Rocket Arena finally made it happen for me, and it was a great feeling. I was always pretty good at landing rockets on other people, but on myself? In a way that launches me somewhere I want to go and doesn't just blow me up? I could rarely work it out. Yes, this is to the great shame of somebody whose favorite shooter heroes include The Soldier and Pharah. "I mean, it was quite a different game then, and we've built so much more content in the meantime that we really wanted to evolve the game, and make a great offering for players," he says. You don't see many games going from free-to-play to paid these days – the other direction is more common – but Franklin seems happy to have made the changeover. Rocket Arena will also include in-game microtransactions for certain character outfits and other high-end cosmetics, though Franklin assures me that you won't be able to buy anything that affects the gameplay mechanics themselves you'll either own those outright as part of buying the game, like the 10 starting characters and maps, or unlock them as you play, like the ability-tweaking Artifacts. Now it's part of the EA Originals label, and it's launching on July 14 on PC, PS4, and Xbox One with two paid editions – a base level for $29.99, and the $39.99 Mythic Edition that comes with extra goodies. Rocket Arena was originally going to be a free-to-play title when it was being developed in partnership with Nexon. It was a big shift to make in the middle of development, and it wasn't the only one for Final Strike Games. So it was a big challenge, but it was well worth it once we dug into it We also found that the characters, with all the personality they have, were quite a bit more expressive in third person. "But we didn't want to make any compromises on the feel of the game, or how it felt to aim rockets or get air shots, or play on a controller. "We found that it was a lot easier for players to time their dodge in third person," Franklin explains. Rocket Arena used to be a first-person game, but it went third-person last year in large part to get that dodge feeling just right. We've never done it before, but it was a lot of careful balancing and experimentation to get that just right." So that was a new thing we wanted to build in a new shooter. But you also get a chance to dodge them with our air dodge feature. "If you see that cannonball coming through the air, you know it was Blastbeard that fired it. So if everything's a projectile, you always get a chance to know who fired it at you," Franklin continues. "We really wanted to make players have ways to interact with airborne rockets. This makes choosing when and where to use your dodge a constant tactical triage. Plus, if you time your dodge just right, you can break out of the stun inflicted by mounting damage, potentially saving yourself from a knock-out at the last second. Pressing a button will make your character briefly juke out of the way of incoming rockets, but then it goes on cooldown – and you probably already have another dozen rockets headed your way. The second most fun I had playing Rocket Arena was dodging other people's rockets. Eventually they'll top out and the next rocket will send them ricocheting around the map and out of bounds, racking up points for the opposing team before they fly back to the arena ready to fight again. If they're sitting pretty at the center of the stage, they still have a decent chance to survive a hit even if their meter's high. This determines how far they'll fly the next time they get hit. When you catch an enemy with a rocket – whether head on or with splash damage – you'll build their blast meter. And that really became the nucleus, or the core thing that we built, and had a lot of fun with." And we made it so the rockets didn't kill you, they kind of blasted you around the arena. "We started our prototype with rockets only in a greybox form. But we got together and knew we wanted to make something completely different," Franklin says.
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