James and Nic take another swing: Sloclap’s Rematch version

Sifu and Absolver team Sloclap stuck a release date on their multiplayer footie game Rematch today – June 19th. Meanwhile, we’ve been shouting at each other in joy and defeat – sometimes both in the same six seconds – in the open beta. I’m leaving the article name open to sequels in case James and I ever kick a different thing together.

Nic: Well, that was fun! The only reason I wanted to play Rematch was out of curiosity to how the Sifu devs would handle a football game, really, but I reckon I’d actually play that. The Sifu DNA is there, too. Plenty of room for self expression and what felt like a high skill ceiling. Both James and I came to the same immediate conclusion on playing the tutorials, which should have been obvious in hindsight: yep, that’s football as a third person action game, that.

James: One of the reasons I like IRL football – which, as a Manchester United fan, dwindle in number with every passing day – is how quickly a game can turn on its head. Attacks become counterattacks, worldie shots become fine saves, and glory becomes heartbreak in an instance. Rounds of Rematch are made up almost entirely of these moments, with little of the pass-fest deadlocking that produces dull 0-0 draws.

Nic: James what is a worldie shot? All balls are shaped like worlds. Can you do one in this? I watched someone do a header once but I never worked out how. Dribbling seems like the most fleshed out part of the game so far. You can keep kicking the ball short distances while keeping it control for maximum speed, or you can enter a sort of tricksy clownman stance where you do lots of little defensive moves by hitting different directions on the analogue stick, and look very cool doing it with not much effort. I would like to get good at it. Let me hang from the skill ceiling like a virtuousic cobweb.

James: A worldie is like a banger, y’know? A proper rocket, a screamer. A thunderpunter. Like you just Amazon Primed the ball into their net. I never managed one in the games we played and to be honest I repeatedly scuffed the dribbling as well, though it doesn’t feel too wibbly that I don’t think I could learn it. We had a teammate in one of games, Philos, who basically communicated in these moves instead of words, dinking the ball on and around his body like it was in gravitational orbit.

Nic: Yeah shout out to Philos, a prancing firework of a many-limbed lemur of a footmanballer.

James: I would like to be a little more like Philos. Except the part where he showboated the ball into an enemy’s feet (side note: I adore how opponents are called “enemies” in the tutorials) and they immediately scored on us.

Nic: I will say though, despite the nuances, it’s quite intuitive. Move. Tackle. Slide tackle. Shoot. I know shooting from shooting games, right, so I got that part. You’ve even got a reticle. The real sticking point for me was stamina management. You can sprint, then you can super sprint, and the temptation is to be going full whack all the time because the tempo of the game is so high. So learning when to relax and when to really swing the putter so you can knock a home run through the hoop and off the track, that’s the key to properly snookering the other team, I reckon.

Oh, that’s right, it also switches everyone’s positions each time a goal is scored. How did you find playing goalie?

James: In a way it was almost like a relaxing break from the chaos of outfielding, being able to see how each team moves and to keep an eye on the ball without having to constantly spin the camera around. You also feel very sticky as a keeper – as long as you’re vaguely diving near the ball you’re probably going to save it. I don’t mind that, though, as it lets you do heroics when you’re stuck between the posts, and when you’re attacking, you get the interesting challenge of trying to surprise (or even draw out of position) the opposing goalie. You seemed more comfortable playing outfield, I noticed, especially down the wings – was staying out wide like that an intentional strat?

Nic: I was honestly torn between trying to play in the moment and trying to strategise about positioning and observe where I might be needed. I think maybe there’s some nuance and overview you get if you follow football that I lack – you seemed to understand the shape of the game better. Though I do think it’s been designed so it’s just fun to play without that context. That’s something Sloclap prove to continue to be great at, just making movements flow together so that mastering them becomes its own reward. But I suppose it’s a truism that people who are more into football will get more out of this. Did you experience much dissonance? Like, expecting things to work a certain way that they didn’t?

James: I’ll concede that I initially played as if the offside rule was in effect, which it was not. Actually I think Rematch being 95% fantasy makes it more interesting to me – if I wanted to play something that resembled real football, I’d rather get a ball and head down the park than sit in a chair on FIFA. Sorry, “EA Sports FC”. Rematch still distills down what I find enjoyable about the sport as a spectator, but playing-wise is far more geared towards individual derring-do than replicating rules and regulations. The only downside I’ve seen so far is that it seems too easy for the goalkeeper to just boot a ball up to goalhanging attacker, allowing them to receive and shoot unimpeded. But then, maybe we just need to defend better? Either way this is definitely going to develop its own metas and strategies, so I don’t think it’s a problem to ignore what works in normal football.

Nic: We played four-a-side, although you can play five. At one point two northern lads showed up and started talking about pizza and chinese food over their microphones. We could hear them, but they couldn’t hear us because we were in Google meet. I had to mute them eventually because I was still learning the controls, and nothing throws me off my game faster than a hungry northerner. But you kept them on, right? Did they eventually start talking about pies, as I imagine all conversations in the north eventually end up?

James: It wouldn’t be football if there weren’t a few “Fookin”s and “Bloodeh”s being thrown around. They were good, to be fair, though the pie talk did make me think what kind of Footie Scran would be served in Rematch’s AR stadiums. Maybe holographic pasties.

Nic: The holographic backgrounds were nice, right? Like the positions, they change after someone scores a goal. Same with the music. Made you feel like you were playing inside a Meta headset owned by god, or on a Subbuteo table inside an augmented reality zoo restroom.