Knockout City it’s a lot to deal with. In the playlists of the funky, futuristic and exaggerated burning game, few things are as simple as they seem. In a preview staged by creator Velan Studios and Electronic Arts on Tuesday, I often found myself just standing and watching the action, trying to develop a fundamental sense of play.
Teamwork is as critical to winning (and entertaining) the game as understanding of Knockout Citymany unique rules and techniques. Good news for that: the game’s first closed beta starts on February 20 on the PC.
“Since burning is the inspiration, we can play with several balls on the scene,” said Guha Bala, co-founder and president of Velan. Velan most recently developed the mixed reality game / toys for October life Mario Kart Live: home circuit
“There are few movements, but it is extremely complex in terms of layers, which allows you to really go through this kind of cycle of introduction, practice and mastery,” said Bala. I disagree that there are few moves here, but I see your point about being easy to learn and difficult to master.
In a straightforward match for everyone, I was seeing novice users (like me) running at high speed when they saw a spawn point on the ball, ending up shooting, only to have their element of surprise taken by someone who was paying more attention when the tutorial showed how to intercept a ball. There is a melee attack that is also a good counterattack to separate an opponent from his ball, so it really is not a matter of picking up good weapons first.
Wrapping yourself up in a ball (one of the wildest aspects of the Knockout City) means that a teammate can choose they up and throw them. Just bump into a rolled-up teammate to catch them; it was a little confusing the first few times it happened, but of course, that means that Knockout City can serve team-based eliminatory game variants where there are no balls.
As for the balls themselves, you probably guessed that there is more than just your standard red kick ball (which makes a satisfying “PROONT” noise whenever it hits someone in the face). Throwing it means quickly firing the right trigger (one faster, but less effective attack) or loading it with an automatic lock for any opponent that is closest.
A blast of Bomb Ball’s large blasting effect area makes it something that players want to find and get rid of quickly; but it also means that intercepting a Bomb Ball ping is no longer a way to turn the tide against an enemy. (And a generous window of time to catch an incoming ball means that I was sitting on the left trigger command for this, somewhat reflexively, but the game came with a way to force me out of the crutch movements and keep me on tiptoe.)
Why Knockout City it is based on rounds, teams can go from a very bad death (and tanking the round, like a tennis player in a losing first set) to a very dominant second or third round and a return win. As Bala puts it, “I was being killed on Diamond Dash [a team-based game where KO’d players drop a litter of diamonds, meaning sharp teammates can be there to make the save.] But I left with the last determining point, taking the last diamond for our team that won the match. You had an amazing number of clutch moments like that in this game. “
The only area of concern I had is what latency can do in an accelerated game. Bala praised the engine that Velan developed specifically for Knockout City, which the studio calls Viper. Of course, it is very technical, but, “We added another super-high-performance engine with a new computing method to maintain a synchronized physics simulation,” said Bala.
The aesthetics of Knockout City they are very important for the game, just because the roof maps mean traps (in one case, a big swinging wrecking ball), but also cushions and perches to reach. In other words, it is not a court-based sport. It also means endless and flashy customizable (there are 17 cosmetic slots and three characters to build and trade), which means that Velan plans seasonal and similar content once the game is released on May 21, 2021.
And with cross-play and cross-progression across all platforms, that means Knockout City it must have a large user base at launch for people to take action quickly. Knockout City will be available on everything: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PS5, Windows PC (via Steam and Origin) and Xbox One and Xbox Series X.
As for whether I’m going to be good at Knockout City, Bala dismissed some protips, but mostly said, yes, watch a few rounds and I’ll get the hang of it – and if not, I’ll at least see a really fun game. “Spend some time watching,” he said. “I think it’s a very watchable game, too.”