The Problem's Chronic

Yesterday, I completed my trophy collection on Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars. This is the best game I have played this year, and here is for why.

Despite its convoluted name, the game has a simple premise: Let’s play football with cars. This is ‘football’ in the British sense, and ‘cars’ in a very loose sense. In fact, the game goes to great length to define what it means by ‘cars’ in its title, which I need not repeat, as it is written in the opening line (and I call it Football Cars anyway). The initial attraction of this game to me was threefold: 1) it was PS3 exclusive, thus stroking my personal preference elitism, 2) it was download-only, which is THE FUTURE, and 3) it was £8, which is incredibly cheap considering even second-hand games will likely set you back anywhere upwards of £20, and new titles will hit the market for £50 and stay there indefinitely, even though they are stool.

What I usually look for in a game is story, a genuinely good narrative can, for me, excuse many graphical, technical or gameplay blunders. It is therefore unusual that Football Cars has come to rank amongst my favourite games, as it is utterly devoid of plot, there is no story here, or no pretention of one. That is the beauty of it; it is a ‘game’ in the truest sense. It is a standalone competition, a pitting of one players ability against another.

It is strange that a game where you play as a car is easily the most fluid football game I have ever played. Even the most recent Pro Evolution or Fifa titles feel like turgid clunky dross in comparison to a game in which you control, not a human being, but a lump of metal with wheels on. The reason behind this is the physics engine, and the limited, but sufficient, controls that you have. The problem of the ‘actual’ football games is that there are too many ‘moves’ you can do, and yet none of them are actually integrated into the flow of the game, feeling disconnected from everything. Often in those games, two players could clearly run full into one another and not actually meet. This is where Football Cars shines.

Despite being a ‘football’ game, Football Cars plays like a sandbox, where you are given abilities, but you are free to combine them as you choose (or are able to). The controls of the game are fairly basic; accelerate, reverse, handbrake, jump, boost. The art is in the combination, and mastering these combinations, which begin at the mundane, and are at best a joy to behold. Boosting out of a reversed handbrake turn and positioning yourself directly in line with the ball is one of the most empowering feats in modern gaming, able to endow the player with an incomparable sense of flair and cool-dudery.

The game certainly subscribes to the ‘easy to pick up, difficult to master’ school of thought, and when played for a concerted length of time, will unfold and change your perception of how the game is played. This is especially true if you play online, where any number of players will be more than happy to blow your silly little internet gaming mind. Often the ball will ricochet ponderously high into the air, leaving you stranded below, attempting to gauge when and where it will drop either by tracking its shadow or aiming your camera wildly at the sky. At least, that was the way that I used to deal with those situations. Nothing could prepare me for the first time I witnessed a player who, instead of waiting for the ball to drop, sped from the other side of the pitch, double jumped, and then used his boost to propel himself through the air at the airborne ball, and then flip, propelling the ball downwards into the floor-level goal. It isn’t often that a game can open up a whole new dimension of play using controls you have had at your fingertips all along.

In terms of the physics, they work in much the same way as they do in reality, in a very basic ‘what goes up must come down’ sense. This simplicity works in its favour. The main problem of the Pro Evolutions and Fifas is that they are not honest enough replications of reality. The way the players and the ball react is not an true recreation of how it feels to play football. The sense of uncertainty and creativity is stripped out of those titles, where the possibility of slicing or a ball bouncing unexpectedly off a post is absent, replaced by stiff pre-programmed sequences. Weirdly, Football Cars does contain these elements, and when you see a shot just miss the target, you know it is because of your mis-controlling of the car, a combination of angle and speed, whether you jumped too soon, or boosted too much. In other titles, this complicated issue is boiled down to whether you held down O button for slightly too long and your bar filled up too much and/or the game doesn’t feel like letting you score this time, sorry.

I appreciate that incorporating all the nuances of actual football into a game would be impossibly difficult, which is why the minimalistic representation found in Football Cars is so much more effective. The subtlety of ruling whether a tackle was a foul or not is completely hoisted out of the window, because you are a car. A ‘battle car’ at that. At times, the chaotic rough-necking in Football Cars can be frustrating, where you can be sent hurtling all over the screen for an entire minute from opponents single-mindedly crashing into you, but even this is subject to tactics, where smashing into or destroying an opponent is all well and good, but it can leave you stranded on the wrong end of the pitch with no boost, which is a very good way to lose.

