Hexagon Knockout (PC) Review

 

Hexagon Knockout is a game about being the last car surviving. All players are placed on a platform and have to knock each other down from there via bumping into each other, using boosts or rockets. The playable area keeps getting smaller and the winner of 5 rounds is being crowned the champion of the match.

There are 12 different variants of rounds and they switch after every completed round. In some of them the ground collapses faster, there are extra obstacles in the way, a rocket bombardment, one player has an explosive car or there is a crown to be held for a certain time to win. These variants definitely increase the variety and replayability of the game, but the core gameplay idea always stays the same.

Unfortunately Hexagon Knockout does not have Bot Support or true Online matchmaking, which makes it much more difficult to play than it would have to be. You can play locally with additional controllers (or via LAN?) or online with people on your Steam friends list. That is better than nothing, but does feel overly restrictive and limited. I don't see why you couldn't play online with other people outside your friend list, like in pretty much every other online game.

The (mouse and) keyboard controls on the game are also horribly optimized. You can use them, but it is pretty uncomfortable. You can't even use the mouse in the main menu and instead have to use the keyboard to navigate yourself into a match (some buttons are displayed which are not even part of physical keyboards) and the movement ingame is not the greatest, since you move with camera directions, not with the car directions, which can be pretty confusing in the beginning. The whole keyboard controls seem unnecessarily convoluted and unintuitive. The game offers gamepad support and that works at least much better.

 

Pro:

+ Core gameplay functions okay

+ Variety of different rounds

+ Local and Friend matchmaking possible

 

Contra:

- No Bot Support

- No real online matchmaking

- Badly optimized keyboard controls

- More of a minigame than a full game

 

Result:

Hexagon Knockout is actually not a terrible game for what it offers. In comparison to 'Push Battle' (game with a similar concept) for example I would definitely prefer Hexagon Knockout. That being said, the whole gameplay idea seems more like a minigame to me, than a standalone game. If you are into car brawling the game might be worth a look, but I didn't enjoy it enough for a recommendation and got pretty annoyed by the bad keyboard controls and lack of online and Bot matchmaking.

 

4/10