Did you really think I was going to go the whole month without talking about one of the best releases of 2015. Hell, I'd even go as far as saying that this is the best release of 2015. Is it my game of the year for 2015? Quite possibly. I know what you're thinking, and yes, I am fully aware that this may not be an indie game, but...it did win an award for the best independent game of the year, so given the nature of that award, it gives me the right to talk about it, so i'm going to. I make the rules here, not you.
I'm going to start this off by saying that I'm not a huge fan of sports based games. Hell, I know they can be fun and super competitive, but in my earlier years of playing video games, I was never hugely into the basketball / baseball games, unless you count the countless hours I put into Ken Griffey Jr's Major League Baseball for the N64, but I digress. This game is perfect for the people that never really had a good experience or an experience at all with a sports game, because this game brings together both a sports related game and turns it into something revolutionary.
You may know Psyonix from another popular game they made known as Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars, which at the time, I didn't even know existed, and man do I wish I could turn back time and play it, because Rocket League is it's successor, and done so in all the right ways. Psyonix as a developer is quickly becoming my favorite developers in this day and age because first of all, Rocket League has managed to not only brings in millions of players worldwide, but they've also managed to bring in countless dollars of sales while also maintaining a pretty good price tag for the game. Not only that, but every DLC that Psyonix has released for Rocket League has not exceeded 2$, which to me says more about the community engagement over the money they make. A lot of companies will make a great game and sell the game at a ridiculous price of 50-60$, and continue to release DLC's that also match that price tag, while not even bothering to make the DLC's interesting or engaging. Psyonix took a different route and decided from the beginning that it's more worth it to engage with their fanbase and give them great things for the game at a reasonable price. To me, that just makes the game far more enjoyable, because I'm not having to break my wallet every single time I want to buy some DLC's to make the experience that much better.
As I mentioned earlier, Rocket League has brought in millions of players around the world. Recently, they even added cross-platform play through Xbox One, so now you can play Rocket League from your PC with players on Xbox One and Playstation 4, which to my knowledge, is the first of it's kind. What better way to make the game that much better then to make it so everybody can play. It's a smart move on their part, and again, they have still managed to keep the price tag for the game at a fantastic deal. So, if you have any of those consoles, get your hands on it, it's worth the 20$.
Now my experience with the game has been a bit of an odd one, because although I have almost 150 hours in the game, I played this game pretty heavily when it was released, and then I took an extended break from it, only to come back to it recently and have fun with it again. When I say that, I don't want people thinking that the game stopped being fun for me. Honestly, more of it was due to being too tired to really get the full experience of the game, which I enjoyed from the beginning. The game has managed to so far stand the test of time for me, because a lot of the time, i'll play a game for about 50-60 hours before I start to get bored with it. Rocket League as I mentioned has gotten close to 150 hours out of me, and it continues to grow with every day I feel the urge to play it. Which is nice, because I like getting excited over a game that I was once super excited to play at it's release. There are times where I will get frustrated when I get thrown into a team that doesn't know what they're doing, but then i'll find a team that knows how to play the game really well, so that makes up for it. The recently added basketball servers are also really cool, though I will say that it definitely takes a different take on the Rocket League formula, but again...it's done really well and doesn't take away from the fun of the game. With the hundreds of different ways to customize your vehicle, mixed with the ranking systems, and even the streams for the tournaments that are held, my experience with Rocket League has overall been nothing short of excellent.
Two of my all time favorite DLC's that were released for this game would have to be the addition of the Delorean from Back to the Future and the Batmobile from Batman obviously...
It gets me excited to think about what Psyonix has next up their sleeve, because with each update they've put out, it's only made the game better each time. I've not been disappointed with any of the recent developments of the game, so it'll be cool to see where they take the game next, and i'll be right there with my car ready to play.