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FBC Firebreak review – a really weird game

by admin June 21, 2025

A bold approach to the concept of work marks this game out as a singular enterprise.

On my best runs, with the best accidental match-ups, I’ve been the watering can guy. I’ll deploy alongside two far more talented players, and they’ll fix machinery and fight the hordes while I handle the watering. I’ll put out ground-based fires to allow for freedom of movement and to stop enemies being enraged by flames. I’ll put out any fires on my allies when they accidentally set light to themselves, so they don’t have to race back to the nearest shower block.

FBC: Firebreak review

This works, until it doesn’t work. I’ll be watering away and then I’ll round a corner and an elite baddie will pop up. Oh, Christ, I’ll think. It’s RACHEL DAVIES. (Elite baddies in Firebreak always come with names plucked out of some Platonic HR database.) Rachel Davies will be on fire and she’ll be floating and laying down hellish covering damage. Monsters will spawn beneath her and we’ll be over-run and no more machinery will get fixed. And there’s nothing that the watering can man can do now except die as efficiently as possible.

A step back: Control was a fairly normal game that wanted you to think it was weird. Underneath the stylish disarray, it offered a pleasantly traditional blend of shooting and physic-based magic powers, and it let you loose against a range of entertainingly predictable enemies in close confines. FBC: Firebreak is a Control spin-off, but get this. It’s a weird game that wants you to think it’s normal. On the surface it’s a run-based co-op shooter that should fit in somewhere between Helldivers 2 and something like REPO. But underneath…?

Once again we’re in the Oldest House, the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control, an agency that deals with anything that’s traditionally accompanied by a theremin when it turns up in a TV show. The Oldest House was absolutely the best thing about Control, a game fairly filled with good things, so it’s lovely to be back. Polished concrete! Wood- and glass-lined conference rooms! Weird Lovecraftian mines with slate roofs and horrible things growing in the dark. You get the idea.

Here’s a trailer for FBC: Firebreak.Watch on YouTube

In Firebreak, you take the role of a bunch of endlessly expendable janitors, and the missions often take you into parts of the Oldest House that were one-shot gags in Control. That room filled with Post-it notes? It’s now a mission, in which you have to clean up an infestation of Post-its and maybe fight a giant Post-it monster. That furnace, whose staging was so luminously clever you almost felt your eyebrows turning to cinder in its presence? That’s another mission where you have to fix up machinery and step inside the turbines to get them venting again.

There are five of these missions and they’re available in various configurations in terms of length and difficulty. But they all work the same way in essence: there’s something annoying and technical and genuinely job-like for you and two other players to get done, whether it’s clearing something up, fixing something or loading something. There will be a substance to avoid getting covered with – Post-its, strangely delicious looking toxic pink goo. And there will be Hiss, Control’s spectral enemies, that warp in now and then to give you a really hard time when you’re doing it.

The Hiss and the jobs themselves go some way to explaining Firebreak’s bizarre load outs. Alongside a range of guns and grenades, the best of which are unlockable, you also drop into levels with one of three kits. One of these fires out water and is the best. Another sends jolts of electricity. A third is basically just a wrench. The water puts out fire and makes enemies wet. The electricity charges machinery in an instant and can shock things. The wrench fixes machinery in seconds and allows you to do a bit of general bashing.

FBC: Firebreak. | Image credit: Remedy

Firebreak wants you to work out how these kits work in concert with one another – and ideally you’ll work this out to your enormous surprise in the middle of a fight. Spray Hiss with water and then get your buddy to zap them? Massive electrical damage. That’s a combo, but there are loads of other elemental tricks, and not all of them come from the kits themselves. I was about five hours in when a friend told me I could use a level’s zipline to put out flames, for example. Wind beats fire. Nice.

