The esports boom is the perfect opportunity for arcade sports games to make a comeback. The shooter genre isn't the only gaming category with competitive potential, and we can’t play Rocket League forever. The $19.99 Knockout City takes the simple game of dodgeball and turns it into a colorful, chaotic, online multiplayer brawl with an impressive balance between depth and accessibility. It just needs more substance alongside all this style.

The Knockout Game

Anyone who’s ever taken a big, red, rubber ball to the face in gym class can tell you the feeling isn’t too different from being shot. Knockout City intelligently recognizes that dodgeball’s projectile-based nature makes it akin to a kid-friendly shooter, despite technically being a sports game. When two teams of three compete to score the most knockouts, the online battles feel closer to Splatoon than Mario Tennis.

However, dodgeball’s unique properties provide a fascinating foundation onto which Knockout City introduces an impressive array of original gameplay mechanics. You can time your button press correctly and catch an incoming ball instead of getting knocked out, trip up your opponent’s timing by charging the ball, execute a fake throw, or pass the ball to a teammate if they’re in a better position. You also have multiple jumps, evades, and glide maneuvers to creatively stay mobile. Better yet, curl yourself into a ball for your teammate to pick up and throw into an enemy for an instant KO.

You don’t need to worry about precise aiming, but you never want to start chucking without a plan as the balls are surprisingly sparse. Balls with special powers give you even more choices. Blow up opponents with a bomb ball before it explodes in your hands. Capture your opponent in a cage ball and throw them off the stage to their doom. 

Knockout City is fairly easy to pick up if you’re okay with losing your first few matches, but its sheer tactical potential is what has inspired me to genuinely stick with it. Even in individual 1v1 skirmishes you have a variety of options to consider in just a few seconds, giving the game a satisfying, fighting game-like rhythm. 

A Total Knockout?

It’s a good thing Knockout City has such an appealing core, because the game built around it doesn’t quite do it justice—at least not yet. Besides training missions, there’s no single-player mode. Thanks to crossplay, PC and console players can take each other on with ease, so I never had an issue finding a multiplayer match. Still, the handful of maps and multiplayer modes aren’t that different from each other.

You have your standard Team KO mode, where the first to 10 knockouts wins. In Diamond Dash, knocked-out players leave behind diamonds for the enemy team to collect until they hit the winning number, which just seems like a more complicated way to get to the same goal. For some wacky entertainment, Party Team KO mode turns all the balls into special balls. Face-Off is the high-pressure, 1v1 mode. You can also set up private matches, create and join crews with other players, and compete in League Play (which hasn’t started yet as of this writing). 

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As much as I enjoyed playing Knockout City, I quickly felt like I had exhausted everything to do. Plus, I didn’t appreciate the artificial ways the game attempted to keep me playing. Despite costing $20, Knockout City is structured and monetized like a free-to-play live service game with rotating seasons, an ever-changing storefront, and contract missions to complete straight out of Fortnite. I tend to dislike these features no matter what, but would probably tolerate them more in a truly free game. In a paid game (albeit a budget one) I expect more content upfront.  

Don’t Mess Up That Pretty Face

Knockout City sports a radical, stylized, summertime aesthetic that’s pretty well-worn territory these days. If you’ve played Overwatch, Ninjala, or Sunset Overdrive you’ll recognize the game’s whole vibe. Still, it’s an excellent execution of said vibe. 

Characters zip around rooftops and construction yards with flair as rainbows shine around them. There’s an almost “futuristic 1950s” theme as teams arrive on flying muscle cars, and dudes with pompadours rock leather jackets. The item shop also provides plenty of contemporary ways to customize your character’s body, outfit, and emotes. Meanwhile, the groovy DJ narrating your exploits recalls DJ Atomika from SSX and other EA Sports Big releases. And "Knockout City" is the best game name since Treachery in Beatdown City.

Knockout City comes from Velan Studios, the team that developed last year’s Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit. The crew is made up of Vicarious Visions veterans, and that team was particularly skilled at pulling off technical feats on weaker hardware. Knockout City runs fantastic on the Nintendo Switch, whether you opt for the 30-frames-per-second Quality mode or the lower-res, 60-frames-per-second Performance mode. Neither lag or poor visuals kept me from success in this twitchy, multiplayer game, and I assume the game looks and runs even better on stronger hardware.

A True Underdog Story

Knockout City has already accomplished what has to be one of the more difficult parts of game development: nailing a central idea. Its thrilling, multiplayer dodgeball matches scratch the same itch as classic arcade sports games, while still feeling entirely fresh. But to stay fresh, Knockout City needs to give you more to do, especially if you're spending hard-earned money. The game clearly has plans to evolve and improve in the future, but in a live service game field this competitive, here’s hoping Knockout City doesn’t get knocked out first. 

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