I'm again going to be brief with my review of a PS5 game, as though I do think that there was stuff to admire about "Knockout City" I felt I had played all the game had to really offer after just a few sessions, so decided to delete it and move on.
"Knockout City" is essentially a game of dodgeball. Depending on the variation of the game that you end up playing it's either played solo, or in teams of two, three or four and being hit by the ball will eliminate you, either permanently or until you respawn (again, determined by the mode of game you're playing). The are various modifications you can make to the way you throw the ball, that may made it harder for your opponent to catch, there are also trick balls available in certain modes, that have different effects.
It's hard not to immediate think of "Fortnight" when you power up "Knockout City". It has a similar design, a cartoony aesthetic, a bold looking 3D world, your character even has a glider that can be called on to adjust descent speed. The levelling up unlocks gear, with which you can change the aesthetic of your character, though nothing that will enhance your performance, all of which can be purchased with real money, should you wish to buy a particular outfit sooner.
There's a lengthy tutorial which explains how everything works, which was fun to play through. The game itself is, at the moment, relatively slow to pick up enough players for a game, but it fills in bots after a certain amount of time to get a game started. Generally, each match I played had one or two other human players and then the rest of the characters were bots. It is, indeed, fun to play for a while. The trouble was, I felt that after a couple of sessions I'd seen everything the game had to offer. The games core mechanic, doesn't, for me, have enough to it to sustain many replays. And it's not like the level design, or what mode you're playing the game in, can really do anything about it.
Not awful - good and fun in short blasts even. . . But not enough to encourage much replay.