If this sounds like it adds up to a very chaotic game, well, it certainly does. Standard weaponry, randomly spawning foes, elemental chaos, a mission based on drudgery. To give things a little more focus each level has a bunch of stations you can keep running – respawn points, weapons restockers, a shower block for getting rid of goo or Post-its. What this in turn means is that you’re in a multiplayer game where you’re all working on the same objective, but randomly breaking off when your own needs require it. We’re all tackling that pink goo, but I’m out of bullets, or I’m so caked in the stuff I can’t move. At such a moment it seems almost overkill to mention there are deployable gadgets and ultimates for each kit, but there are. The wrench’s ultimate is a piggy bank, for example, and you really don’t want to be around when it breaks.

I should declare my hand here: I don’t mind drudgery that much. In real life my favourite job ever was working as a dishwasher in a restaurant and I’d possibly still be doing that if gentle hearing loss hadn’t made me realise that’s a bad idea – lots of Firebreak-style elemental combinations can occur when a KP can’t hear “BEHIND YOU!” – but drudgery in a game has to be carefully used. Because Firebreak uses a weird system where levels can get both longer and more aggressive depending on your settings, that careful use I’m talking about goes into the garbage disposal.

FBC: Firebreak. | Image credit: Remedy Entertainment

The best runs I’ve played – the best times I’ve had with Firebreak – were hectic and brief. The level wasn’t too long, but it also wasn’t too quiet. We were working frantically to do our jobs and clear out Hiss, and the Hiss weren’t having it. Attacks from all sides, and also corruptions in play. These are randomisers you can switch on and off that might change the basis of a level a bit. There’s a haunted traffic light that makes you slow down (I think), and there’s a flying wrench that’s constantly damaging machinery. All good when the Hiss are strobing in and the end is in reach.

The worst levels I’ve played though were either knackeringly long: load this thing, load it again, get it on a shuttle and then stand by for the launch before making it to the exit. Or they were too quiet. Again, another work anecdote. When my wife was a trainee nurse, her favourite shifts were in A and E because your feet never touched the ground. You went in, had a Red Bull, dealt with the chaos, and before you had time for another Red Bull you were headed home. Firebreak at its worst can be like an endless shift on a very sleepy ward. I’ll be fixing furnaces forever, with only the rarest case of Hiss to try my ultimate out on.

FBC: Firebreak. | Image credit: Remedy Entertainment

Beyond all this stuff is the general business of unlockables and perks to buy and pick between as you level up, along with more perk slots to use as you get more powerful. There are some entertaining guns in there, along with fun sprays and those ultimates, which are always money in the bank, but the game is held ransom a little to whether you’re going to be stuck doing something that’s no fun for a knackeringly long time.

Even here Firebreak can surprise you, though. Last night I foolishly cranked Firebreak up to the most hectic settings and did one of the pink room runs and it was glorious – just me and someone else, constantly busy, constantly over-stretched, looking after each other as wave after wave came down. The game’s unreasonableness was charming then genuinely thrilling. And those synergies emerged – I would chuck water over everything and my pal would add electricity and we’d be zapping a whole dance floor of baddies. The length of the mission was still too much, but it didn’t matter because we were doing something totally unfeasible. We were working away in the impossibility mines and it was a good time.

FBC: Firebreak. | Image credit: Remedy Entertainment

And that’s the thing: a game this weird really needs a good player base, and here Firebreak has smashed it. This is one of the most generous and patient communities out there. Remember: a lot of the tasks here are annoying and hard, and need you to divide up and take unglamorous roles. Well, players endlessly rise to the occasion and I’m left with so many stories of kindness, from the guy who laid down pings for me all the way back to the escape elevator to another who waited at the elevator for a full minute for his comrades to come back.

FBC: Firebreak accessibility options

Controls can be remapped, sprint and crouch can be toggled, subtitle size can be enlarged, hitmarker audio can be tweaked.

