Knockout City review: EA's dodgeball game is worth a throw

At the heart of Knockout City is a brilliantly fun idea - it's a battle royal experience where your playground games of dodgeball are writ large. Instead of a Call of Duty or Fortnite-style firefight, you get creative opportunities for team-based play across a variety of colourful maps that are laden with surprises.

And the good news is that it works really well. Having taken part in the game's cross-play beta and a recent review event, we're pleased to report that Knockout City is an exciting new contender in the battle royale space. It's a lot of fun to play. So much so, in fact, that it's our RadioTimes.com Game of the Week. To try it out for yourself, take note of the Knockout City free trial event that is running for the next 10 days!

The best thing about Knockout City is its core gameplay experience. In our Knockout City interview, we learned that the developers faced a "really hard problem" in getting the throwing and catching mechanics to run smoothly enough for online play. But they fully have overcome that issue, thankfully enough. Chucking balls and receiving them has a really nice weight to it in the finished game, and it's easy to get caught in the loop of 'just one more go' after you finish a battle.

Around this central mechanic, Velan has built a very enjoyable offering. There are multiple maps at launch, each of which has its own unique features - moving vehicles that will get in your way, rooftops you can fall off, and giant tubes that can quickly send you flying across the map. The game's main mode pits two teams of three players against each other, but there is also a solo mode and some other fun variations on the formula.

And there are loads of different types of balls, too - ones that explode, ones you can get trapped in, and even a 'multi ball' that allows you to dish out three quick-fire throws. You can even roll your character into a ball, and then one of your teammates can throw you. They could even charge you up and drop you as a bomb. This may not be a scientifically accurate depiction of how the human body works, but boy is it fun to weave that into your tactics.

With all of these different ways in which things can play out, no two games of Knockout City are ever the same. We kept wanting to go back for more, right up until they turned the servers off at the end of the event. That feels like a promising sign of this game's potential. Hopefully, Knockout City can build a strong player base and we can jump into some more wild battles in future. It'll be interesting to see what people come up with in terms of tactics, because there really are a lot of possibilities.

Read more on Knockout City:

• Watch the Knockout City trailer
• How to play Knockout City for free
• Where to buy Knockout City
• When do the Knockout City servers go live?

It's probably clear by now that we've really enjoyed our time with Knockout City so far - the gameplay feels really well-tuned, and there's so much replayability - but that's not to say that this is a perfect game. Art is subjective, of course, but this reviewer feels that the Knockout City art style is a little bit underwhelming. Rather than forging a visual language of its own, it looks more like a knockoff of Sunset Overdrive. That's another great game, but Knockout City didn't have to copy it.

Also, it's hard to escape the fact that Velan and EA are clearly hoping that this will be a huge money-making machine in the vein of Fortnite. Again, Fortnite is great, but Knockout City might have done well to forge its own path and build its own brand before it started promising more seasons, more skins and all the other microtransaction-funded additions that are in the pipeline. Fall Guys, as a comparison point, made a case for itself before promising too many extras.

Some players might like to see a little bit more lore, too, or at least a tease of a story. Knockout City doesn't do much to explain why its world exists, although there is a commentator/announcer's voice that chimes in occasionally (I actually turned this off after a while, finding it a bit grating, and put on a podcast instead). None of these things are major flaws, though, and if the game does end up having a long shelf-life, we would be happy to jump in and try the new modes.

When you're building a battle royale game, nothing is as important as the gameplay, and Knockout City has really delivered in that regard. It's joyous to try and overcome your enemies with a well-timed dodge, catch or throw, and the brilliance of that core mechanic could carry this game a long way. We'll just have to wait and see how those future plans fare. For now, the launch-day version of the game is well worth a throw!

Knockout City is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch.

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