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You can mix things up with curve shots and lobs - I even found myself discovering my own moves which felt very rewarding. It's extremely satisfying and doesn’t get old even after one hundred matches. Every time you hit someone, you get a satisfying bonk sound and send them flying too. You do two things: throw and catch, and it’s essentially perfect. Thank God the simple gameplay was done so well. I can’t not mention how you can roll up and have a friend throw you instead of the regular balls, we must have spent hours screaming ‘Bob throw me!’ The training dummy (one of my favourite things to see in a game) was very useful for practising throwing and catching, or just knocking him off the building over and over. Every kind of ball is left in spots around the map, so you can try everything and already start picking favourites. Before I even got into my first match, I must have spent maybe twenty minutes in that hub just jumping around and figuring out the controls. The smooth animations, the perfect speed, the responsiveness with the controls: it works in the way you want it to. So, when I was dropped on top of the roof, the fluidity of the movement hit me in the face harder than any dodgeball could. What you first experience in the game is this rooftop hub: a playground to practice and mess around, with your friends or all on your lonesome. Velan Studios (the developer) clearly put a lot of work into the movement, and it’s the first thing I noticed when playing. There is a certain dance performed in Knockout City, one between your character and the ball. There is a certain dance performed in Knockout City, one between your character and the ball Beyond my expectations, we were instantly hooked, and part of me wishes I started playing sooner.

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By the time the PS5 version was released, PlayStation Plus offered it for the month, and that’s when I finally jumped in - dragging my friends along with me.

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Knockout City didn’t go free to play, but through different services like EA Play and in turn Xbox Game Pass, the game was at least trying to get more people in the door. Each season usually brings in a new map and a new ball (this season had a UFO instead), and that just doesn’t feel like enough for the 90 days or so between updates. It launched with a decent selection of maps and balls, but with nothing much on the horizon. Chalk it up to bugs and server issues at launch, as well as a slow drip of content. Open betas nowadays are essentially glorified demos, so why should I waste my time?įollowing a strong launch with millions playing, for one reason or another, the game fell pretty hard. The game’s open beta and launch were fairly successful, but it never grabbed my attention enough for me to pay for what I thought should have been a free to play game - even if the gameplay looked decent.

It didn’t look awful or anything, just generic in a sea of developers trying to push the same aesthetic. What also didn’t help was the visuals we first saw - a Fortnite-esque presentation that everyone was trying because Epic Games was making the big bucks. It didn’t get me interested in the game, it just looked cheap. The first thing you see isn’t a high-speed dodgeball, it’s an array of knockoff characters from other publishers talking about the game: like a SWAT member from Counter Strike and an orc from World of Warcraft. The reveal trailer was dropped in February of last year and was immediately confusing, seemingly no different than most other games being released around the same time. Before you go any further, I will say at the top: yes, I do recommend the game wholeheartedly, and I’d like to show you why, so here is my belated love letter to Knockout City.Īfter seeing this game for the first time, it didn’t leave the best first impression on me.

This is my experience with the game, including what I adore from it, but obviously nothing is ever perfect so we have some complaints here and there. It never got very far, but this sort-of indie-published by EA game deserves a lot more attention. For the uninitiated, this game can be summed up as an extreme dodgeball experience, but I can assure you it is so much more than that. If you don't know what Knockout City is, congratulations, you're like most people. Rory Galvin gushes over the game that deserved better

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