Rocket Racing review - A hyper-polished racer that fails to stand out
Platform reviewed: PS5
Available on: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, Android
Release date: December 8, 2023
Rocket Racing is another major game to launch within Fortnite at the end of 2023, in what was a landmark period for the ongoing blockbuster title. Rocket Racing is being worked on by Psyonix, the folks behind Rocket League, and actually shares a lot with the popular car football game. The result is as slick and polished as you’d expect, but like the other two new Fortnite games to arrive alongside it, Rocket Racing lacks its own sense of identity. It’s a competent racer that simply fails to stand out against its competitors - but there is hope on the road ahead.
Psyonix has made a smart choice with Rocket Racing, taking the beloved Rocket League brands and folding it into a reasonably straightforward arcade racing experience. If you buy a skin in Rocket Racing, you can use it in Rocket League, for example, and many of the racing mechanics are just retooled versions of the moves you can pull off in Rocket League. Because of this familiarity, given you’ve played Rocket League, of course, Rocket Racing’s drift-heavy gameplay clicks almost immediately. The key to winning a race is delightfully simple: just be faster than the other players. There are no items and very few gimmicks to be found in Rocket Racing, with races primarily focusing on skill and map knowledge.
There are 26 launch tracks to race through in Rocket Racing, split into Novice, Advanced, and Expert difficulties. One of the main issues with progression is that if you want to go down the ranked route, you’ll only really play Novice tracks for the first couple of hours. These are stripped-back affairs, lacking any of the zero-g twists and turns that comprise the game’s main hook. You see, the cars in Rocket Racing can air-dodge and stick to surfaces, gravity be damned. In Expert levels, this neat mechanic is used plentifully, resulting in some very fun racing indeed. The tracks at lower difficulties? Well, they’re less engaging. Simpler tracks focus on drifting, which does get old very quickly. It all feels a bit like item-less Mario Kart. It's exciting for a select few, but not really how most people would choose to play the game.
A challenge a day
Thankfully, you can choose tracks to jump into from the get-go, if you want to experience the Expert tracks sooner. As a complete offering, Rocket Racing’s tracks suffer from the lack of identity present in the overall game. I have played each track at least four times apiece, but I would struggle to tell you my favorites or even distinguish between most of them. The soundtrack, meanwhile, is excellent, hitting a sweet spot between the drum and bass of the 2000s and some of the more electro-heavy leanings of the Rocket League soundtrack.
Given that Rocket Racing lives within Fortnite, its vehicles can be applied to use in the Battle Royale Mode. New vehicle skins can be purchased in the Item Shop, and I must say, the prices are absolutely egregious. A whopping 4000 V-Bucks (a 5000 V-Bucks pack costs $19.99) will get you a new car and some decals. This is well out of parity with the Lego and main Fortnite offerings in the store, though perhaps this has something to do with the prices in Rocket League. Regardless, it turns an approachable racing game into something a bit more pricey, which I think misses the mark.
By dodging while in the air, you’ll flip your Rocket Racing car left, right, up, or down. This can be used to propel yourself onto walls and ceilings, where you can drive in zero gravity. Building on this, some of Rocket Racing’s best moments involve switching between these planes of racing.
Rocket Racing does have Daily Challenges, Quests, and even Battle Pass rewards, giving players something to work towards while racing. Unfortunately, the game does not have its own Battle Pass and instead shares its rewards as part of the main Fortnite Battle Pass. In fact, the first Rocket Racing Battle Pass unlock doesn’t arrive until level 82 out of 100, making it pretty inaccessible to most players.
Not so special
Currently, Rocket Racing is running its Season Zero, so it has yet to launch what one assumes, or hopes is a more robust set of progression features. It’s the future where things look brightest for Rocket Racing, with user-created tracks, leaderboards, and further customization options all teased for later down the line. Hopefully, once the first major update hits, Rocket Racing will start to feel a bit more like a full game, and less like a Rocket League collaboration within Fortnite.
Rocket Racing shares Fortnite’s accessibility settings, which means they’re slightly too buried in menus. Still, there’s a sound visualizer, completely remappable controls, as well as some HUD scaling options.
While future updates will go a long way to making Rocket Racing feel like a worthwhile proposition, the game has a real problem with its sense of identity. The art style is generic, the tracks are forgettable, and the core racing hook is not exciting enough to make a splash. This will be trickier to remedy moving forward, but for now, at least, Rocket Racing is polished enough to recommend to those looking for a new arcade racer. Something is missing, however, and I suspect that feeling will persist until the community gets its hands on the upcoming creation tools. Until then, so far, so unremarkable.
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