Rematch Hands-on Preview - Rocket League Meets Pro Clubs in the Best Ways

It is very rare that I’m surprised by a sports game anymore, but Rematch did nothing but surprise me in all the best ways during the beta test that took place over the weekend. I played the game for 12+ hours over the weekend and wish I could have played it for at least 12 more.

I actually remember where I was when I first played Rocket League. It was at E3 in a booth off the main part of the floor. I had never heard about it before that E3, but after stumbling upon it, Rocket League instantly hooked me with its gameplay loop. For me, that is such a rare feeling in a sports game because you have to learn a lot of mechanics in most sports-adjacent simulation games. And since there are less arcade sports games being made these days, that feeling of picking up a controller and jumping right in is even rarer, which I think is a problem. So the best thing I can say about Rematch is I was hooked in a way that felt very similar to how I felt when I played Rocket League for the first time.

Rematch is a multiplayer soccer game played in an arena setting where there is no out of bounds, no stoppages, and you play either 4-on-4 or 5-on-5. Every player is human-controlled, and the default ranked mode is 5-on-5, so I assume that’s the preferred “competitive” way to play the game. The only real difference I felt when adding those extra two bodies was that games generally were a bit more defense-oriented in these early stages. I actually preferred 4-on-4 by a small margin, but that might be because it felt like there was more space, which was nice to have while getting a feel for all the mechanics.

Rematch Understands What Makes Pro Clubs Great

While I would classify Rematch as an “arcade” game, it’s pretty traditional overall. You can jump real high, but the moves you do are in the realm of reality, there are no power-ups, and traditional soccer tactics are still how you prosper more than doing move after move. While something like the rainbow flick is overpowered, It’s not FIFA Street where you really succeed by chaining a ton of moves together. You will run out of stamina, and the tackling is powerful enough that you can mostly survive by being in the right spots (of course, this could change as people become true demons at the game). Instead, passes, crosses, and general teamwork are how you win in this game.

You can absolutely make some comparisons to Pro Clubs, but I would argue the big reasons why this is more enjoyable than Pro Clubs is everyone has the same attributes, and you’re obviously more involved at all times in a game with fewer people on the pitch. In an ironic twist, this arcade game is also doing what so many other soccer games have not been able to do while trying to be a new-age alternative to EA FC. Rematch actually improves upon EA FC gameplay in some ways, and it’s providing a real alternative to how soccer can feel when you’re playing it.

For starters, the ball is its own object nearly all the time, which is amazing. While there are no fouls, tackling mostly makes sense. On top of that, there are actual battles through the midfield during large stretches of the game.

Passing feels especially impressive because of the way you can layer balls into space or put them right on a teammate’s foot with control that is very hard to come by in EA FC outside of expertise with full manual controls. I think the passing is the biggest strength of this game because of the amount of freedom you’re given. Since the ball is an independent object that isn’t going to just suction to another player all the time or is always tractor-beaming towards a player in space, you can reward your teammates for the runs they make in a way that makes you feel like like Xavi or Messi.

The one major area where things fall into the age-old issue of animations vs. inputs is with goalkeeping and certain 50/50 situations. It can still feel weird at times with what animations are playing out vs. how you warp to make saves or who ends up winning a 50/50 ball or tackle.

Rematch Is Still Soccer, But It Feels Very Fresh

You can change your controller inputs to more closely mimic FIFA/EA FC’s buttons, and I think many will go that route, but the feelings I constantly had while playing this game were “why haven’t we been doing some of this stuff this way forever in EA FC?”

Below you will see me push a ball around a defender to avoid a tackle and then come back on the other side and pick it up to finish with a goal. In Rematch, you use the A button (on an Xbox controller) to push the ball away from your possession. You can do something similar in EA FC, and yet it feels so much better in this game. It’s the easiest way to avoid tackles from behind, and it’s useful even in situations like this where I know a tackle is coming so I time it out to push the ball right as I’m about to get challenged.

This is so incredibly hard to do in EA FC. It’s not that it’s impossible, but the idea of pushing the ball around a defender, going around him, and then picking the ball back up is improbable. Instead, you would do skill moves or just try to speed around the defender more than push the ball ahead in this controlled manner. It feels so good to do simple stuff like this. And this sort of move is not overpowered in Rematch either. You can push the ball ahead of you and then overrun it by mistake or just not pick the ball back up, and again, that’s because the ball is acting as its own physical object. You need to re-engage with the ball, and you only do that by actually running back on to the ball — rather than it suctioning back to your feet.

It’s not that skill move spam doesn’t exist here (I do genuinely think the rainbow flick probably needs to be nerfed in some way, perhaps taking way more of your turbo away or going on cooldown for a moment), but the point is you don’t need crazy stick skills to be effective. If you’re thinking ahead, Rematch works like a traditional fighting game or even Sifu (Sloclap’s last game) where you just need to guess right and do the input that will negate the other person’s input. In effect, you’re “parrying” the other person’s input by reading their mind.

Where you do need more stick skills is with shooting. It’s a very unique system that will probably throw some people off because of how the camera works in this game. You use the right stick to basically pre-aim because your shot location is based on where you’re looking. After your shot input begins, you can’t move the right stick much to drastically change where you’re already aiming, but you can still curve the ball with the left stick to change its in-flight movement.

