Rematch Review - Near Pitch Perfect

Developer SloClap makes their way back onto the pitch with the latest release, Rematch, which, for many, is a complete surprise given their previously released game, the critically acclaimed martial arts action game Sifu, and the online multiplayer combat game Absolver. As a keen football (soccer to my American counterparts) supporter for a specific English football club, the opportunity to review this game was right up my alley; having participated in May's Closed Beta Test, everything looked promising for Rematch and its developer.

Rematch is premised largely inspired by a hybrid of street football and five-a-side football with no rules other than the Mercy Rule, meaning there are no yellow or red cards, no offside shenanigans, and no VAR required. But this game more than piqued my interest beyond making football games a cash cow project; it makes it fun to play and enjoy solo and with friends, as my hands-on experiences brought back childhood memories of playing FIFA Street with my younger brother.

Rematch Review - From The Academy To Football Stardom

If you're in the loop about Rematch, it's an online multiplayer football game with a third-person perspective, which, for fans of FIFA Street, much like myself, this game feels like its spiritual successor. Unlike other prominent football games of yesteryear and the present time, players won't be going head-to-head against AI-controlled opponents, as every teammate and those on the opposing team are controlled by other players in the match.

There are elements to yet another football-centric game, Rocket League, where players are playing not just for ball possession but to pull off incredible goal-scoring moments worthy of being replayed, much to the pain and suffering of the team that conceded the goal. Another core gameplay aspect of Rematch is that it isn't a football-simulated game where players must strategize and assign their starting lineup and substitute players to keep the pressure on or bolster their defense; instead, what matters is the precise time to attack, tackle, steal ball possession, defend and of course, GOOOOOAL as one wrong button input or missed opportunity could spell the downfall of the match.

It may seem and feel this straightforward, but take it from me: there's a huge learning curve before immediately jumping into any of the multiplayer modes, and players can take advantage of the Practice mode, which unlocks once the Prologue is completed. Here, players can learn and practice various skills, like movement, passing, defending, scoring, and goalkeeping, through a tutorial to master the basics, with each skill having at least two Workshops for more advanced tricks.

The game's controls are pretty easy to learn and understand, but if you're like me, who spent time in Practice Mode, most of the advanced skills and controls get lost the moment they enter matchmaking, so sincerest apologies to those who had to carry me in matches during the Early Access period. Outside of the Prologue and Practice Modes, its core gameplay experiences are in its multiplayer features, of which Rematch offers Quick (Casual) and Ranked matches; the latter becomes available once players reach Level 5 in Quick (Casual) Match and only offers a Ranked 5v5 multiplayer mode.

Meanwhile, Quick (Casual) has three multiplayer modes: 3v3, 4v4, and 5v5, which are great options if playing solo, to help players master and fine-tune their fútbol skills and, of course, earn experience points (XP) to level up their ranking. There's a Custom Match feature, in which players can create private games and fine-tune the match parameters for their friends to join or join custom games from a generated code.

Do keep in mind that experience (XP) will not be awarded to players when participating in custom games to earn XP; they can play in a Quick (Casual) or Ranked Match. Rematch also features Customization options for their in-game character, which include two Preset slots to customize their character and other customizable details, such as home and away kits, career profiles, Celebration emotes, ARs, and stadiums, among other features.

Some customization options, such as equipment options and kit designs, are locked behind the game's season pass, called the Captain Pass, or through microtransactions, in which they can buy more options within the Customization tab or the in-game Store. Speaking of the Captain Pass, Rematch looks to add new content every season for players to unlock on their free or premium tiers and new casual and competitive game features, the latter of which includes a tournament offering and leaderboard rankings for the professional players amongst us.

SloClap was initially scheduled to release crossplay support with the game at launch; however, due to ongoing technical issues, the developer has delayed its release to resolve pressing issues, including latency problems, desync, and stability issues, by releasing hotfixes and patch updates. With crossplay temporarily unavailable, players can matchmake in solo queue or create custom matches for friends on their preferred platform for the time being until the crossplay update launches soon.

Rematch Review - It Pays To Be A Football Star

Rematch is similar to many live service sports games on the market, for which SloClap has developed and designed its content to appeal to all football fans. It doesn't have a central narrative that players can follow every season, although this would have been an interesting choice to pursue, further supported by the Prologue, which depicts our playable character's progression from an aspiring talent scouted to training for superstardom on the football pitch.

In terms of the live service offerings, Rematch has a season pass that has free-to-play (F2P) and paid tiers, and most of the unlocked rewards are cosmetics, but there are other cool rewards to get, such as stadiums, AR cages, Celebration and Victory emotes and more. There are three Chapters available within the pass, with the Pre-Season chapter currently available, and once completed, players can unlock the Qualifiers and the Championship chapters; however, the latter two will go live at specific dates and times during the current season.

Other rewards that can be unlocked from the free tiers of the season pass are the in-game currencies, Quants (the gold coins), and Blocks (blue credits). Both Quants and Blocks are used to purchase items from the in-game Store, and, in the case of the Quants, can also be used to purchase Upgrade Tickets and also purchase cosmetic items from the in-game Store.