What a bizarre, improbable thing this is. If Control was all about a fairly standard action game with world-beating set dressing, it feels like Firebreak has worked backwards from that set dressing to build all its actual ideas from. It really is a game about fixing furnaces and picking up Post-its, but it wants you to do it with strangers, and, heck, why not have a little interference from the Hiss as you go? It’s pretty much Control fan fiction – and I mean that even if you don’t get the mission in which you’re fixing giant fans.

Code for FBC: Firebreak was provided by the publisher.

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June 21, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Thanks To Borderlands 4 Fans, This Handy Feature Has Been Added To The Game

by admin June 20, 2025

Following a recent wave of Borderlands 4 previews, Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford has confirmed that one fan-requested feature will be in the game when it launches in September. While a mini-map won’t be in the looter-shooter, a radar will, making situational awareness of a battlefield much easier.

In a lengthy thread, Pitchford spoke about how fans had been asking Gearbox to add this feature to the game–many people from the European, US, and Asian preview tours were advocating for it, Pitchford said–and the studio managed to make this happen.

“As me and head of dev, Steve Jones–and some of the other guys–were poking around with producers trying to figure out what it would take to add these features and if we could make it in time to ship or not, something awesome happened,” Pitchford explained. “In classic Gearbox style, where we have an ethos of ‘they who builds it, wins,’ some developers got together and found some time in the margins of their schedules. Some Gearbox heroes did what Gearbox heroes do!”

Several Gearbox employees “splintered off” to work on the radar, and Pitchford says they managed to squeeze it into the game before it undergoes some QA testing ahead of its launch. The radar will be off by default when the game launches, and it won’t be in the current build of Borderlands 4 on the Borderlands Fan Fest showfloor this weekend. Here’s what it looks like in action:

A combat radar is now an optional feature in Borderlands 4, you guys! Here’s a sneak peek at what it looks like! 29/32 pic.twitter.com/kcKebRqE2r

— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) June 19, 2025

Borderlands 4 will also have a few other fan-requested features when it launches, and the base version of the game has an MSRP of $70. “This feels like a Borderlands game through and through where enough has changed for me to feel like this is an improvement over Borderlands 3, but it’s not so different that I can expect huge and sweeping changes,” Jordan Ramée said in GameSpot’s Borderlands 4 preview.

Borderlands 4 launches on September 12 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S, with a Switch 2 version arriving at a later date.

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June 20, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Donkey Kong Bananza’s Direct Reveals A Truly Smashing Game

by admin June 20, 2025

Nintendo’s Donkey Kong Bananza Direct went out June 18, revealing a vast amount of new information about the forthcoming Switch 2 exclusive, and the more it went on, the more we found ourselves absolutely pumped for the game. You can watch the entire 15-minute video below.

Tears Of The Kingdom’s Newspaper Questline And The State Of Hyrulean Journalism

While we already knew that Donkey Kong Bananza was going to be a 3D open-world action adventure starring Mario’s first-ever enemy and that nearly everything in every level is destructible, it was hard to get a sense of exactly how the game would play. After fifteen minutes in its company, that feels completely different. This looks like it could be very special. (Jump to 29:30.)

DK is accompanied on Ingot Isle by Pauline, who, it seems, was trapped inside that purple rock we saw in earlier glimpses of Bananza? Who knows. But the important thing is, the two of them are then free to smash their way around layer after layer of adventure, each level set below the last, until you reach the core of the planet.

As the video goes on, we learn that DK can pretty much go anywhere at any point, climbing anything, and then also smash through or down any part of the level. It seems you really can bash down just about anything, which will hopefully lead to some excellent videos as people attempt to destroy entire levels. Oh, and he can turn into a zebra and an ostrich?! Amazing. He’s doing all this with the goal of finding Banandium, a precious banana-shaped gem, while also trying to help Pauline return to her non-ape-based reality.

As Kotaku watched the video, one by one we all declared our astonishment at how much is going on in this game, and how much we want to be playing it. However, like everyone else, we’re going to have to wait a month. The game is out on July 17, with pre-orders open now. Remember, this is a Switch 2 exclusive, and there’s no version for the original Switch. Presumably this was once intended to be a launch title, but needed an extra couple of months.

