This week publisher Electronic Arts held a presentation of the game Knockout City, within which the edition GameMAG managed to play it for several hours. This is a project from a young team Velan Studioswho made a race in augmented reality before Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit…
Knockout City is a variation of the children’s game “Bouncer”, which was crossed with a brawler. The basic rules are simple: there are two teams (three or people in each) that run around the map, pick up balls and try to hit the enemy with them. Two hits – and the player is sent to respawn.
The first thing you notice after launching Knockout City is the highly controversial visual style. It can be described as a mixture of retro-futurism, rockabilly and modern progressive trends.
The developers boasted that the work of their artists is unique and unlike anything else, although this is also slyness. Apparently, the team members spent too much time watching old comics and cartoons about Ninja Turtles. They especially liked the alien race Neutrino, whose representatives were obsessed with rockabilly and moved in flying retro cars. The latter migrated to Knockout City without any changes.
Velan Studios rely heavily on character customization, but the end result is always asexual cartoon characters dressed as ridiculous as possible. Where is the boy, and where is the girl – it is impossible to understand in principle. My attempts to do something pleasant were unsuccessful: it seems that the developers were advised by the creators Mass effect andromeda, in which it was impossible to create a normal character (only goggle-eyed dummies were obtained).
The game itself starts on the hub map. Here the player can practice on scarecrows in throwing balls, run a lot, calmly customize the character or start a match. You can also go through the most stupid training on a separate map, which consists in collecting terminals with a description of control (it is not clear why it could not be implemented in the hub). There is no way to play with bots in Knockout City. Gathering friends offline will also not work, because the game requires a constant Internet connection (private matches are available). Here the owners will feel slighted Nintendo Switchplaying in a portable format outside the home, as they will have to look for Wi-Fi hotspots. However, the developers focus on crossplay, so there will be no platform ghettos (clans for 32 people will be available at the start).
Multiplayer matches are the main entertainment at Velan Studios. And the team tried to deepen the gameplay.
Everything is implemented as follows. The player quickly moves around the map in search of the ball. Having obtained the latter, he can throw it at the enemy, guessing the moment. Aiming is automatic, and the opponent can react and intercept the flying projectile. However, he can be fooled by performing a false swing or throwing the ball to another team member.
If the ball is not nearby, then the player … can become a projectile himself, curled up. In this case, it can be picked up by a partner, launching at a member of the enemy team. But you have to be careful, because the enemy can also use you as a ball, running alongside during the “roll-up” phase.
There are additional features as well. Let’s say a throw at an enemy can be “charged” by making it more powerful. In the case of using a player as a ball, the blow will be especially strong: the projectile is sent into the sky and begins to follow the target. After falling, an explosion occurs, which can injure other enemy players.
To complicate the life of opponents, several special moves are available:
- open the hang-glider for flight (one of the maps has updrafts to facilitate movement);
- dash to dodge a flying ball;
- hold a ballet turntable to knock the ball out of the opponent’s hands;
- roll over yourself, which will make it easier to climb some objects.
Special balls are additionally scattered on the maps, the type of which is determined at the beginning of the match. In the preview version, lunar shells were available (they give the player reduced gravity), bombs (you need to throw them quickly, otherwise they will explode) and cage shells (when hit, the enemy player is temporarily inside the ball).
In the first couple of hours, the gameplay can even be captivating. However, then you start to notice a whole series of miscalculations.
In the preview, journalists and bloggers tested three sets of rules:
- Diamond Dash (3v3) – after liquidation, diamonds drop out of the players, which teams need to accumulate to win;
- Ball-Up Brawl (4v4) – there are no balls on the map, so you have to throw only teammates;
- Team KO (3v3) – you need to eliminate enemy players a certain number of times to win.
During the start of the match, we noticed the first oddity – the player presentation screens are made as if they were originally created for four characters, not three. Apparently, during development, Velan Studios changed the number of participants in the match, because the 3v3 scheme does not make sense (two players can use the other two as balls if necessary).
The second miscalculation is the design of the cards. The developers have allowed three of the four that will be available on release. And already two of them we can call unsuccessful.
In Knockout Roundabout, brawls take place in a square in the center of the city, around which cars fly slowly. The latter cannot kill anyone, but they are very annoying in the heat of the battle: the player is either pushed sideways, or he starts to glitch under the car. The situation is aggravated by the fact that there is very little space on the square itself, for it is filled with towers, leaving narrow passages.
The weakest is the Concussion Yard, a construction site. The developers added moving platforms, a giant ball for demolition of buildings, tractors with buckets and more. However, the routes of movement are not well thought out, so 90% of the fights take place only in one place – on the first floor of an unfinished building.
The third map (Rooftop Battle) consists of two skyscrapers connected by a bridge and updrafts. And she is the most dynamic of the collection.
The next problem is difficulties with movement. Yes, the developers have offered advanced options for movement, but only some of the solutions were controversial. Let’s say a hang glider unfolds after double-clicking on the jump button. Why couldn’t you double jump? It obviously suggests itself, because somersault is not very convenient. There was also a distinct feeling that Knockout City lacked wall-running. All of the above is especially relevant for the Concussion Yard.
I also want to scold the weak graphics. Knockout City is due out on a variety of platforms, including Nintendo Switch, but it looks bad even by hybrid console standards. In the preview version, only resolution, anti-aliasing and shadow quality were allowed to be adjusted. Everything else remained the same and had to put up with blurry textures and sprite smoke effects. In some places, the game is even a bit too reminiscent of the now defunct Battlefield Heroes, which was launched from a web browser. And this is not surprising: the backbone of Velan Studios consists of people who previously made games for mobile devices. On the other hand, Knockout City should work seamlessly on almost any hardware.
The main miscalculation is that Knockout City is not very suitable for playing with random players. Without voice communication, it is impossible to understand when a partner wants to curl into the ball, it is difficult to coordinate passes, and so on. Perhaps the situation will improve in ranked matches that were not available in the preview (teamwork is required in the fight for titles).
The whole complex of the above problems leads to the fact that we got bored with Knockout City in about an hour and a half. This is not surprising, since only one of the three cards turned out to be sane.
The developers are trying to disguise the problems with tinsel: a bunch of cosmetic items (but the visual style is controversial), a bunch of tests (progress is counted in case of victory), an announcement of seasons (even more cosmetic items), and so on. And what is happening is easy to find an explanation.
Last year, EA released Final Strike Games’ Rocket Arena, focused on multiplayer brawls (3v3) with browser elements and cartoon graphics … The game died right on release, because no one understood why they asked for $ 30 for it. Prices dropped quickly, but the developers failed to attract gamers.
To avoid such a fate, the creators of Knockout City tried to take preventive measures. They ask to pay only $ 20 for the game. Seasons with battle passes promise to remain free, although the game already has an additional type of currency and an in-game store. In addition, a trial version will be available on the release for everyone.
We are not yet sure that Velan Studios will be able to keep players even in this case, but we will wait for the release.
Knockout City will be released on May 21, 2023 on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X | S, PS4, PS5 and Nintendo Switch. Closed beta test on PC will be held from 20 to 21 February…
Author: Vadim Syedin (Vadim2)
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