Rematch is free to play for a long weekend after its Season 1 launch—and I'm currently torn between saving Olympus and having a kickabout

Two footballers celebrate a goal in Rematch Season 1's volcano map.
(Image credit: Sloclap)

Rematch is kicking off its first season post-launch, which means all sorts of cosmetics, and a nice helping of pretty arenas to get "Good Job!" spammed at you in. To celebrate, Sloclap's made the game free to play for a long weekend—or until September 29—on Steam. There's also a 20% discount until the same date.

Which means new blood and a livelier matchmaking queue. And that puts me in a precarious situation, folks, because Hades 2 is also out and I'm very interested in that as well. Sometimes the games I'm torn between are very similar; this is not one of those times.

As for the nitty-gritty balance changes: The Ippy Slide (a quite frankly horsecrap option that let dribblers clown on defenders without much counterplay) is dead and buried, and SloClap's "reduced how quickly players can snap to the ball while using extra effort" so that volleys are a smidge weaker.

There's also a 3v3 ranked matchmaking mode—though I'm not entirely sure this was the play. There's no current option to queue for both 3v3s and 5v5s at the same time, meaning you're gonna be splitting your playerbase in two.

Besides, I popped in for a couple of 3v3 ranked matches, and I'm not convinced we needed this thing. Sure, there's more room for individual skill expression, but sometimes that skill expression just involves passing the ball in a triangle while you're one up, since your opponents have a mathematically un-counterable amount of defenders to stop you doing just that.

Fundamental Problem with 3v3 Ranked from r/Rematch

I can think of a couple solutions to this—making it the first to two/three goals is one, but I also reckon you could stand to make the arena a touch smaller. That might be a tall ask given how the (cool as ever) background screens work, but as it stands 3v3 feels dead in the water unless you just, like, really hate passing to people.

Still, given the game's free until Tuesday? This is a solid time to get stuck back in. Unless you're helping Melinoë exact her revenge in the underworld, in which case you'll need to clone yourself so you can play both games as much as you want to. Maybe a third clone for like, doing dishes. And a fourth one for seeing friends. Can games stop coming out for a bit, please?

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Harvey Randall
Staff Writer

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.

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