This really does look like the big title the Switch 2 is desperately lacking. This definitely doesn’t look like it’s some sort of stop-gap before the proper Super Mario title, but rather a full-fledged Super Donkey Kong action game to occupy our summer. You know, if it plays as good as it looks. We’ll find out soon.

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June 20, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

‘Dosa Divas’ Is a ‘Spicy’ New Game About Fighting Capitalism With Food

by admin June 20, 2025

As protestors faced off against ICE agents and law enforcement in Los Angeles, game developers gathered just a few miles away for Summer Game Fest. They’d come to the annual show in early June to show off their games and make professional connections. The team at Outerloop Games was no different. But the studio, led and staffed by brown and Black developers, many of whom are immigrants themselves, had extra precautions to consider: “In case of an ICE raid,” says game director Chandana Ekanayake of the team’s plan at the time, “we’re gonna stay together.” Whether that meant at the event itself, or even dinner after, the team kept track of each other for the entire event.

Outerloop, creator of Thirsty Suitors and Falcon Age, were at the event to show off their newest project, a “spicy” narrative turn-based RPG called Dosa Divas due out in early 2026.

As the Trump administration carries out mass deportations, targets visas, disappears migrants into a foreign megaprison, and tweets “ASMR” videos of people being deported in chains from the official White House account, Outerloop is making games that find ways to connect people to different cultures through food. “That’s the most accepted version of ourselves or of culture, is food,” Ekanayake says. “People are definitely willing to try food before they’re willing to accept the people that make it.”

Outerloop’s games have always featured food in some capacity, and Dosa Divas only ramps up its importance. Named for dosas, savory crepes popular in South India, the game stars two sisters fighting against an evil fast food empire, literally; characters in its turn-based combat have unique abilities associated with different “flavor profiles,” like sweet, spicy, or sour. To attack effectively, you need to match moves to the enemy’s flavor craving.

Dosa Divas centers around three sisters—Samara, Amani, and fast food entrepreneur, Lina—the last of which has become estranged after their family restaurant closes down. Lina’s quick cuisine has become so widespread that nobody really cooks anymore.

Ekanayake says that part of the game’s story is about reconciliation and reconnection, especially through food. Collecting ingredients and cooking plays an important role in the game. By sharing meals with villagers, players can help repair communities and build their own reputation.

Much like Thirsty Suitors, Outerloop’s previous game, Dosa Divas is set in a colorful, vibrant world that mixes fantastical elements with the everyday. In Thirsty Suitors, heroine Jala battled her exes in over-the-top fight sequences, skateboarded, and tried to make peace with her parents. Dosa Divas adds a giant mech to the mix who helps the sisters beat up lawyers.

Early reactions to the game are positive, with critics praising the game’s humor, esthetics, and flavor-themed battles. Summer Game Fest had “many games set in spooky or dystopian locales that made for a weekend filled with lots of dark, shadowy worlds that felt largely devoid of color,” wrote ScreenRant. “After so much gray, to come across a bright color palette and such a visually-appealing art style in the game felt so inviting.” RPGFan said “its combat felt intuitive, its writing was witty.”

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June 20, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Eight minutes of footage from an unfinished open world D&D game has leaked

by admin June 20, 2025

Four years ago, Hidden Path Entertainment—the studio behind the Defense Grid series and the codeveloper of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive—posted a bunch of job listings that revealed it was developing a big-budget open world Dungeons & Dragons game. Bad news came in 2024 when its creative director posted on LinkedIn to reveal the studio had spent six months searching for “replacement funding” to continue work on it, but in the absence of that funding, made the decision to “pause development on that project and reduce the company size until we have an opportunity to return to it.” 44 developers lost their jobs.

