Well, East me Enders and Pano my Rama: live Esports is coming to to the BBC this month. BBC Three (which is now online only) will broadcast the new Gfinity Elite League Series One, which means four hours of Rocket League, CS:GO and Street Fighter V on iPlayer every weekend for the next six weeks.

There’s a proper schedule and everything: Fridays at 9pm is for Street Fighter, which in a massive programming screw up clashes with Gardener’s World. Saturday nights from 9-11 is CS:GO (no Casualty for me then), and Rocket League is happening Sunday afternoon from 5. It’s all coming live from the Gfinity Arena in West London, with eight organisations taking part.

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Rocket League [official site]! Cars with fire shooting out their bums, playing football! The absolute best>! Or… so it was in 2015. There is this trend whereby the most fresh and accessible game drifts into incomprehensible specifity and a poisonously impatient community over time. Two years on, has Rocket League escaped that curse? Or: if you are, like me, something of a casual player when it comes to competitive online games, is there still a way into Rocket League?

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Today is a notable day for Rocket League [official site]: it’s the day two days before the second anniversary of its launch! What better day (other than the obvious) to launch an anniversary update? Developers Psyonix are today adding celebratory goodies including a new carball arena, new cars, and new Rick and Morty trinkets to decorate your sports car. Presumably the purpose of pre-anniversary anniversary update is to let everyone party down and wreck themselves tonight, recover over tomorrow, then be professional and respectable for the actual anniversary on Friday – be nice to sponsors, avoid swearing in front of the cars’ parents, and such. … [visit site to read more]

As Adult Swim gears up for the third season of Rick and Morty, characters from Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland s anarchic sci-fi cartoon will be appearing in a slew of games, including Rocket League [official site].

… [visit site to read more]

Like a jammy dodger who books a bouncy castle for their child’s birthday party, Rocket League [official site] developers Psyonix are giving plenty of notice about celebrations for their gamebaby. Rocket League turns two on July 7th, and on the 5th Psyonix plan to release a big update bringing a new arena, the start of its fifth competitive season, new engine sounds, custom goal explosions, and new sportscars like a mutant F1 racer. That’s the news out of the Rocket League Championship Series Season Three World Championship this weekend, whose livestreams are archived for folks who fancy watching world-class carball. … [visit site to read more]

‘Terrible’ only in the sense of their gaming capability. Honestly, I’m sure your> laptop is lovely to look at and it was definitely a extremely sensible idea to spend all that money on it instead of buying a holiday or helping to save the pandas. Truth is, though, that playing recently-released games on the vast majority of laptops is about as effective as starting an online petition to uncancel your favourite television show.

A little discretion goes a long way, however. Sure, you may be denied the glossiest of exploding viscera, but it is entirely possible to keep up with the Joneses even on a Terrible Laptop that has no dedicated graphics card. Here are but twelve contemporary games – either recently released or still-evolving going concerns – that will indeed run on your glammed-up toaster. Additional suggestions below are entirely welcome. … [visit site to read more]

Splendid sports ’em up Rocket League [official site] has launched a new version of its Neo Tokyo sportsdome, with the same cyberpunk city backdrop but a standard pitch layout. Neo Tokyo hit Rocket League in June 2016 but its non-typical layout with elevated sides (and therefore non-typical play) irked some players, so developers Psyonix pulled it from the competitive playlist in March 2017. The new regular Neo Tokyo is now in all playlists, while the old version will still be playable in private and offline matches under its new name of Tokyo Underpass. … [visit site to read more]

I am dad, hear me whinge. Too many games, not enough spare time, for all my non-work hours are spent kissing grazed knees, explaining why you cannot eat the food in that cupboard>, constructing awful Lion King dioramas out of toilet roll tubes and being terrified that the next jump from the sofa to the armchair will go fatally wrong. I’m lucky in that my job to some extent involves playing games, so by and large if there’s something I really want to check out I can find a way to, but I appreciate that there are many long-time, older or otherwise time-starved readers for whom RPS is a daily tease of wondrous things they cannot play.

Now, clearly I cannot magically truncate The Witcher 3 into three hours for you, but what I can do is suggest a few games from across the length and breadth of recent PC gaming that can either be completed within a few hours or dipped into now and again without being unduly punished because you’ve lost your muscle-memory. … [visit site to read more]

The weekend looms. The dreaded monster of free time skulks in the shadows, ready to devour you and spit you out again on Monday morning. What sacrifice must we make this time to the foulspawn? Prey is coming out, but that is expensive. The Division is free until Sunday, but that is grindy. If only there was some small, wonderful, universally-adored game to throw to the creature. Something with cars, but also giant bouncing balls, but also slow-motion replays, but also playable for 0.00.

OH MY WORDY WORDS, WHAT IS THAT. It s a Rocket League [official site] free weekend. … [visit site to read more]

Rocket League [official site] was already our favourite game of 2015 but today it finally becomes proper football with the addition of a new mode where players will smash a load of windows to score points. Dropshot is its name, and bopping the ball to break open goalholes in the floor of your opponent’s half of the arena is its game. Today also sees the start of Season 4 of competitive play and the addition of some silly fun Easter-themed items for cars to wear. Here, check out Dropshot in this trailer: … [visit site to read more]