Rocket Bot Royale review

Just like its name sounds like a hodgepodge of gaming terms, Rocket Bot Royale is a similar mashup of genres and mechanics where players parachute tanks into an arena and fight to be the last one standing. The result is a frantic little multiplayer game that is fun to play with casually but would be more fun if it wasn't so aggressively monetized and its matches lasted a tad longer.

Worms-meets-PUBG

Rocket Bot Royale is a multiplayer battle royale game where every player controls a tank. At the start of each match, 25 live players parachute off of a helicopter onto a battlefield where they can then proceed to arc rocket shots to hit other players, kill bot tanks, and even blast their own tank to jump around to other parts of the map.

The goal of each match is simply to be the last tank alive. In addition to destroying other tanks to better your chances, you also have to constantly pay attention to the rising ooze that slowly overtakes the arena. Any tanks that aren't able to stay above this hazard get automatically eliminated.

Platform and pulverize

There's a lot to pay attention to in any given Rocket Bot Royale, but even some of the longest matches don't take more than a minute or two. In that time, you need to manage your positioning, destroy bots, look for crate drops, platform, and even destroy bits of the environment to give you better positioning against your enemies.

The tanks in Rocket Bot Royale aren't particularly sturdy, so you need to avoid enemy fire at all costs. Luckily, your tank is surprisingly good at rocket jumping and sticking to any surface, even when completely upside-down. These dynamics create potential for some really wild highlight moments of destroying tanks in mid-air or flipping out of the way of enemy salvos, but these feats will most likely happen by accident unless you invest a lot of time mastering the game.

Military industrial complex

There are a few minor quirks with Rocket Bot Royale, like its strange default controls that don't get completely fixed by turning on the slingshot aiming function, but all of these pale in comparison to the game's true problem: how it is monetized.

There are a lot of very familiar free-to-play mechanics present in Rocket Bot Royale, like a battle pass, premium skins, etc., but there are also systems in place that intentionally place players on unequal footing in matches. Prior to every round, players can spend coins on special weapons to bring with them, and your menu of choices increases the more you level up your account. If you don't engage with this system, you're almost always at a disadvantage when entering a match. The game drops crates that anyone can collect to gear up, but matches don't really last long enough for a looting phase to feel like something you can feasibly rely on.

The bottom line

There are a lot of ideas happening in Rocket Bot Royale, and most of them are pretty compelling and enjoyable. The only problem is many of these ideas are so thoroughly smothered by the game's monetization systems and blisteringly fast match length that none of them feel like they get room to breathe and realize their full potential.