Now, an eight-minute video and a collection of concept art for the game has leaked (via MP1st). Codenamed Project Dante, it’s a third-person RPG with action combat (very early-in-development action combat, I feel obliged to say), and two AI-controlled companions. After an initial fight we see a simple puzzle being solved to activate a magical temple, some exploration, a flashback cutscene, a snippet of tavern conversation, and then a song.

The fact there’s a full song being sung by a group of NPCs you can overhear just by sneaking up on them is the most surprising thing in the footage, which is otherwise fairly by-the-numbers fantasy RPG stuff. It reminds me of Dragon’s Dogma, only with a Forgotten Realms skin.

The concept art is a nice collection of D&D imagery, showcasing an adventuring party that includes an orc bard, a tiefling rogue, and an elf lady with a tiny dragon pet. There’s a bunch of dragons, some displacer beast kittens, and an adorable tressym—one of the flying cats like Gale has in Baldur’s Gate 3. It looks exactly like the kind of art I show my players when I’m running D&D.

”

While nothing about what’s been leaked seems exceptional, it does seem like development was fairly far along. While Wizards of the Coast did reportedly cancel five in-development videogames a couple of years ago, it seems like Project Dante was put on indefinite hold due to a loss of funding. Either way, it’s a shame to see so much hard work go nowhere.

Another D&D game that’s definitely still in the works is the singleplayer action-adventure coming from the former director of Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi games. That one’s being developed by Giant Skull and all we know is that it will apparently contain “immersive storytelling, heroic combat and exhilarating traversal” and is being made in Unreal Engine 5.

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June 20, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Sinister Sodies is a snappy claymation match-3 game that reminds me of when Flash games were still a thing

by admin June 20, 2025

Match-3 games are probably the purest out there, at least in terms of genre. They are so instantly understandable by pretty much anyone, no wonder there’s a seemingly infinite number of them available on our phones. The issue is that most of them can’t match up to the heights of a classic like Bejeweled, though at least every once in a while we get delightful spins on the genre like Spirit Swap. Now, there’s a new, quite tiny new kid on the block in the form of Sinister Sodies, a match-3 game where you set out to “purify your carbonated concoction before time runs out.”

Sinister Sodies has the usual thing you’ll find in a match-3 game, i.e. different coloured tiles you have to match up. The particular spin here is that rather than like in other games in the genre where you might move a tile to get a match, you have to box specific combinations of three tiles in by drawing a four-cornered box.

Announcing my latest game, Sinister Sodies! A bite-sized, fast-paced arcade puzzle game where you box in colorful Frooblies to purify your carbonated concoction, all to win the love of your evil overlord! Grab it on Steam today!

[image or embed]

— Crisppyboat (@crisppyboat.ca) June 18, 2025 at 5:12 PM

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It sounds simple enough, but there’s a fast-paced time limit, so in the first instance you have to find a spot that includes your three target tiles before you can even match them up. This gets complicated by things like tiles that explode if you draw a line through them, more and more of said tiles appearing as you make matches.

I really like this little twist on the genre, there’s a snappiness to it thanks to the timer that really helps it to feel satisfying when you just manage to make a match. Not enough to make you want to play it for hours on end, but I can see myself coming back to this for five minutes pop when I need a break from writing about the latest Fortnite update or whatever it is games journalists do these days.

I think the thing I’m most fond of is the presentation. It all looks like a piece of claymation, rendered in artist Crisppyboat’s own signature style. I feel like it’s a game that would have fit very well on Cartoon Network’s Flash games site back when that was still a thing. Real “killing time on the family computer while your mum is getting ready for the school run” kind of vibe in the most positive of ways possible.

Anyway, it’s already out on Steam and itch.io, and it’s cheap as chips, so you’ve not got much of an excuse to not get it honestly.

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June 20, 2025 0 comments

Major US retailers cancel Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders

Esports

New report suggests third-party Switch 2 game sales are “below estimates”

by admin June 19, 2025

Though sales of Nintendo’s new Switch 2 hardware had become one of the fastest-selling consoles ever, sales of third-party games have reportedly been sluggish and “below estimates.”

