Rematch

A heart-pumping genre superlative that should not be missed despite some technical issues to sort out.

There’s a certain level of animosity that comes at the mere mention of sports games. They’ll often summon a shudder of disdain, followed by a prompted lashing of venom from the ‘gamers’. And it’s not just down to how the genre became a getaway from gambling addictions and mass motivation.

Rematch is a great arcade sports title that’s sure to win over both hardcore and casual fans. With tight controls and excellent customization options, the title’s fun and easy to pick up. While the soundtrack feels lacking and matchmaking can occasionally balloon, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything like this rooted in traditional soccer. If you dig arcade soccer and are tired of gasoline fumes, you’ll have a great time with Rematch.

Nobody was expecting Sloclap, a studio made famous by their martial-arts focused action games, to release a competitive multiplayer football game. The pivot from Sifu initially seems crazy, but I can understand why Sloclap felt they were up to the challenge. The studio has experimented with multiplayer before with Absolver and has created hundreds of athletic body animations. Still, Rematch is a very ambitious title, and thankfully, one that sticks the landing.

From the same brilliant minds behind the absolutely amazing Sifu, comes Rematch, a brand new (and absolutely welcome) take on virtual football. Unlike your more traditional squad-based games like EA FC, eFootball or even the more recent UFL, Rematch has you playing as a single character in a team, in an over-the-shoulder perspective, in a more arcadey, but still skill-based environment. Think of it as if Rocket League, the game all about cars that play football, was actually about people play...

Back in 2017, French developer Sloclap released its first game, Absolver, an action-RPG with a heavy emphasis on grounded, physics-based melee combat. For its second project, Sloclap took those combat mechanics and refined them to near-perfection, delivering the kung fu movie love-letter Sifu in 2022. But three years later, Sloclap has taken a surprising turn, trading its single-player melee combat for intense multiplayer soccer action with the release of Rematch.

Rematch is very close to being a real blinder. An online multiplayer football game in which every player controls an individual person on the pitch, it's a totally fresh take on the sport that takes more than a little inspiration from Rocket League, and the result is fantastic.

If you're in the mood for some solid multiplayer football, REMATCH is certainly a good effort that you'll be happy to attempt to master thanks to intricate controls, and the bite-sized sessions that throw the rule book away for the sake of fluidity and fun.

A clever and hugely enjoyable online team game, even at this early stage in its career -although it feels more like a rival to Rocket League than EA Sports FC.

Rematch evokes the nostalgic feelings of the glorious FIFA Street days by revitalizing arcade football with casual and ranked multiplayer modes that allow players to delve in. While the developer has future content planned for the game, the game is being marred by a myriad of technical issues that impact gameplay and server stability, but they are being proactive with patch updates that hopefully add that luster before the season ends.

Rematch has great mechanics, but lacks the polish to make it shine on the biggest stages.

Despite the fact that the game looks the part and there is a lot of surface-level fun to be had with Rematch, the harsh truth is that the game feels far too rough around the edges to stand a chance of becoming an ESports stalwart, or even a middling multiplayer title for that matter. The game's performance feels akin to an alpha still in development, gameplay doesn't facilitate a high skill ceiling for players to strive for, there are a litany of glaring omissions in terms of basic UI, and there seems to be a geunine lack of understanding on the developer's part on what makes for a gripping an...