Online Saturday - Rocket Racing - Not Very Welcoming For New Players

*Apologies for the microphone issues. i'd understand if you don't want to listen to me in this video. So i have uploaded another video which is just the racing and no commentary. you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/-JWYdT-rPlg.

For Online Saturday i played the PS4 version of Rocket Racing from developers Psyonix. it's an online racing game built on Fortnite tech. It was my first time playing it. i was surprised that the install for it was over 60GB! it must've downloaded the whole Fortnite game. however, i don't know for sure as there's a lack of information on the PSN Store page.

This lack of information from the game to me was frustrating throughout this video. it's a shame because the actual gameplay was fun and the tutorial was great. but there's no tutorial outside of the game. and for me, who's never played this before and never used this lobby before, it just wasn't intuitive enough. this happened early when i ended up doing the tutorial twice as i thought pressing up meant doing the tutorial instead of it meaning choosing game mode.

I also had an issue with my first try of the Metalica stage as there was no audio and no sound effects! i quit the game to change settings on my PlayStation 4 so i don't know if it was quitting the game that fixed it or the settings. but this, combined with no tutorial for the lobby screen just gave a bad first impression.

These  lobby screens on console are often poor, my first video on Trackmania https://youtu.be/we766gY1WPw, and Pokémon Unite https://youtu.be/OMKdxzCkOwI, are examples of this. even the recent Star Wars: Hunter game has a busy lobby screen https://youtu.be/648VolmhSuA but at least that game tried to explain it all. Rocket Racing made no attempt.

There were also issues when trying to play some levels made by other people. none of them would load and i don't know why. i could only get the Metallica stage and the Ranked Mode stages to load. Again, Ranked mode wasn't really explained. i don't know what stages are on it, i doubt i played against real people in a couple of stages, and progression wasn't explained nor do i know where any of that stuff is.

Gameplay is good, tho i would have liked the game to explain how to do boost starts, is just that everything else about Rocket Racing was a frustrating mess and just not welcoming to new players. all it needed to do was, when the game takes me back to the lobby after the tutorial, ask if i wanted a lobby tutorial or not. it's hard to recommend Rocket Racing for new players. but if you have time to figure it all out, the gameplay is fun. but there aren't many people playing it so waits could be long.