Knockout Kings 2000
Reviewed by Dale Kulas
The Game
Last year, EA Sports released its first venture in the
boxing world with Knockout Kings for the Playstation, now
it's back with a sequel, Knockout Kings 2000. It also came
out for N64, the format I favor to review on, but I never
played the game on the N64, but my friend has this game, and
we played the game a few times for hours on end, so I'll
review the Playstation version instead. Now last year's
version of the game was pretty flawed to my knowledge, so
will this sequel improve on last year's flaws? Let's get
onto the review and find out.
Graphics
Really nice FMV intro, plus the boxer entrances look really
nice for a Playstation game, with the boxer walking down the
aisle of a certain arena, like the Caesars Palace for
example, doing their little struts and warmup punches.
Really nice. The boxers are surprisingly well done for the
game, and the models for all of them make them look a lot
alike their real life counterparts. You can see the tiniest
of details on them from their muscles (or rolls in
Butterbean's case), to a black eye, or cut above their eye
in the in-between round rest periods. What look really great
is when you make a boxer juice (bleed) during the middle of
the round, where a splash of blood just pops out of their head.
The ring looks great, with different logos for each boxing
arena, but that's the only difference between the arenas,
all of the buildings for them look exactly the same, you
only get a different outside model for them on the arena
select screen, and different in ring logos. A minor setback.
To be on the nitpick side, I really wish their was
bodyguards, and what not accompanying the boxers to the ring
to add to the presentation, also the instant replays after
rounds do look kind of weak, they just show one viewpoint of
boxing before a blow, or just some plain old brawling, I
wish they could've had a rotating camera (which adds dynamic
effects in games like Sega's 2K series). But overall, the
graphics are well done.
Sound
From the second I turned on this game, I hated the sound.
You get a rap soundtrack from the rap artist, 'O,' and man
is he annoying as ever. Now even though he worked hard into
making an original soundtrack for the game, I hate most of
his tracks, and it distracts from the boxing experience.
Some of the entrance tunes sound alright, like Ali's, but
Evander Holyfield's is just annoying as Hell (I can't get
those annoying opening lyrics, 'put your hands up' out of
my head). And to make matters even worse, the commentating
is really dull in this game. Al Albert and Sean 'O Grady do
the honors of making us mute our tv's . Most of their
comments happen a few seconds after the match happens, and
they only throw in a few comments on occasion, and don't do
consistent accurate commentating. The only plus sides in the
audio department is that, the in ring introductions are
nice, and Judge Mills Lane sounds great no matter how many
times he says, 'Let's get it on!' Oh and I guess the sound
effects are ok too with all the punches, ducks, etc.
sounding appropriate. But sound is the worst part of this game.
Game play
The game's controls are a bit confusing at first. You use
the X, Circle, Triangle, and Square buttons to throw high
and low body/head blows, and the shoulder buttons and a
direction simultaneously to duck or block. To do a certain
combo of punches, you press 2 buttons in a sequence, which
is usually a button followed by a shoulder button. These
combos can easily be countered by simply throwing a high
punch at the right moment. The worst part of the controls is
maneuvering around the ring, I mean half the time I'm
holding up on the control pad, and my character will move to
the right, using the analog pad doesn't even help a bit
either, compared to Ready 2 Rumble, the maneuvering is like
hell. Each round is 3:00 minutes long and at most 10 rounds
by default, but of course, you can customize both of them.
If you notice at the top of the screen during game play,
there's 2 bars, the thicker, wider, bar is your life meter
which slowly wares down as you absorb more punches, the
second, thinner, green bar is your power meter, which drains
down as you throw more punches, whenever you connect a throw
with a nice amount of energy in your power bar, it does more
damage then usual. You go through up to ten rounds, and if
you get KO'd you gotta repeatedly tap the X button to get
up, the more times you get KO'd the harder and faster you
gotta tap the X button to get up. If you're KO'd 3 times in
a round its considered a Technical KO'd you automatically
lose. If you guys don't score a KO or TKO win within 10
rounds, the winner is the person with the most points by the
end of the game.
The game has a nice selection of boxers in the three
separate weight classes (light, middle, and heavyweight),
all have ratings in several different categories like Power,
Heart, Stamina, etc. The game has many greats like
Butterbean, Evander Holyfield, and Oscar De La Hoya, to name
a few, heck the game even brings back the legend himself,
Muhammad Ali in the game, who has a 100 in all, but one
category. You got exhibition mode where you must fight
boxers in your weight class to have a fair fight. You can
also create your own boxer, and customize him to your
liking, and if you want take him through the career mode,
where after every fight, you get to go to your own personal
gym you selected around the world (each one has different
weight equipment) and train, and after training you get to
distribute some attribute points on stats like Chin, Speed, and Heart.
Replay Value
You got lots of modes to keep you company here, career mode
for the single player experience, and exhibition so you can
go at it against your friend. Plus creating your own boxer
gives lots of depth to the game as well. The game does make
use of the analog rumble feature, and the controller sure
does let you know when you get KO'd. But you won't wanna
play this game for hours on end every day, in this heavy
simulation based game, after playing one, 8-10 round game,
you'll be all tired out and won't even feel like playing for
the rest of the day, that's how I felt any ways.
In Brief
+: Improved Career Mode, Nice Create-a-Boxer, Great Roster
of Boxers
-: The soundtrack stinks, weird angle of instant replays,
hard to move around the ring
The Final Ratings Rundown
Graphics: 8. 7
Sound: 3. 0
Game play: 7. 2
Replay Value: 6. 4
Overall: 6. 3
Comments
A decent boxing game, really fun to play against your
friend, even though it does have a few noticeable flaws,
like it being hard to move around the ring, and that really,
really, horrible rap soundtrack, the game is a fairly solid
boxing game, with Create-a-Boxer, and Career mode giving you
a run for your money, but I recommend waiting until next
year's much polished up version, or getting the simpler,
easier to understand, Ready 2 Rumble Boxing. But if you're a
big fan of 'real' boxing, and simply can't wait until next
year's game, I guess this is worth the $20.
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