ShockRods is a thrillingly old school arena shooter

I've never been to Stainless Games' office, situated right in the centre of the Isle of Wight, but I've always imagined they're just bouncing around to Reef and the Spin Doctors while buzzing on Sunny D and Cheese Strings as their Global Hypercolour t-shirts begin to go a funny purple from all that activity. There's nowt more 90s than their games, basically, and that's as true as ever even after the studio has moved on from the Carmageddon series that made its name.

ShockRods, Stainless Games' all-new IP, is somehow even more 90s that what went before it, and I mean that as the highest compliment. This is the high adrenaline arena shooter of the late 90s combined with the high octane thrills that Stainless Games are famous for. It's Quake meets Rocket League, if you want to be super reductive - and who doesn't! - and even in its incubative form, it turns out that's a formula that works.

This is a 6v6 shooter - or 12 player free-for-all, if out and out chaos is more your flavour - with arenas that are nicely compact ensuring you're never more than a handful of seconds away from some serious action. This is a vehicle-based shooter, but the emphasis is very much on the shooting - in team deathmatch, it feels a lot like, well, team deathmatch, with movement akin to a traditional first-person shooter (thanks to the dynamics of the cars, which have 'hi-tech' wheels that allow them to move along any plane and that are also equipped with jump boosters).

Read more