That’s according to a new report by The Game Business, which intimates that despite attracting strong buy-in from partners like EA, Take-Two, Microsoft, Ubisoft, Sega, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Square Enix, CD Projekt, and Konami – and although third-party publishers have fared better with the Switch 2’s launch than its predecessor – “most third-party Switch 2 games posted very low numbers.”

According to NielsenIQ, CD Projekt’s Cyberpunk 2077 is currently the best-selling third-party game of Switch 2’s launch. However, although third-party publishers “appear to have done slightly better during the launch of Switch 2 compared with Switch 1,” report author Christopher Dring added: “It’s hard to describe these statistics as positive.”

“Most third-party Switch 2 games posted very low numbers. One third-party publisher characterised the numbers as ‘below our lowest estimates’, despite strong hardware sales,” Dring writes. “The improvement over the Switch 1 launch is also slightly misleading. For starters, there were more consoles sold this time. Plus, the Switch 1 only launched with five physical games: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, 1-2-Switch, Just Dance 2017, Skylanders Imaginators, and Super Bomberman R. By comparison, the Switch 2 had a wider selection, with 13 physical games available at launch.”

Dring also posited that the lack of early review units for press – which has, in turned, hampered timely reviews – may also have adversely impacted sales as “there were no critical reviews available for them to base their purchasing decisions on.”

Earlier this week, we reported Nintendo Switch 2 has sold more than 1.1 million units in the United States, breaking launch week records for gaming hardware. Hardware sales for the Nintendo Switch 2 have reached almost one million units in Japan, too, making it the country’s biggest console launch to date.

The Game Business newsletter was created and written by GamesIndustry.biz’s former head of games, B2B, Christopher Dring.

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June 19, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Borderlands 4 Is Coming To Game Informer’s Cover

by admin June 19, 2025

When we told you that Game Informer was coming back, we let you know that we didn’t just mean our website, podcast, and video presence; we told you that the print magazine for which the outlet has been known over the last three-plus decades is also returning. After relaunching our subscription program earlier this month, we are pleased to announce, ahead of our full cover reveal next week, that the game gracing our first cover in nearly a year is Borderlands 4.

You may have seen yesterday that several outlets (GI included) shared hands-on previews of Gearbox’s upcoming shooter. That’s just the start of what we played and saw. In addition to that day at 2K’s Novato, California offices, we spent two full days inside Gearbox’s Frisco, Texas headquarters, exploring new areas, trying out all four of the base game’s Vault Hunters, and picking the brains of tons of folks behind the Borderlands franchise.

The image you see above is not our cover, but you won’t have to wait long to see the art and read the story. We will reveal our cover art on Tuesday, June 24, before launching the issue digitally later that day. That also means that anyone who has subscribed to the print edition of Game Informer will receive their first issue in the coming weeks. If you haven’t subscribed to our print or digital edition, there’s still time to lock in the early-bird pricing and receive the Borderlands 4 issue! Visit GameInformer.com/Subscribe to see pricing and availability!

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As always, thank you so much to everyone for supporting and reading Game Informer. We’re beyond excited to be back to bringing you striking cover art and deep dive articles on the biggest games in the industry! We’ll see you for our cover reveal on Tuesday, June 24!

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June 19, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

Avalanche Game ‘Forgotten Playland’ Implements NFTs in Biggest Update Yet

by admin June 19, 2025

In brief

Forgotten Playland implemented blockchain and NFTs in its social party game.
The game is built on the Beam Network, an L1 network powered by Avalanche.
The game’s implementation comes with new content, a play-to-airdrop campaign, and more.

Social party game Forgotten Playland is further entrenching itself in Web3, formally integrating with Beam Network, an Avalanche L1 chain, while unveiling new content and a battle pass.

