Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars was going to simply be named “Crash Course” when the game was first conceived. Unfortunately for Psyonix Studios, the game’s developer and publisher, the name had already been claimed by the Crash Bandicoot team for potential future use, leaving their first independent game without a suitable title. After much deliberation, Psyonix broke down and decided to just name the game for what it was about: Cars which use rockets to travel at supersonic speeds, perform acrobatic maneuvers, and do battle. We sat down with Dave Hagewood, Psyonix’s owner, founder, and director of development, to get a crash course quick lesson in the finer points of battling with rockets, and to spend some hands-on time with the supersonic cars which will do so exclusively on the PlayStation Network this fall.
The one aspect of SARPBC which is not made explicitly clear by the title is the actual method by which the cars do battle: The game will allow up to 8 players (4 players locally plus bots, or up to 8 human-controlled players online) to drive around on one of three wide open playing fields, with a large ball in the center and a goal at each end. The game is thus played like a match of explosive mechanical polo or soccer, with cars tearing across the field, leaping and flipping into the air, and smashing each other to bits as they attempt to knock the ball into the opposing team’s goal. It sounds simple, and as a game developed as a downloadable application, it’s easy to think of SARPBC as a fairly underwhelming and basic game. However, though the premise may be simple, Psyonix has gone to surprising lengths to make their game truly rocket-powered; the game makes use of both the Unreal Engine 3 and the Ageia PhysX Engine to run its matches. In addition, the vehicle-based gameplay is in good hands — for those of you who may not remember their previous work, Psyonix is the studio responsible for integrating vehicles into other UE3 titles like Gears of War, and for bringing the popular “Onslaught” mode to Unreal Tournament 2004.
SARPBC is the result of Psyonix’s long desire to make their own game while developing for these other companies’ games. “One way or the other, this game’s been eight years in coming,” said Hagewood. “We started with the goal of getting a game published ourselves in 2000. We’re just now getting to the point where we’re making one, entirely independently. This game in particular, we started thinking about right after Onslaught, so, three or four years ago.” Hagewood praised Sony and PSN for allowing his team the creative freedom to bring their own game to the network and publish it themselves, and demonstrated the myriad ways in which it takes advantage of the PS3’s inherent features: SARPBC has trophy support, persistent stats and leaderboards, easy friends-list play and team/guild features, and the ability to drop your own music into the soundtrack from the XMB. Also, in addition to taking things from the XMB, SARPBC will allow you to place things on the XMB: The game contains an extremely robust replay editor, containing not just camera manipulation, but slow motion, a complete timeline with jump points and keyframes, the ability to lock focus on any one player, create jump cuts, and more — and allows you to save your videos to the XMB, or upload them directly to YouTube from an in-game interface à la PixelJunk Eden.
With the tour nearing its conclusion, it was time to grab some controllers and try the game personally. SARPBC controls as one might expect an action-driving game to control; the left analog stick steers while the R2 and L2 triggers control the gas and brakes, respectively. In addition, however, SARPBC mixes things up with a rocketing jump on the X button. A single tap will send your car hopping upwards, allowing you to dodge incoming opponents or intercept a flying ball, but double-tapping the button will execute an acrobatic double-jump in a direction indicated by the analog stick. In this way, players can get in contact with the ball without being directly lined up with it, hitting it from the side or even from behind — After playing for only a few minutes, I was able to race underneath a ball in mid-flight, hop up in front of it, and reverse direction with a double jump to flip backwards for a well-executed goal block. It looks terribly confusing at first, and one’s first few flips will probably end up landing upside-down, but SARPBC’s controls quickly become intuitive, and any player will soon be hopping, flipping, and performing game-changing maneuvers every few seconds.
It’s not uncommon for players to switch from offensive efforts to defensive ones, and back again, in short order; SARPBC moves exceptionally fast. Performing one of the aforementioned double-jump maneuvers will provide a small speed boost to one’s car, but there is also a short-lived boost meter, replenished through pick-ups on the field, that any player may trigger with the circle button for massive acceleration. Using this rocket-based boost for just a few moments, in fact, will send a car into the titular supersonic speed — their screen will go purple, their car will start laying down fiery tracks, and any opponent unlucky enough to be in their way will be smashed into so much vehicular shrapnel. SARPBC features infinite lives and only the briefest of respawn times, but being wrecked will reposition you elsewhere on the field, making it an effective way to end an offensive drive or remove a pesky defender from the goal area. In addition, this boost can be triggered in mid-air, allowing the cars to almost literally fly; an expert player can use this boost cleverly to get across the entire arena while performing mid-air turns and maneuvers, as was demonstrated to me.
Once these techniques and controls are mastered, SARPBC’s “soccer” matches can become quite chaotic. 2v2 games can allow for some clever strategy and impressive cooperative maneuvers — my teammate had come to an awkward stop between myself and the ball, allowing me to accidentally slam into him, fling him into the ball, and knock the ball into the goal. 4v4 matches can easily devolve into laughter-fueled, frantic efforts to keep near enough to the ball to drive it the right way down the field, efforts which are thankfully aided by SARPBC’s various visual cues. Each player’s display features an arrow pointing out of one’s car, indicating the direction of the ball. Or, if one is inclined, one can change his camera settings to lock onto the ball at all times (though aiming one’s car at the ball is still a manual operation, naturally). SARPBC also allows for any and all split-screen configurations, allowing for horizontal or vertical, one half-screen and two quarter-screens for three players, and so on. In addition, the game allows for ideal drop-in/drop-out multiplayer, allowing anyone to pick up a controller and take over from a bot at any moment — or relinquish control to a bot when they need a break.
SARPBC has some single-player extras to round out the experience. Beyond the obvious ability to play matches alone against bots, the game includes a collection of single-player “challenges,” most of which are geared towards improving your skills for the multiplayer matches. Players will complete objectives such as defending a goal, knocking balls out of mid-air, performing “penalty kick” style shootouts, and so on, receiving star ratings for each mini-game which will allow them to unlock new cars. Still, the multiplayer game contains only the soccer matches, with the variety consisting solely of the three different map configurations and the car selection — and even the cars are only different cosmetically.
When asked about this, Hagewood informed me that Psyonix’s aim in keeping SARPBC to one game type was to keep the experience pure: SARPBC should be played like a sport, keeping the game purely skill-based, rather than relying on random chance through items, or gaming the system through ideal car selection. SARPBC is a game for “purists,” said Hagewood, and while the single-player mini-games might be more varied than the multiplayer, their true purpose is to build one’s skills for the multiplayer experience. That being said, however, Hagewood pointed out that while the cars may all feature the same acceleration and speed, the in-depth physics engine still provides a different “feel” to each car based solely on their shapes (one car may be more top-heavy than another, or roll differently on a bad landing, etc). In addition, Psyonix has plans to add some new variety to the game for fans: DLC is “already in production,” in which the developer hopes to add new maps to the game, and perhaps new gameplay features and modes somewhere down the line, at no charge to players.
“If you’re looking for a multiplayer game, if you’re into multiplayer gaming, you’ve got to give it a try,” said Hagewood, “Because it is addictive.” Psyonix’s favorite part of creating this game, he told me, was the playtesting process; the team has tremendously enjoyed playing the game they have created. “I like to joke around, saying that even if nobody else buys it, we’ll be happy, because it’ll be out and we can play it whenever we want online.”
Other players will get the chance to join Psyonix online soon: Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars is scheduled to launch on PSN in “early fall.” The price has not yet been determined.
September 10th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Great preview. Makes me wish I had a PS3. :3