Omega Strikers review: Rocket hooligans

If one were to look at the visual aesthetic of Omega Strikers, their first guess might be that it's the setting for a multiplayer shooter or a MOBA. The stylized animation would suggest something like Overwatch or League of Legends. Instead, this is a new game from some former Riot Games developers at Odyssey Interactive called Omega Strikers and it's actually a 3v3 soccer-style sports game.

Omega Strikers is a solid concept and shows great potential for growth. I certainly had a lot of fun playing it prior to release. It does need some polish in certain areas and the whole package starts to feel limited after a while, but what is here is enjoyable.

Taking the pitch

Omega Strikers is a game set in a futuristic world, where teams of three battle it out in a sport that feels like a more advanced soccer. However, to say this is mainly about putting a ball (or a "core" in this case) into a goal would be oversimplifying how this game works. While the basic premise is to be the first team to score five points, members of each team have their own distinct set of moves to help them get there.

There are no fouls in Omega Strikers, which opens the door to a MOBA-style arrangement of special abilities. While they can be used to help guide the ball to the opposing team's goal, the other part of the Omega Strikers formula is that players can get physical with their opponents. In fact, it's possible to temporarily knock out members of the other team, leading to a situation like a power play in hockey. While my sessions didn't see knockouts factor into the outcome often, the option to stun or KO other players added a welcome sense of chaos.

As I played through an increasing number of sessions, I noticed that Omega Strikers is meant to be fast-paced. Often times, it is, especially as multiple players unleash their moves. My main complaint is that movement feels rather slow, as I'd often try and chase down the core and see that my character was moving like they had sandbags weighing them down. While certain Strikers have dash moves that give them brief speed bursts, the base speed on every character feels like it should be faster than it is.

Something else that helped mix up every game was the variety in stages. Arenas don't throw out copious amounts of obstacles, but do offer different layouts. One example uses a black hole while another places a horizontal barrier along the center of the playing field.

Developmental league

Between the variety of characters, arenas, and the brevity of the first-to-5 format, I never felt bored with Omega Strikers. However, I will note that beyond the main 3v3 mode, there wasn't much to do during my time with the game. It should be noted that more game modes are coming after launch, which is nice to hear given that Omega Strikers has full cross-platform play across PC, consoles, and mobile devices.

Speaking of mobile devices, the main downside of Omega Strikers at the moment is that it feels like it's designed for the mobile gaming space. It isn't just the free-to-play economy model, though that's part of it. Omega Strikers runs on the battle pass model, which features unlockable cosmetics like skins, emotes, goal explosions, taunts, and more. The positive here is that there are enough daily missions to allow players to progress at a decent pace. That also goes a long way towards unlocking the full roster, all of whom can be unlocked with in-game Striker Credits.

The reason this feels like a mobile title is because through most of my review, many of the game's menus didn't feel like they were designed with controllers in mind. As I went through the tutorials, I had to frequently switch around between controlling my character with a controller and navigating the menus with a mouse. There were several instances where I booted the game and it simply didn't read my controller at all, requiring me to reboot Steam entirely. This wasn't a deal-breaker, but it was a major annoyance and enough that it will probably, in the long run, drive me to play Omega Strikers on my phone instead.

Goal!

Omega Strikers mixes together concepts from some tried-and-true success stories like Rocket League and Overwatch. The result is something that's both fun and quick to play with enough unlockables to keep people engaged. Each individual game feels different thanks to the potential combination of strikers, arenas, and team strategies. Speaking of the strikers, each character has a unique and interesting design and many of them are worth the effort to unlock.

Those looking for a new free-to-play activity to add to their list can certainly do worse than Omega Strikers. It may not bring anything revolutionary to the table, but it's enough of a good time that it's worth a few pick-up rounds, especially given its availability across numerous platforms.

This review is based on a Steam code provided by the publisher. Omega Strikers will release on PC, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android later today and on PlayStation and Xbox at a later date. It is a free-to-play game. The game is rated E10+.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?