With the update and blockchain integration, most in-game assets within Forgotten Playland become freely tradeable, allowing players to exercise one of the promises of decentralized gaming and entitling them to own a piece of the game economy.

Players will be able to own two different types of NFTs on the platform, cosmetic and toybox. Cosmetics—like skins, traits and emotes—can be earned by playing the game, but also can be packaged within the battle pass or toybox features. Toyboxes act as limited-edition bundles that will only be rolled out periodically.

“These NFTs enhance the game by offering personalization, social signaling, marketplace trading, and access to exclusive content,” Zico Bakker, co-founder of Duckland Games told Decrypt.

The NFTs and the game’s Forgotten Playland token (FP) “empower a vibrant economy,” according to Bakker, who added that the blockchain and NFT implementation gives the Forgotten Playland “the freedom to work on a play-to-airdrop campaign,” which it is undertaking right now with a FLUFFY points campaign.

In the campaign, users earn points based on the amount of cosmetics they own, their activity in the game, and the quests they complete.

“As NFTs and FP tokens gain utility, players no longer experience purely cosmetic progression; there’s financial and social motivation to engage deeper,” said Bakker.

Players will be able to engage with new content in this update and in the near future as well.

“We have a lot of new content planned for Forgotten Playland,” said Bakker. “With this update, we introduced the battle pass feature and Toybox feature, so expect more of that. In two weeks, we will add two new party games to the mix for even more fun. After that we will focus on the Plushkyn Battle feature, which we will share more information [on] at a later date.”

In addition to new content, the latest update also adds new seasonal challenges, rewards, and full German language support.

Forgotten Playland, which spotlights abandoned plush toys in a dusty attic, joins a growing ecosystem of games on the Avalanche-powered Beam Network. It is developed by Vermillion, a collaboration between Duckland Games and the Beam Foundation.

“Beam has believed in the project from day one and helped us raise the necessary funds to get us where we are,” Bakker said. “We share a lot of values regarding game development and pushing the crypto gaming space to the next level. And we both want to create a fun game that can be enjoyed by many players in which gas fees are low, processing is fast, and technology is progressing.”

The free-to-play Windows PC game is available for download from the Epic Games Store.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

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June 19, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

I played the challenging new online football game coming to Xbox Game Pass that’s been likened to Rocket League and was immediately transported back to my school’s playground

by admin June 19, 2025

If I had to name the one thing I miss most about my school days (and to be honest, I’m going back a fairly long way here) I’d say it’s the ability to play football every day. I’m sure I could do that now if I really wanted to, but never again will I be in a position to run out onto the playground or field every breaktime and always have enough people for at least some five-a-side. It was glorious. Tennis ball, sopping wet sponge ball, tatty old mini leather ball… we’d have kicked around a bunch of rolled up paper if we had to. Having played Sloclap’s (Sifu, Absolver) Rematch for a few hours it’s already provided the closest I’ve experienced to those classic days of scuffed shoes and grass-stained trousers.

Rematch

Publisher: Sloclap, Kepler Interactive
Developer: Sloclap
Platform: Played on PS5 Pro
Availability: Out 19th June on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series S/X.

This kind of five-a-side-style game of football isn’t new to video games, of course. It’s most memorable for me in FIFA 97 (the one with legend David Ginola on the European cover art), although unlike in Rematch the gameplay on the 32-Bit systems of the time is viewed from the side of the pitch, with you essentially possessing whichever player has the ball. In Rematch you control one player who is part of a three-to-five-player team. If you’ve played Be a Pro/Player Career in modern FIFA/EA FC, with the camera hovering behind your player, you’ll know what to expect. The difference here in Rematch is the level of control you have over what you do with the ball and the more arcade feel to the matches.

