For me, the fun of Rocket League lies entirely in how its supersonic acrobat rocket-powered battle cars control. That means it’s still fun even if you remove the ball and, say, turn it into a free-for-all battle royale about punting opponent cars out of bounds. That’s what the time limited Knockout Bash mode does, which is available from now until May 10th.
Here’s a trailer for the mode, which launched a couple of days ago:
There’s more going on here than just removing the ball and changing the shape of the arena. As the Rocket League website’s news post explains, this new mode switches up the controls to allow you to attack other cars, block incoming attacks, and even ‘grab’ opponent cars and then toss them.
You can toss them into hazards that little the levels for an instant knockout, or you can fling them out of bounds. If they don’t get back into the safe zone within ten seconds, that’s a knockout. The faster you’re going when you attack someone, the further you’ll launch them – and that safe zone is constricting over the course of the round, too, like in many battle royale modes.
There are other changes, too, including triple jumps in favour of double jumps and a stun state after being hit that renders a car briefly inoperable. All these little tweaks combine to make Knockout Bash more than easy novelty.
Today also saw the release of a new Formula 1 Fan Pass, which brings a newly designed Formula 1 car and other cosmetic items to the in-game shop from May 4th until May 10th. Here’s a trailer for that:
