Coming via the EA Originals publishing label, Rocket Arena will blast off to PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on 14th July, with full cross-play multiplayer between all platforms. The game’s a 3v3 arena battler partially inspired by the classic Quake series mods with which it shares its name.
Set in the rocket-happy community of Crater, where rockets are life, is family friendly take on the classic concept of battling with rocket launchers. The game still features the core of being able to rocket jump and battling with projectile-based weapons, but almost everything else has changed and has been wrapped up in an animated film art style. Instead of having health bars, landing successive blows on enemies will see their Impact meter grow until they’re susceptible to a Megablast that knocks them out of the arena, Super Smash Bros. style. They don’t die, but just fly back into the arean again.
There’s 10 playable characters at launch, each with 100 levels of progressions and hundreds of unlockable cosmetics. Each character has a different type of rocket launcher, from a standard launcher to a fast-firing one, and even a shotgun and sniper rocket launcher. In addition to their main attack, they then have a secondary fire and a special ability.
10 maps will feature on day one, with four PvP game modes – Knockout, Rocketball, Mega Rocket and Treasure Hunt – as well as a co-op PvE mode called RocketBot Attack.
Keeping the game sustained will be daily and weekly challenges, with Season 1 and a battle pass being introduced two weeks after launch. The game will cost $29.99.
We went hands on with the game ahead of today’s announcement coming away relatively impressed. I wrote, “Going into the game with a ton of preconceptions from the old mods, I was surprised at every turn by Rocket Arena. Maybe change isn’t so bad after all?”
Head over to our full preview for more.
