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Knockout City it’s a lot to deal with. In the funky, futuristic, over-the-top dodge ball game playlists, few things are as simple as they seem. In a preview staged Tuesday by creator Velan Studios and Electronic Arts, I often found myself standing back and watching the action, trying to develop a fundamental sense of the game.
Teamwork is as essential to winning (and having fun) as it is to understanding Knockout CityThere are many unique rules and techniques. Good news for that: the first closed beta of the game launches on February 20 on PC.
“Because the dodge ball is the inspiration, we can play with multiple balls in the scene,” said Guha Bala, co-founder and president of Velan. Velan recently developed the October Toys-to-Life / Mixed Reality game. Mario Kart Live: Home circuit
“There’s very little movement, but it’s extremely complex in terms of layers, so you can really go through that kind of cycle of introduction, practice and mastery,” Bala said. I don’t agree that there is little movement here, but I see his take on it being easy to learn and difficult to master.
In a straightforward straightforward match, I would see novice users (like me) running at full speed once they saw a spawn point of a bullet, coming close to shoot, only to see their element. of surprise carried away by someone. who was more attentive when the tutorial showed how to intercept a bullet. There is a melee attack which is also a good counter for separating an enemy from their bullet, so it’s really not about getting the right weapons first.
Rolling into a ball (one of the wildest aspects of Knockout City) means that a teammate can choose their and throw them away. The simple act of hitting a coiled teammate picks them up; it was a bit confusing the first few times this happened, but of course that means Knockout City may offer variants of team knockout play where there are no balls.
As for the balls themselves, you’ve probably guessed that there’s more to it than your standard red kickball (which makes a satisfying “PROONT” noise every time it hits someone in the face.) Throwing means quickly pulling the correct trigger (a faster, but less effective attack) or charging it with an auto-lock from the nearest opponent.
Bomb Bomb’s large area of effect explosion makes it something players want to find and get rid of quickly; but it also means that intercepting a falling bomb is no longer a way to turn the situation on an enemy. (And a generous timing window for catching an incoming ball means I was sitting on the left trigger control for this, a bit of a reflex, but the game found a way to force me not to move the kickstand and keep me on my toes.)
Because Knockout City is based on rounds, teams can go from getting killed pretty badly (and tanking the round, much like a tennis player in a losing first set) to a very dominant second or third round and a comeback win. As Bala says: “I was getting killed in 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 came out with the last deciding point, getting the last diamond for our team that won the game. You’ve had a surprising number of clutch moments like this in this game.
The only concern I had was what the latency might do to a fast paced game. Bala touted the engine that Velan developed specifically for Knockout City, which the studio calls Viper. It’s of course very technical, but “We’ve added another very high performance engine with a new computation method to actually synchronize a physical simulation,” Bala said.
The aesthetics of Knockout City are very important to the game, only because the cards on the roofs mean traps (in one case a big wrecking ball swinging) but also twists and perches to hit. It’s not a field sport, in other words. It also means endless, flashy customizations (there are 17 cosmetic slots and three build-and-trade characters), which means Velan is planning for seasonal and other content once the game launches on May 21, 2021.
And with cross play and cross progression between all platforms, that means Knockout City should have a large user base at launch so people jump into the 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 to whether I will get good Knockout City, Bala handed out a few protips but mostly said, yeah, watch a few rounds and I’ll figure it out – and if not, at least I’ll see a very entertaining game. “Just spend a little time looking at it,” he says. “I think it’s a pretty watchable game too.”
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