This is a segue: NBA basketball is, to me, the most nearly perfect of the four major American team sports. But the game of basketball at any level includes a design flaw that is just about fatal: fouls. I don't know, 30-40 times a game(?), the breathtaking action and skill of the best all-around athletes in the world stops while nine guys next to each other grabbing their shorts and one guy shoots a free throw. Coitus interruptus.
This is the segue to: Over the weekend I watched TEN hours of Rocket League with my son, five on Saturday, five on Sunday. Rocket League is a real sport played by real human beings, but in virtual reality. There is a basketball Rocket League and a hockey Rocket League but by far the most popular is soccer Rocket League. Any version of Rocket League takes some getting used to and the first impression you get is that it's hokey: cars that can fly, a ball as big as the cars--that is a turn-off for Boomers like moi who gave up cartoons like last year (ahem). But once, or if, you overcome that, and especially if you have someone as I do who can train your eyes, the skill of the uniformly young, like teenage young, Rocket Leaguers is sublime, as skillful and with reflexes as lightning-quick as you see in the NBA or NHL. And! No fouls, no rules!, no stoppage of play. Each game lasts only five minutes--because it is so intense. It is mentally draining just to watch, I can only imagine how draining to play. Rocket League has, or had, design flaws. The first, which continues, is that there is no league. Rocket League has no leagues. It has tournaments. It has tournaments out the ass. And the formats of the tournaments is confusing at best, stupid at worst. There's a semi-finals, and the winner moves on to the finals (duh), but then so does the loser of the semi-final sometime. I think they play a consolation round or something where the winner of that plays the winner of the semi-final. That is what happened earlier this year when my favorite global team, Sand Rock Gaming, won the European semi-final and faced the team they just beat in the Grand Finale, where they got swept. So there's flaw and sub-flaw, 1 and 1A. The second separate flaw has been partially eliminated: the camera angle was always at ground level and would pivot and reverse field till you ended up sea-sick. They are "experimenting" with an overhead angle which is why are you just "experimenting" with that you knuckleheads.
Rocket League is fabulous--No, it is not going to replace the NBA or Premier League in my preference; the NBA players just look like cartoon freaks and Premier League soccer is "the beautiful game" at it's most beautiful, but Rocket League's virtues are now attracting major sponsorship and technical talent to correct the obvious, like the camera angle. This weekend the North American championship was sponsored by Verizon, with commercials and everything, and it was much crisper and more professional. More nearly perfect.
This is the segue to: Over the weekend I watched TEN hours of Rocket League with my son, five on Saturday, five on Sunday. Rocket League is a real sport played by real human beings, but in virtual reality. There is a basketball Rocket League and a hockey Rocket League but by far the most popular is soccer Rocket League. Any version of Rocket League takes some getting used to and the first impression you get is that it's hokey: cars that can fly, a ball as big as the cars--that is a turn-off for Boomers like moi who gave up cartoons like last year (ahem). But once, or if, you overcome that, and especially if you have someone as I do who can train your eyes, the skill of the uniformly young, like teenage young, Rocket Leaguers is sublime, as skillful and with reflexes as lightning-quick as you see in the NBA or NHL. And! No fouls, no rules!, no stoppage of play. Each game lasts only five minutes--because it is so intense. It is mentally draining just to watch, I can only imagine how draining to play. Rocket League has, or had, design flaws. The first, which continues, is that there is no league. Rocket League has no leagues. It has tournaments. It has tournaments out the ass. And the formats of the tournaments is confusing at best, stupid at worst. There's a semi-finals, and the winner moves on to the finals (duh), but then so does the loser of the semi-final sometime. I think they play a consolation round or something where the winner of that plays the winner of the semi-final. That is what happened earlier this year when my favorite global team, Sand Rock Gaming, won the European semi-final and faced the team they just beat in the Grand Finale, where they got swept. So there's flaw and sub-flaw, 1 and 1A. The second separate flaw has been partially eliminated: the camera angle was always at ground level and would pivot and reverse field till you ended up sea-sick. They are "experimenting" with an overhead angle which is why are you just "experimenting" with that you knuckleheads.
Rocket League is fabulous--No, it is not going to replace the NBA or Premier League in my preference; the NBA players just look like cartoon freaks and Premier League soccer is "the beautiful game" at it's most beautiful, but Rocket League's virtues are now attracting major sponsorship and technical talent to correct the obvious, like the camera angle. This weekend the North American championship was sponsored by Verizon, with commercials and everything, and it was much crisper and more professional. More nearly perfect.
