Rematch Review — GOOOAAL!

Rematch took on an ambitious challenge: gamifying a sport in such a way that it can exist in the same sphere as other competitive, team-based multiplayer games out there. After giving the game some time, it’s safe to say that it does, in fact, succeed in this task, creating a 3v3 to 5v5 competitive multiplayer experience based on soccer (or football for my non-American friends) without straying from the rules, mechanics, or reality of the game. It is almost comical to see people compare the game to “Rocket League without cars,” though it’s not the worst comparison someone can make.

Thus, it’s kind of hard for me to talk about the game without simply explaining what it’s like to play football (I’m going to continue calling it “soccer” by its internal name for the rest of this review for ease of reading). If you can picture those schooldays you spent out on the field during PE, you have a pretty good idea of what Rematch has to offer: two teams compete over a single ball, hoping to kick it into the other team’s goal. Doing so scores you a point, and the team with the most points wins.

In order to gamify things for an online multiplayer audience, the rules are changed a bit. Most notably, a game of soccer in Rematch is played in teams of three, four, or five, vastly reducing lobby sizes in what is probably the most obviously necessary change to convert the game to an online multiplayer experience. The game seems to highlight 5v5 as its premier or main game mode—the one you’re supposed to play to really experience what it’s meant to be. However, during the early pre-launch version I played, the 5v5 option was unavailable. This is obviously due to the lower player count, with only pre-order players being able to play before the game’s full launch.

Another big change to the rules is that the game automatically ends when a team pulls ahead by four goals. This creates a very clear, defined goal that not only ends the game fast if one team is leading—preventing you from having to sit through a long, protracted game if your team just doesn’t have what it takes to win—but also keeps things neck and neck and provides a clear comeback option for teams that are evenly matched. With no “items” or “gold” or “experience leads,” a game in Rematch can very easily turn at any moment, making your skill at the game the only real defining factor in who wins and who loses.

The mechanics in Rematch feel limited, but are surprisingly complex. The game not only gives you means to track the ball, but also allows for some fairly precise ball control besides simply kicking it as hard as you can in one direction. You can also lead, slide, and perform other maneuvers to either play goalie or snatch a ball out of your opponent’s grasp (is it still their grasp if they use their feet?) and prevent an opponent’s goal.

I would say not to ignore the game’s controller recommendation at the start, as the fine movement required to stay on top of the ball feels really difficult when playing on keyboard.

Rematch manages to make its version of digital football feel so realistic that I actually was given flashbacks to being an underperforming player as a kid. I felt real shame and disappointment every time the opposing team managed to score a goal due to my lack of online football prowess; you really feel as though you are letting your team down when your reactions aren’t quite fast enough to make that play or score that goal.

Competitiveness is just as present in Rematch as it is in any other multiplayer game, too, even in the game’s pre-launch state at the time of writing. With no in-game communication (at least none that I was exposed to—the game does appear to have voice chat functionality), it was much less obvious, but at times, I could feel the frustration in my fellow players when things didn’t go their way. There were even instances of people throwing the game by intentionally kicking the ball into our own team’s goal.

I don’t have a lot more to say about the current state of Rematch—it does something I, for some reason, never really thought I’d see done: pulling off a fun, competitive, video-gameified version of football that can be played online, where each player of a team is an actual player. Though I have seen Steam reviews complaining about network connectivity errors, the game I personally played was really stable and overall polished, if lacking in some areas, such as cosmetic customization. Replayability, of course, is going to be up to how much you enjoy the sport.

What will define the longevity of Rematch, in my opinion, is the community it fosters. Though I experienced some salt in my playtime, it’s still too early to say what the community around Rematch is going to be like. While we all hope the game’s players will be relatively sportsmanlike, it’s just as likely that it will foster an overly competitive and rather toxic community. For a game that demands so much technical skill to succeed at, I can easily see a toxic community putting off a lot of new players trying to learn the game.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of Rematch. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Rematch is available on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation.