Kung Fu’s Kinetic Action Meets the Beautiful Game

The video game Rematch isn’t soccer as seen on television or EA Sports FC. The camera sits low, centered behind one player, not the familiar broadcast angle from the bleachers. The ball is easily lost as it flies overhead or hides beneath a crush of bodies.

Its online multiplayer matches, played in three-, four- and five-player teams, feel closer to the amateur soccer games played by millions worldwide. And unlike in other soccer video games, Rematch players are fully autonomous. There is no artificial intelligence to assist passes or control teammates.

A fresh approach to soccer feels long overdue at a time when the creativity in sports games chiefly lies in the efforts to encourage impulse in-game purchases. Rematch’s creative director, Pierre Tarno, considers innovation an existential necessity for independent studios during economically challenging times.

“The only way to stand out and survive,” he said, “is to make a game that’s very good quality and original.”

Tarno and three fellow Ubisoft employees founded the Parisian studio Sloclap in 2015, and it has built a reputation for unusually exacting action games. Its breakout title, the kung fu brawler Sifu (2022), sold four million copies thanks to a dancelike combat system inspired by the dynamic fight scenes and reactive environments of Jackie Chan movies.

The same kung fu cinema techniques, including freeze frames and camera shakes on impact, give Rematch’s animation satisfying kinetic force as players crash into one another or shoot the ball with fierce power.