Knockout League – Arcade VR Boxing has you duck, dodge, and punch your way to victory while putting you through a real workout. With a variety of cartoonish opponents and more of a focus on fun gameplay than realism, it feels quite different than many other virtual reality boxing games available.
Punch Out an Octopus
Punch-Out!! for the Nintendo Wii was perhaps my favorite Wii game in how it made use of motion controls, and Knockout League feels directly inspired by it. It even jokes about the first opponent not having a glass jaw.
The main gameplay mode involves fighting your way through the nine opponents, with each subsequent match unlocking as you continue to win fights. Each one feels significantly different, whether it’s the opponent’s speed, attack patterns, or having an unusual gimmick like kicking with mechanical legs, using magic, or being an octopus with eight arms and as many boxing gloves.
While the opponents are very different, the core gameplay remains the same throughout. It consists of watching your opponent carefully, dodging or blocking, and then using that opening to punch back.
You can use a few different types of punches depending on your motion (straight, hook, and uppercut), which are all useful for different situations. Blocking is putting your hands in front of your face. Dodging is either leaning in one direction or ducking. Knockout League is a game played by standing in one spot, so you can’t move around the ring to avoid getting hit.
The core mechanics work really well. Blocking needs to be timed almost perfectly to get a chance to hit back, and slightly less so to successfully block at all. Occasionally some attacks only lets you dodge or block. Dodging can be fairly extensive too. In one early example, an opponent always attacks three times, but the directions you need to dodge change each time.
Risk versus reward plays a factor in your gameplay too. Opponents’ bigger attacks sometimes have a chance to interrupt them, which gives a visual cue but has a short window to hit it. This gives you a great chance to land some serious damage on your opponents, but it can also leave you open, which adds a level of weighing up your chances and deciding whether to go for it. Observational skills are increasingly important as you play too, with some tricky opponents feinting, leading you to make a move that’ll put you right in the way of their attack.
Continuing to successfully land varied and uninterrupted hits builds up your momentum, adding to your damage output and ability to guard break. Do you play it safe or go for the risky punches? With a bad move not just being a risk of opening myself to getting hit, it was something I was constantly weighing up in the back of my mind.
Knockout League has a great balance between skill, reaction speed, and learning the patterns specific to that opponent. Beyond that, it’s a great workout, with each fight involving a lot of motion.
Mini-Games and More
As well as the main mode, there are a few mini-games included. These come with several difficulty modes or stages.
Reflex Alley is both my favorite and the one I found the most useful to practice. It has balloons, weights, and balls shooting at you from various directions. You need to react correctly by punching with the correct color-coded glove, blocking, or dodging as appropriate. The punches in this mini-game helped me to learn the correct motion for hooks. It’s also surprisingly fun on its own too.
Focus Mitts has you practise with your trainer in a few drills, with him calling out numbers associated with certain punches—1–4 for left-straight, right-hook or 3–6 for left-hook, right-uppercut. It’s perhaps not as outright fun as Reflex Alley, but it’s useful to get the motions down for the actual boxing matches.
Speed Bag sets you in front of a speed bag and asks you to punch with left, right, or alternating left and right. The trainer asks you to vary the speed and it shows how you’re doing through a gauge and audio prompts. It’s certainly a good workout.
Not enough to do? Knockout League also includes several achievements to aim for. While some are the basic ‘defeat the opponent’, others have you aim to interrupt specific fighters a number of times or parry certain moves. It’s a nice way to extend the gameplay while giving targets to aim for.
Not Exactly Rocky
Knockout League uses a rather cartoonish style, which works well considering the type of opponents involved, who all have very unique and eye-catching designs. This style also ensures that it looks great in VR since it keeps it simple.
It’s worth noting that the native Meta Quest version of this game does include a Mixed Reality option. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to a Meta Quest 3 so I can’t comment further on it. The atmosphere of the virtual boxing ring and its cheering crowd is good enough for me though.
The voice acting and clips between matches add a lot to the atmosphere too. This is mostly achieved by the narration from the trainer, who talks you through learning all the skills and introduces the opponents.
Verdict
Knockout League – Arcade VR Boxing has a great mix of well-thought-out mechanics leading to a satisfying gameplay experience. It’s fun, it’s a great workout, and it’s perhaps the closest thing to a spiritual successor to Punch-Out!! on the Wii.
KNOCKOUT LEAGUE IS RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another VR game, you might want to check out The Climb 2. If you would like more info on VR products, why not check out our virtual reality reviews?
The writer played the PCVR version of Knockout League using the Meta Quest 2 and HTC Vive.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