Basically, this entry could be titled ‘A Love Letter to Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars’, and I have composed it due to the resurgence of my activity with the game. I was enticed back to its shiny metallic dimension due to a, free, update which brought two new levels into the mix, an old school galleon and a ‘European’ style stadium (with PROPER goals). I then played online for long enough that I stopped losing 10-0 to the obscenely proficient online players, and eventually started winning consistently. This led to me unlocking the vast majority of trophies for the game, trophies being PS3’s lacklustre, though commendable, attempt to ape the 360’s achievement system. Upon checking the parameters of the trophies, the only one I didn’t have was the one that needed me to have completed every ‘Challenge’ with a 5-star rating.

‘Challenge’ sections are the bits I usually despise in games, because, usually, I lack proficiency in a number of the gaming fields, and so having a section where you are forced to play the game in a certain way and then have that style scrutinised is hugely unpleasant. Are you listening Soul Calibur? However, I was determined. And I also had a lot of time on my hands. Which I clearly still do, as now I am blog-wanking about it.

It is strange how the ‘Practise makes perfect’ cliché is so often touted, and yet so rarely put into practice. It is true. Having toiled away on certain challenges which originally seemed impossible and which I eventually mastered, I was filled with a sense of tangible achievement, which is unusual anywhere outside of school-systems. When was the last time you were congratulated for actually having achieved something? The only congratulations the average human receives is for having lived to see another year. Happy Birthday indeed. Here is where I attempt to make a heavy-handed justification for having sunk so many hours into clocking this game.

I’m sure there are a very many people who will feel that having ‘completed’ a video game is hardly an achievement at all, in completing a game, I’ve not really produced or achieved anything of value (although I hear if you fully complete Oblivion you get the cure to cancer and AIDS after the credits). Coming from a social perspective where the highest aim is to give and add to the community around you, my small achievement of having stamped my authority over a fairly niche download-only PS3 exclusive video game basically about playing football with cars, is of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. But what of this grand scheme? Pish to the scheme say I! The use of the term ‘scheme’ suggests that there is some path laid out in front of us, or that there is an ultimate, and understood, goal that we as a species are aiming for, which I, personally, object to. My achievement of being proficient at a video game may not be of practical use, such as someone else’s achievement of being proficient at fixing pipes or healing the sick. Neither is it, however, detrimental, as of someone else’s achievement of being proficient at spouting bigotry, inciting hatred or fucking up the economy (check your watch, its ham-handed satire o’clock). Furthermore, if a global controversy were unearthed and the only way to resolve it was to employ a South-Walean gamer to control a video game car via a controller then I know where you’d come knocking, yes indeed.

Essentially, my point is this. My little nothing of an achievement brought pleasure to me, and I don’t really expect it to impress or mean anything to anyone else. It doesn’t have to, my enjoying it is enough. Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars is a brilliant game, it is simple, fun and addictive, plus it is possible to listen to podcasts or the iPlayer while you play it, therefore spending your time doubly wisely.

If anyone reading this is thinking that I have wasted my time becoming Esteemed Welsh Grand Master of Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars and then further wasted my time by writing what is undoubtedly an over-long blog entry, essentially parading around with my metaphorical pants down and with a metaphorical erection singing “Look at me, I am good at a game”, then ponder this Mr or Mrs Wisdom-of-an-Owl: who is the bigger waster of time? Eh? Eh? Me, for having played the game, enjoyed it, gotten up to date on podcasts, kept up with my blog entries (a goal I set myself because I am so in charge of my own destiny thanks), or alternatively; you, for having read this all the way through.

It is clearly you, unless you are Barack Obama and/or Stewart Lee, which you clearly aren’t. Now go turn off the microwave before your spaghetti melts.

*Blog trivia: The title of this entry is a lyric from the Bad Religion song 'Supersonic'. Also, it is apt.