Players are in full control of the movement of their car. They can turn and drive like any other normal vehicle as well as jump up or dash in any direction. After utilizing dashes or their boost tank, cars will reach supersonic speed. At this speed, they hit the ball harder and even demolish opposing players when making contact. When demolished a car will just respawn by their own goal, losing any extra boost charge that they had accumulated.
Gameplay Rules
There are many variations of the game but competitively Rocket League is played in a 3v3 setting. Each game is 5 minutes long with a possible sudden-death style overtime phase. There are no timeouts and the time only stops when a goal is scored to allow for a cinematic instant replay. When the match timer reaches zero the game won’t stop until the ball has touched the ground, giving the opportunity for wild buzzer-beater goals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNG7r1n6Jk8
Customization
Rocket League allows players to customize just about everything, cars, goal explosions, music, etc. With hundreds of different cosmetics items and car types, each player is sure to stand out from the crowd. While most of the cosmetics don’t have any impact on the actual gameplay, the choice of car has a huge impact. There are six different groups of cars that organize all of the vehicles that are constantly being released. These six groups have their own hitboxes which affect how the ball bounces off of them.
While Rocket League has remained unchanged for a number of years, its popularity has never been higher. Now it’s time to turn on the stream and cheer for your favorite team as they compete for the championship!