This weekend I was dragged kicking and screaming away from the Valkyria Chronicles demo to review other new content on the Playstation Network. My tantrums ceased when I saw the name, which is one of the longest (and greatest) names in video game history.

The name can be a little misleading. When I first was told about “Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars” the first thing I thought was that somebody was making fun of WipEout HD, featuring its own brand of very fast, high flying, jet-propelled combat vehicles. What I quickly found out, though, is that rather than a racing game, these Battle-Cars duke it out in the international arena of Soccer (or Football, depending on your locale).

The game runs on the Unreal engine, meaning it looks fantastic. The cars look like they came out of your Hot Wheels box and painted to match team colors. The arenas are colorful and lively; in the first tutorial arena, a dome in the middle of a huge city, vehicles frequently zoom by the stadium making all sorts of noise pollution. The bright team identification colors on the cars make it easy to tell who is on your team and who is trying to make you the next piece of metal in their grill. The game chugs along at a constant 30 frames per second. It’s not the longed-for 60 FPS, but in this generation of consoles, maintaining a constant framerate at all is nothing to shake a stick at. Flashy particle effects are in no short supply, either, as you smash your opponents into oblivion or score a goal (which also smashes your opponents into oblivion, as luck would have it). There isn’t much to say about the soundtrack. It’s pretty unremarkable and feels like an afterthought. The best bet is to just plug in an MP3 player and use the XMB in-game music option to rock out to your own soundtrack.

As if the out-there title and concept weren’t enough to indicate, the game does not play or control like a realistic driving game in any way, shape, or form. Cars turn on a dime, and in case that wasn’t fast enough you can brake-powerslide to turn on half a dime. Even when boosting and hitting supersonic speeds, you will never spin out. It’s a bit jarring at first, especially since there have been so many recent games that strive for realism. This super traction, however, is gone once the cars launch into the air. Low-gravity physics kick in as you fly in one direction (with a slight alteration with a secondary jump booster), either slamming into the ball or missing it completely. This happens more often than not, especially in the early stages of playing. The learning curve is pretty steep, especially when some of the single player levels pit a single you against multiple bot opponents.

Since it’s soccer with cars, there is no real dribbling mechanic, so out of nowhere either an opponent or someone on your team can zoom by and smash the ball all the way across the arena before you know what happened. This makes it a challenge to keep the ball going where you want it to go, and often times you’re forced to boost and hit the ball somewhere at random just to avoid letting the other team hit it away, and if somebody from your team is over there, all the better. The acrobatics are fun, though ultimately the best solution is almost always a head-on collision with the ball. Nonetheless, barrel rolling into the ball to knock it just over the top of an opponent’s car for a goal is something that will never, ever get old.

The game features two single player modes: A set of challenges (i.e. blocking X amount of balls or scoring Y amount of goals in a certain time period that serve as methods to unlock additional vehicles) and a “Tournament” mode which is essentially just another set of challenges, except without cars to unlock. Some of these challenges cross the line from “challenging” to “infuriatingly hard,” like one particular challenge that pits you against four CPU players in a full match that you have to win. After all is said and done, though, the game features a total of seven vehicles and three arenas. A rather meager selection for a title that runs $15. Psyonix has promised some additional arenas that will be released free of charge, but it feels like these were cut off so that the game could make its deadline.

Unlocks said and done, the real reason people care about a game like this is the multiplayer. The game features online ranking and scoreboards, and has support for up to 8 players. I had some trouble connecting to others, though, so the most I managed to play was a 2 on 2 match. For the most part the match proceeded without any problems. Some users have reported lag, though I was fortunate enough to not experience any of this. All four of us were flying around, smashing each other into bits, and maybe scoring a goal or two. Each match had no shortage of those moments where everyone watching shouts at the screen. You know, those “OOOOH!” moments when you’re watching your favorite team? Plenty of that.

Battle-Cars also boasts a powerful replay feature in which case you can view replays, save them to your XMB, and even upload them to YouTube directly from the game. It sounds great, in theory, but here is where I ran into a plethora of problems. The controls for navigating through the video and selecting parts to record is awkward, and there were numerous occasions where I did something that the PS3 didn’t like, causing the system to lock up and forcing a hard reset. If I didn’t touch any of the controls, the replays looked great, but when I tried to actually do something with them, the game would have none of that.

While far from a perfect game, Battle-Cars still shines as an icon of the creativity that exists in indie games. If you’ve got a few friends to play with, a fondness for over-the-top acrobatics and odd sports mashups, and an extra $15 laying around, you could do a whole lot worse than Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars.

TL;DR VERSION

The Good: Very fun concept, for the most part is executed very well. Unbelievably fun multiplayer experience.

The Bad: Sometimes hard to find people to play with. Getting the ball to go where you want can prove annoying.

The Ugly: Buggy replay feature, very unmemorable soundtrack.

Score: 80%