There are few games that can capture the quick-fire arcade rush of Rocket League in quite the same way. There are some that have tried and failed, and some that offer adjacent experiences, but the team-based vehicular soccer game doesn’t have much direct competition. Sloclap’s Rematch, the arcade soccer game that released on June 19, attempts to fill that gap. The premise is a simple, cheeky reversal of Rocket League’s gimmick. Rocket League was football but with cars; Rematch is Rocket League but with people.
And just like Rocket League, Rematch is fun. It strips down soccer to its street version, distilling the intricacies of the game to their basest elements. You defend your goal, and you try and score against the opponent while looking as cool as possible. But the deceptively simple objectives give way to smart strategies, teamwork, and plenty of skill moves that add complexity to the gameplay. Rematch, however, can be a frustrating experience if you’re paired with the wrong team. The game requires teammates to work together to defend and attack and many players online aren’t really interested in that.
Rematch is also a lean package at launch. There are three modes and ranked play, and Sloclap intends to support the game with post-launch content. But it’s difficult to keep players hooked in a highly competitive multiplayer space with limited offerings. Despite the hiccups, however, Rematch is thoroughly enjoyable and doesn’t really require you to be a football fan to pick it up and start scoring goals.
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Underneath its soccer skin, Rematch is also an action game. Its martial art DNA can be seen in the player’s skill moves and slides. Sloclap is known for martial arts fighting games like Absolver and Sifu. In its recent dev update, the studio said Rematch wasn’t just a football game, but a “samurai” game, too, in some ways. And it’s true. Rematch is a very physical game and the influence of Sifu can be seen in its animations and player acrobatics. There’s a real impact to kicking the ball or going in for a slide tackle.
There are three standard modes — 3v3, 4v4, and 5v5 — and a ranked 5v5 mode. You’re matched with other players online or you can squad up with friends to take part in matches that last six minutes. The team with the highest score at full time wins. In case of a tie, the match goes into overtime and the result is decided by a sudden death goal. If a team takes a 4-0 lead, the match ends with mercy rule. You control a single football player on your team, switching between outfield roles and goalkeeping as the score progresses.
The standard moves of a football match are all present. You can pass, receive, lob, dribble, head, and shoot the ball at goal. But the rules and regulations are trimmed down for arcade simplicity. There’s no offsides, no fouls and no breaks of play. The ball doesn’t go out of bounds and there’s no throw-ins or free-kicks or penalties. It’s box-to-box back-and-forth gameplay. Rematch can be a bit of a jarring experience early on for people who’ve played Fifa or Pro Evolution Soccer all their lives. The game is played from the third-person perspective, grounding you in the middle of the action, instead of the broadcast camera view of traditional football games.
Rematch is played from the third-person perspective
Photo Credit: Kepler Interactive/ Sloclap
It took me a couple of matches to rewire my brain to dig up the muscle memory tied to Rocket League. And if you have played a lot of Rocket League, it won’t take you long to feel at home in Rematch. Once the ball has been kicked, however, the differences become clear right away. Rematch requires you to learn how to control the ball and not just hit it in the general direction of the opponent’s goal. And the ball doesn’t just stick to your feet like Fifa either. You have to time your input to receive a grounded or lobbed pass cleanly, and you can’t sprint around with the ball glued to your toes.
Shooting is the most basic and essential action in Rematch and there are a few ways to manipulate your shots. You use the right trigger on the controller to shoot, holding it down for longer to add more power to your shots. You can add curl your shots, keep them high or grounded, and put in an extra effort and hit volleys. Rematch also offers a robust sandbox to chain several actions and shoot to score. You can rainbow flick the ball and then head it to gain extra height for a blistering follow-up volley shot, or you can lob the ball above the goalpost to deflect it back to you from the back wall to confuse the keeper and manufacture an open chance to score — this perhaps the most common scoring meta in the game. Rematch allows you to go wild with the moves and experiment to create your own tricks and opportunities.