Players can purchase Quants in bundles using real-world currency; however, Blocks can only be earned in-game from the pass and from completing matches. There are "technically" other currencies present in-game, the first being Tier Tokens, which are denoted with a green icon and are used to unlock season pass tiers, while the Upgrade Tickets are precisely what they're intended for: upgrading their season pass from free to premium (paid) version.

I will admit that it took me around 15 hours to finally understand the Monetization model and the purposes of each in-game currency, which I wish the developer had added in-game pop-ups or labels to define them clearly. The dedicated blog post on the game's Monetization model adequately explains Quants and Blocks, but it doesn't do enough to explain how to earn and use Tier Tokens and Upgrade Tickets.

Despite the game's $30 price tag and a vast majority of the in-game content being accessible and available for free, the game has garnered some (and possibly valid) criticism aimed at its microtransactions, with some players voicing their opinions online on its cosmetic options locked behind the premium tiers. Yes, there are a few cosmetics to be unlocked on the free tiers; however, the remaining cosmetic items are paywalled, but if you want to own them, you will have to spend cold, hard cash to buy Quants before spending it, but this is an option at the end of the day.

Nevertheless, players can still earn Quants and Blocks, which may be an eyebrow-raising issue; however, many players have voiced their opinions that the game's microtransactions feel fair and reasonable, with some stating that they'd rather give money to SloClap over Electronic Arts and Ubisoft (ouch)!

Rematch Review - The Glitched And The Buggy

For what SloClap offers players at launch with Rematch, there are a few areas that are missed shots during penalty shootouts. While I experienced minimal technical and performance issues during the Closed Beta Test (CBT), this differs from my experiences during the Early Access period, launch day, and post-launch period.

The developer has identified a handful of performance and stability issues, bugs, and glitches that impacted the gameplay experience during the game's Early Access period, which were addressed in a blog post regarding the game's launch and post-launch plans. Two hotfix patches were released within this timeframe, and while they're aware that other issues are affecting players, the Day 1 patch update was released; however, some problems persist.

One of the significant issues is ball desync which has been a thorn in my side during Early Access, launch day, and post-launch, making multiple matches frustrating experiences to play at best. For those unfamiliar, this persistent issue occurs when the ball's current location, direction, or speed differs significantly for the player compared to others in the match due to desynchronization or inconsistency; which some noticeable ball desync behaviors I identified include the ball glitching and teleporting from multiple locations on the pitch.

Another noticeable ball desync issue occurs when attempting to score, where multiple instances have been observed of trying to score, but the ball either doesn't move from its position. This can be particularly frustrating for goalkeeping positions as players would be unable to identify when the best opportunity to tackle opposing players and block incoming goal-scoring opportunities.

This is more prevalent when queuing up solo than when playing with friends, as the latter can still try to coordinate a different strategy, whereas playing solo, it will be almost impossible to coordinate or implement a strategy to mitigate the ball desync issue. Even more so for players, myself included, when attempting goals, which can lead to rather unfortunate mishaps or consequences like losing matches by a large margin or players leaving games out of frustration.

Ball desync remains an issue for the developer to patch, but matchmaking has been an equally stressful issue despite the availability of multiple servers at launch. During Rematch's Early Access period, the developers were aware of latency and desync issues that were impacting gameplay performance and server stability, which made matchmaking quite stressful.

Nevertheless, the developer has deployed multiple hotfixes and a patch update, which aimed to address the aforementioned issues, especially concerning server and matchmaking issues; players, myself included, still experienced difficulties finding 4v4 and 5v5 matches across servers. As such, players have defaulted to 3v3 matches, and this has made finding these matches on the European server, from my perspective, somewhat annoying due to the long matchmaking times.

But with the recent patch update adding fixes to improve server stability and matchmaking issues, I've been finding more 4v4 and 5v5 Casual matches, and the same can be said for Ranked 5v5 matches, despite being intimidated by the thought of playing in Ranked matches. Aside from the ongoing ball desync and various server and matchmaking issues, I did experience multiple game crashes, which may be related to the network and performance issues that the developer had released a fix for in a recent patch update; however, despite this, I still experienced game crashes, which were oftentimes during matches, meaning any XP accumulated and leveling progress was lost.

Rematch Review - Final Thoughts

SloClap's Rematch is the closest spiritual successor to FIFA Street we'll get, minus the scummy microtransactions and dubious content decisions we experienced from EA and the FIFA series. While the developer is working tirelessly to resolve the persistent technical and performance issues still plaguing the game, it delivers a fun and competitive football gaming experience that many have been seeking.

Undoubtedly, I will continue to be a football fan, even during the worst years of my club’s performance, which has made it a lot harder to watch football. Based on my time with Rematch, sure, I suck rotten eggs, but I had a great time trying my best to up my in-game performance.

I guess I should spend my time away from the pitch in-game, at least.

Rematch was reviewed on PC via Steam for 23 hours with a key provided by the publisher. All screenshots were taken during the course of the review.