It’s easy to see why onlookers have somewhat hilariously labeled Rematch as football Rocket League. The visuals (futuristic and neon), the arenas, the slightly closed-off feeling as you can’t easily see what’s around you, it all has that Rocket League sauce. But ball control, as you might expect from an actual football game, is very different. Passing is angled to where you point with the left stick (when playing with a controller), shooting is precision-targeted to where the camera is pointed as if you are playing a third-person shooter, strength and loft can be decided, and you have some finer close-control that simply isn’t possible when hitting an oversize ball with a car. This is the closest a game has come to mimicking the feel of playing football, and I’m loving it.

Here’s a trailer for Rematch.Watch on YouTube

I’ve mostly played 3v3 matches so far, although you can also choose 4v4 and 5v5. Despite a tutorial that runs you through the basics, nothing prepares you for the intensity of an actual match where you’ll likely fumble under the pressure that simply isn’t felt during the training. 3v3, if anything, at least means I am letting fewer people down, so I’m sticking to this mode for the time being. There’s a fairly steep learning curve to battle through in Rematch, and the added stress of having more people wanting the ball or trying to dispossess you of the ball isn’t conducive to learning.

You’re always playing with and against other humans online in Rematch, whether it’s a bunch of friends who you regularly party up with or a group of randoms, and thus the school playground feeling is thrust front and centre. There are none of the deeper rules in Rematch (so no offside, no fouls, no handball), just a requirement to score more goals than the opposing team. There’s also no set goalkeeper (oh, hello core school memory that has just come rushing back), so you can be diving to save a shot one second and charging up the pitch the next as you attempt to score yourself.

Rematch. | Image credit: Sloclap/Kepler Interactive

This free, casual feel in a fiercely fought online game inevitably, at least in these early days, leads to chaos. The positionally-decided goalie is reminiscent of “rush keepers” from school, wherein anyone could be in goal, but it could only be one person at a time. If there’s a defining characteristic of school kids or people who play competitive games online, though, it’s an eagerness to show off. That goalie who ended up on the half-way line (honestly, there were some right liabilities for this at my school) is often dispossessed while trying to flick the ball over their head, leaving an open goal for all but the most spherically incompetent.

Let’s not pretend I’m innocent in all of this, either. Everyone, I assume, sees the spotlight focus on them at crucial moments, thinking for that split-second that you are in fact Romario and not actually a slightly chubby 11-year-old. Or, in Rematch’s case today, Harry Kane and not actually 42 – the chubbiness remains. Over time I’m sure this ball-hogging and headline grabbing will make way for more finessed play, and the signs are promising. I’ve already mildly thrown a fist or two into the air after a peak-Barcelona move ended in a goal to win a game in the dying moments. With two teams battling hard, not making mistakes, these sequences of play will be even more jubilant.

Rematch. | Image credit: Sloclap/Kepler Interactive

Concerns at this stage are mostly to do with goalkeeping. Not so much the way players leave the goals exposed, which is part of the game, but the act of saving itself. I’ve got to grips with the fundamentals of passing and shooting so that I’m not a complete embarrassment, but I still find myself diving in comical fashion as my hands flail nowhere near the ball, with replays confirming I was beaten by shots even the previously lambasted school children could have saved. I’m going to hit the training modes some more to see if I can become more competent.

There’s also the longevity to consider. Sloclap has promised new content in each season, but this is impossible to judge at this point, as is the general hook of leveling up your rank. An online-centric game like this also needs a healthy player base, which is far from a given. Rocket League, if you remember, launched into PlayStation Plus back when it was a premium paid-for offering. This helped establish a community. Rematch is part of Game Pass, but the early going will need to be smooth for those initially interested players to stick around.

I’ve tried at various points to get into Rocket League. I understand its popularity, but I never quite gelled with it. Rematch is an easier sell. I understand it and can intuitively play it, while there still being a clear path to improvement. Whether or not I’ll still be playing in a month or six months, who knows, but for now I’ve got my evening gaming sessions sorted. It feels good to be back, knocking a ball about – and this time not having to worry about smashing Class 3B’s window.

A copy of Rematch on PS5 was provided by the publisher.

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June 19, 2025 0 comments