I'm going to be a bit verbose here, but "Rocket League" is one of those games that could not exist in any other form. Yes, there are years of garbage around it now, but developer Psyonix never tampered with its near-perfect core experience; Psyonix is now part of Epic, and while there have been many crossovers between this game and Fortnite, the latest one stirs dim memories of what "could have could have been" stirs up dim memories.

A new update adds the Octane, Rocket League's most famous vehicle, to Fortnite's various modes, with the exception of competitive play. When you get into the Octane, it behaves in a way that any "Rocket League" fan would expect. Double jumps, boosts, wall runs, dodging, etc., it's like playing another game within another game.

But what it really reminded me of, though, is that this is oddly close to the original line that the developers of Rocket League were taking. Rocket League is a sequel, and its predecessor, the ill-fatedly named Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars, was pretty much the same game in multiplayer, but it never really set the world on fire. There are several reasons for this: the controls, the aesthetic, the PS3 exclusivity, the emphasis on single-player, etc. However, Psyonix knew they had something going for them, and "Battle Cars 2" (as it was called at the time) aimed to improve on this.

However, the initial concept took several unusual directions. First, there was an open world, and players had to drive around and enter stadiums to play matches; I interviewed the creators of Rocket League about this in 2016, and they told me that the new elements of Fortnite we didn't get That's probably why Fortnite's new elements feel like an approximation of Rocket League that we didn't get. [Dave Hagewood, founder and CEO of Psyonix, said, "We were trying to figure out what we needed to do to make it work better this time around. We quickly realized that some ideas were out of scope or a little crazy. Let's refine what we have, keep the core and create the best experience possible in playing that game"

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This meant focusing on the core of the multiplayer and discarding anything that got in the way (much of which, it must be said, will return as a limited-time mode if the game is such a success). Design director Cory Davis said, "In a back-to-basics meeting, we decided to focus on what we knew was good," adding, "We also decided to embrace the spirit of the game. We didn't worry too much about seriousness."

The rest, as they say, is history, although I've always wondered about the strange idea of Rocket League being set on an open map where players are free to run around and choose when and where they want to join a match, and the battle royale island of Fortnite Trotting around is as close as I could get to what Psyonix had in mind. Of course, the developer's decision to specialize in a multiplayer mode for "Rocket League" was completely correct, but it makes you realize that this kind of thing can be handled like a dream, and maybe there is something else in the future, apart from "Rocket League" itself.

Fortnite has also added Rocket League's Whiplash cars, and both vehicles are available in Battle Royale, Zero Build, and Creative modes Epic's highly successful Battle Royale is now almost like an "anything goes" game, just relentless As it moves forward relentlessly, it is grabbing and incorporating whatever it can grab. It's fun to watch as they fill in one of the little "what ifs" associated with Epic's stablemates, albeit coincidentally.