I don’t remember the commentary from Knockout Kings 2002, but the audio from this version is once again “slightly better than average”. The framerate stayed at a pretty steady clip throughout, and all in all, the game left a slightly above-average impression in my mind. With most of the visual emphasis focused on the fighters anyway, you don’t really notice what’s going on around you unless you make a conscious effort to look. The lighting effects are decent, but it was pretty obvious that EA spent the majority of their time making the fighter models look and move realistically (with good reason).
The crowds seem flat and lifeless, and the arenas don’t really display anything that wasn’t shown last year on the PS2.
It’s the rest of the game that looks bland. Connecting with a good shot (more on that later) gets the sweat and/or blood flying, and you’ll see a lot of bruised eyes and swollen faces. They had the same sweat effects, the same models, and generally don’t look like raw gorilla ass like I thought they would. I’ve never been a fan of the ‘cube graphically, but KOK was pretty good here. The graphics in the game are actually pretty good. Could EA actually fix what was wrong with the first game, and deliver a solid boxing title on the Gamecube? Not really. Seeing what appeared to be the same game wrapped in a fancy new “2003” wrapper frightened me a bit. Your boxers would get out of position far too often, and the control scheme seemed delayed and unresponsive. When playing multiplayer, the person with the fastest jab almost always won. I liked Knockout Kings 2002 on the Playstation 2 well enough at first, but after a day or two, its flaws really began to jump out. When I received the latest iteration of Knockout Kings from EA, I really had no idea what to expect.
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