Final Strike Games, a studio made up of industry veterans, some of which worked on the Halo franchise, and Nexon America have announced Rocket Arena for PC and consoles, including PS4.
The announcement comes with a trailer, too, because what announcement work a look doesn’t? You can watch the trailer up above, and then carry on reading this wonderfully crafted article that I’m totally not writing on a laptop in the bath. Promise.
Rocket Arena is looking to take a slice of the hero-shooter pie. It’s a 3-on-3 cross-platform first-person shooter with a cast of colourful characters and a whole lot of mental weaponry. The game’s matches are just five minutes long as players compete in the Rocket Championship tour on the curious World of Crater. Easy enough to jump in and jump out when you’ve got limited time I suppose.
Rocket Arena isn’t just trying to be a knock-off though, and instead of going down the familiar shooter routes the developers are deviating by adding special gameplay mechanics that are seldom found in shooters. One such mechanic is the game’s blast meter. As you get pounded by rockets your meter will increase. Once the meter hits its critical point, you’re in danger of being blasted out of the game’s map, though you do get to return. It sounds a little like Smash Bros, but instead of adorable Nintendo characters duking it out with fisticuffs, it’s a different set of characters blowing each other to hell and back with rockets.
The developers state that the game will have dedicated matchmaking with servers that take player skills and latency into account before lumping them together into an online game. There will also be cross-play, though the press release mentions that it will be available on PC and Xbox One at launch, with PS4 currently in development.
“We developed Rocket Arena with high-quality gameplay mechanics, superb controls, and the network code required of an online FPS. Rocket Arena is an intricate shooter at its core, complete with a marvelous world, colorful characters, and ridiculous rockets,” said Kevin Franklin, Founder/CEO of Final Strike Games. “Nexon shared our vision for Rocket Arena and provided the resources and expertise to realize our goal. The result is a game that our team is exceptionally proud of, and look forward to playing every day.”
There will be a closed beta running later this month, however, it’s only for PC. Still, if you want to try to have a go of the game before it releases, you’re more than welcome to sign up for the closed beta. Who knows, maybe you’ll be chosen to be a test dummy.