Rematch allows you to chain tricks and experiment with skill moves
Photo Credit: Kepler Interactive/ Sloclap
Holding down the left trigger puts the player in a dribble stance, where you can execute a few skill moves with the combination of the left stick and cross button on the DualSense controller to get past defenders. You can also flick the ball past onrushing defenders on the ground or take the aerial route by rainbow flicking the ball over their heads. But it’s not just about skill moves and showboating; to win, you must pass the ball to your teammates, make runs and stretch the opposition, and send in crosses to create chances. Support play is a crucial ingredient to winning games in Rematch. While that role isn’t as flashy as rainbow flicking past defenders and volleying the ball into the goal, it’s just as rewarding and satisfying to make the right pass and defend your zone if your team actually likes to play as a team.
Goalkeeping comes with its own mechanics, as well. The role passes from player to player on the team with each goal, but you can simply swap by entering the goal box. A keeper can dive to save shots at goal, lunge at the feet of incoming players to gather the ball, and pass to other outfield players. You can also dribble the ball out of the box and join the play, but unless someone is covering for you, you’ll be leaving the goal empty. When all teammates play to their strengths and work in synergy, Rematch can be thrilling and satisfying.
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Goalkeepers can join the action in the outfield, too, but at a risk
Photo Credit: Kepler Interactive/ Sloclap
But that’s where it also rushes into problems. In most games online, your teammates will end up playing like disparate parts of a broken-down machine rather than in-sync members of a functioning squad. More often than not, you’ll have someone on your team who thinks they’re Ronaldo and teammates are there just to feel the warmth of their glow. No matter how many times you ask for the ball, or make a run into empty space, they won’t pass. And they won’t fall back to defend when your team loses the ball either. But that’s just the hazards of online play. Rematch is way more fun with friends or a squad of players online who you know want to play collaboratively.
At launch and in the following weeks, Rematch has also been plagued by matchmaking issues. It can often take while to find a match — a problem that’s exacerbated by lack of cross play between supported platforms. The game also suffers from technical problems. Frequent desync issues can be frustrating while playing as a keeper, and inconsistent hit detection also mars the experience. Sloclap has already rolled out a few hotfixes to address pressing issues and promised cross play will be available in the coming weeks when Season 1 of the game launches. New ranked queues and netcode improvements are also on the way.
Character models in Rematch closely resemble the ones seen in Sifu
Photo Credit: Kepler Interactive/ Sloclap
Last week, the developer rolled out Rematch’s first major patch on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, that improves hit detection for the goalkeeper; fixes issues with the camera, animations, and stability; and allows players to remap controls. With further post-launch updates, Rematch should be in much better shape than it was at launch.
Performance on PC, on the other hand, is near flawless. We tested the game on a rig provided by CyberpowerPC India, which features a 13th Gen Intel Core i5-13400F processor, 16GB DDR5 RAM, Nvidia Geforce RTX 4060 graphics card, and 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD (PCIe Gen4). Even on the highest settings at 2K resolution, I recorded frame rates consistently over 120fps, with negligible stuttering.
Rematch’s visuals, while not as striking in terms of mood and lighting in Sifu, feature the same punchy richness of the martial arts game. Player characters look crisp and come with a fair amount of customisation options. Some skins and accessories are, of course, locked behind microtransactions, but Sloclap needs to add better rewards for progression — that should hopefully happen with the launch of Season 1. The football pitches and the roster of AR stadiums are vibrant, and the latter brings diverse backdrops to football matches.
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Rematch features vibrant visuals and diverse stadium environments
Photo Credit: Kepler Interactive/ Sloclap
With Rematch available on Game Pass, it is not difficult to recommend it to players who enjoy multiplayer experiences. Whether you’re a football fan, or you love Rocket League, or you’ve played Fifa all your life, Sloclap’s soccer game will be familiar and fun territory. Its team-based arcade twist to football expands the sports genre and brings in some necessary competition to both Rocket League and EA Sports FC titles. More importantly, it brings a refreshingly joyous take on football games, a genre left to rot in the hands of EA. Sloclap has already addressed some of the major technical issues with the first patch, and cross play support, which the developer has said will arrive in September, should reduce wait times and improve matchmaking.
From the studio’s perspective, Rematch is certainly a bold gambit. The multiplayer space is a crowded one and players are already entrenched in their preferred titles. Many would have expected Sloclap to follow-up Sifu with a sequel or yet another martial arts game. But with Rematch, the developer has tried to infuse its expertise with games involving physical combat into a football pitch. The result is a crunchingly satisfying experience that combines action and arcade sports convincingly. Afterall, a football match is a fight, too.