So for things like volleys, you basically turn your camera away from the ball before it gets to you in order to aim where you want to shoot it. In effect, you’re partially blind while shooting because you’re inputting your shot before the ball gets to you — you’re just trusting the ball will still make it to your feet so you can take the shot. The same restrictions don’t apply to passing, so you can do “no look” passes by just using your left stick to send the ball any which way without concern for where you’re looking.

In addition, the mini-map is essential because your overall POV is restricted. You can’t see who is behind you any other way, so you need to use the mini-map to notice if someone is about to barrel into you from behind. This will probably bother some people and feel too restrictive, but if you had an expanded POV this game would probably not feel frenetic enough. Plus, it would then also start to feel like any other soccer game, which is what Rematch shouldn’t try to be.

The one area where I feel the camera is a detriment is in net. Firing shots and passes off the back wall did become the “best” way to score in many of my matches by the end of the weekend. It’s not that this method shouldn’t be effective because you want people to use the arena (much like you can use the boards in indoor soccer) to their advantage. However, it’s very hard for goalies to have any idea what’s going on beyond reading where the ball is going to land based on the in-game indicator. You feel really helpless in net because there’s no great way to actually track the ball with your eyes as it goes over your head.

It’s a strange feeling because what the “right” play is for the goalkeeper is to not react to the shot off the wall, and instead try to attack the ball as it lands. The problems with that are goalies don’t have ways to do small movements, and the lobs and other balls just out of a goalie’s reach are when the ball being 100 percent its own object can have its downsides. It feels like there should be an easier way for a goalie — who makes the right read — to just snatch the ball off the back wall through some controller/keyboard input if they’re in the right general area.

Below, you can see me as the goalkeeper not really being able to grab a ball that is just above me. You do have the ability to jump up for a ball, and you do have the ability to dive at a ball, but those movements are much “bigger” than what I would really want here. In this case, I really just want my goalie to lift his arms and snatch the ball. This is one of those moments where I expect the game to do an auto-animation for me, or you need some way to do a “smaller” animation to jump up to the ball with some input that isn’t just the save button (B on an Xbox controller) — you can use the A button (again, on an Xbox controller) to gather/trap balls out in the field, but it doesn’t feel as clean to do in net.

The other “helpless” feeling I tend to have is on 50/50 balls in the air that come in off crosses. In this case, this isn’t as the goalie but rather as a defender. Headers are most easily done by using the pass button, but it does feel like the offense gets priority as they go for their volleys. On top of that, you don’t always want to use the shoot button as a defender to clear the ball because you could just kick it towards your own net. I would prefer if there was some “clear the ball” button, or the game was context sensitive and made one of your regular inputs into something like a “clearance” when you’re inside your own box and just trying to get a ball out of a dangerous area.

June 19 Can’t Come Soon Enough

I could talk about some other things I might change or add such as:

• Adding more skill moves to increase the creativity even more
• Making sure I can lock in what server I play on — I don’t ever want to play on EU or South America servers if I’m in North America
• Some sort of fake shot input — not as a move in the way it’s spammed in EA FC, just if I end up not liking where I’m aiming, for example.
• More control over how you dive as a goalie (perhaps a high or low dive since right now it’s the one time the ball warps to you in order to make up for the animations at times)
• Some tweaks to slide tackling to maybe give it a cooldown or take more of your stamina (similar to the nerf I hope the rainbow flick gets)

But in general, I’m so confident in the overall state of Rematch right now I think any of my concerns can be worked on over time. Instead, the point of this article is more to let you all know I think this game could be special and it should be on your radar. Regardless of whether you want an EA FC alternative or just want a fun sports game to play, I think almost everyone who is looking for something fresh should keep an eye on Rematch. I usually don’t heap loads of praise on games during pre-release windows because I rarely get to play this much of a game before it’s out (or I don’t get to write about it because I’m under embargo if I do), but Sloclap seems confident in their game — and they should be. Even in its beta state, it’s all I want to play even as I write this up.

Rematch will launch on June 19 (or June 16 if you get certain versions). it’s also going to be on Game Pass on day one. It’s launching at $30 (with more expensive options as well), and I think that’s the right spot. Since it’s strictly a multiplayer game, I would assume it will go the Rocket League or Fall Guys route and eventually become free-to-play because it has plenty of cosmetics and some sort of battle pass already built into the game. Either way, I think the gameplay alone gives it plenty of value, and I think it could only be undermined by having such a smaller user base that you can’t find enough competitive matches.

In the end, I truly can’t say enough how much fun I had playing Rematch all weekend. There are still some issues I want to see cleaned up (mainly on the goalie side of things and how 50/50 balls in the air are handled), but the moment-to-moment enjoyment I had playing with 7-9 other random people is not something I experience very often in sports games these days. While I’m sure the toxicity will ramp up and there will be those inevitable annoying moments that happen in Rocket League or Pro Clubs, the annoyances don’t take away from the highest of highs. If you’ve been looking for a way to get your Pro Clubs squad into another game or have been looking for a true EA FC gameplay alternative, this very well could be your white whale.