Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars

Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars
File:Super Sonic Acrobatic Battle Cars.png
Developer(s)	Psyonix
Publisher(s)	Psyonix
Designer(s)	Dave Hagewood
Engine	Unreal Engine 3
Platforms	PlayStation 3
Release date(s)
Genre(s)	Sports
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars, (colloquially known as SARPBC, officially abbreviated as SARP Battle-Cars or just Battle-Cars) is a physics based vehicle soccer video game released through PlayStation Network in North America on October 9, 2008 and in Europe on February 12, 2009. The campaign mode of the game is made up of a series of varied mini-games, and tournaments against AI which can only be played in single player mode.

Its sequel, Rocket League, was released on July 7, 2015, for the PlayStation 4 through the Instant Game Collection on PlayStation Plus, as well as on PC through Steam.

Gameplay

The game is played by one or more players, locally or online, using their controller to hit a soccer ball, which is much larger than the cars themselves, into the opposing goal. Each goal is worth one point, and whoever has the most points when the timer, lasting 5 minutes, runs out wins. If both teams are tied when the timer runs out,the game enters into sudden death over-time mode, whereby whoever scores a goal first wins. The overtime game mode can theoretically last forever. There are also many various mini games and tournaments, that can only be played in single player, consisting of situations such where the player is outnumbered by computer controlled opponents, where the player must shoot balls at a goal in a certain amount of time, or defend a goal from shots from a cannon. For each completed mini-game or tournament, the player earns up to 5 stars, depending on how well it was completed, along various criteria depending on the game in question.

Maps

There are 6 maps available for multi-player; Urban, Wasteland, Utopia, Cosmic, Galleon and Stadium.

Urban, Wasteland and Utopia were the original maps that came out with the release of the game. Soon after in a patch, the arena Cosmic was added for free to the American version (the European version of the game was released after this first patch, so came with 4 maps at first). Eight months later, the cosmic patch was followed by the simultaneous release of Galleon and Stadium, in another patch, also for free.

Cars

New players have only two cars but there are seven vehicles in total, unlocked by finishing mini-game challenges or playing online. According to the developers each car has the same speed, strength and agility. However, as the game relies heavily on physics, the subtle differences in the cars leads them to each "behave slightly different."

The cars also have 4 different skins each, which are chosen by the player before the start of each game, which consist of a pattern of the team colour (red or blue) and white.

Updates

In addition to lowering the price to USD $9.99 (GBP £7.99; EUR €9.99), on December 18, 2008, Psyonix released a free update to the game that fixed numerous netplay-related bugs, refined the online lobby and matchmaking aspects, and added the arena Cosmic.

The latest patch was released in early August 2009. The patch had fixed numerous bugs in the game. It also added two new arenas for the game, Galleon, which is set on a ship sailing the seas on a cold spring night and Stadium, a European-styled football stadium.

On February 5, 2013, Psyonix announced another price reduction, lowering the cost of the game to USD $2.99 (GBP £1.99).

On May 31, 2014, Psyonix released another patch, and also removed itself from the GameSpy Servers, switching over to its own servers. The patch eliminated Ranked Matches, changed the Gas and Brake, making them analog, and also improved general gameplay and graphics across the game.

Reception

Reception
Aggregate scores Aggregator Score GameRankings 70.05% Metacritic 67/100 Review scores Publication Score GameSpot 6.0/10 IGN 6.5/10

Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars received generally average reviews by critics, with a Metacritic score of 67/100. It was downloaded on the PlayStation Network over 2 million times.

Sequel

Main article: Rocket League

In March 2011, Psyonix confirmed that there was a sequel in development, but that it was far from completion, and even further from release, due to them having difficulty pitching it to publishers or acquiring the finances required to self-publish.

In September 2013, Psyonix announced their plans for the sequel in more detail, saying that there would be a free PC alpha version released for testing and improvement, and to allow buildup of a community, before being ported to consoles. They also confirmed that there was a playable version of the game, and announced what improvements are being made on the game, and new features, compared to the old one.

On February 19, 2014, Psyonix confirmed that the sequel would be called Rocket League. On July 7, 2015, it was released for the PlayStation 4 through the Instant Game Collection on PlayStation Plus, as well as on PC through Steam.

External links

• Official website