It's been a while since I played a good boxing game. In fact, not since I played Legends of Boxing for the Super NES have I experienced a boxing game of its caliber. That is until I played Knockout Kings 2001 by EA Sports. This is as polished and in-depth as any boxing game gets and boxing fans (maybe even fighter fans) are lucky to have such a fantastic game come to the system so early in its life.

Gameplay
From the opening sequence right away you begin to see the authenticity take hold. All of the familiar boxers including current favorites like Shane Mosley and Oscar De La Hoya are here as well as old legends like "Smokin" Joe Frasher and Muhammid Ali. Yes they've even gone as far as to include the arrogant reigning heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis. If you get bored fighting with these guys you can even try one of the female boxers on for size. Player's will recognize the voice commentary by the ESPN announcers and ring introductions by Jimmy Lenin Jr. To further add to the authentic experience, the action is presented in a broadcast style very similar to they way it is covered on TV. There is also a wealth of venue locations to fight in from Madison Square Garden to a Roman Coliseum!

The game has a good amount of play modes and customization options but the real meat of the game lies in the Career Mode. This allows players to create their own boxer and take him through the Light, Middle or Heavyweight ladder. You are given a fair amount of freedom when creating your boxer. There isn't a whole lot of appearance variety to choose from but you can change their height, weight, reach, gender and color. Then you are given experience points that can be allocated to a wide range of attributes such as power, speed, stamina, chin, heart, etc. As you fight your way up the ladder taking on other boxers you can train in between matches to earn more experience points to build up your boxer.

The training mode is quite good; it serves two purposes. One is to familiarize the player with all of the game's many controls and the other is to gain experience points to add to your boxer's attributes and to teach you advanced fighting tactics. Most of the time you'll be following the directions of your trainer to carry out punches and combos on a punching bag and other times you'll be in a ring with a sparring partner to learn fighting techniques. If you piss of your trainer you'll only end up getting 5 points to put towards your attributes but if you do everything you are supposed to, you get 10 points. After a while the training sessions begin to loop and become repetitive but it's okay since you know you're getting points out of the ordeal.

I firmly believe that KO Kings 2001 has one of, if not the best boxing fighting system ever in a videogame! Every button on the DS2 controller is put to excellent use and because of the controllers many buttons, EA Sports was able to add an incredible amount of variety of punches and moves. For the sake of keeping this review to an acceptable length I won't bother getting into explaining all of the button's functions but I'll just go on record to say that the interface is absolutely superb. There are almost a limitless number of combos that you can perform. For the most part you feel very much in control of your boxer. However sometimes there is a slight delay in reaction to the button inputs but this is just a very minor problem, which doesn't affect the gameplay hardly at all.

Collision detection is very important in a boxing game and it's dead on in KO Kings 2001. You can really feel those haymakers coming home when you hear that loud smack and blood/sweat fly from your opponent's face! When the stresses of life become too much, this game is a great way to blow off some steam. It really gives you the feel of beating the crap out of someone (especially when you unload a vicious combo) and there is nothing more satisfying than seeing your opponent's bloody face and glazed over eyes slowly crumble to the mat after a brutal uppercut. Yep, this game delivers boxing action like no other. It's a game that grows on you. When first playing it I thought it was okay, but the more I played the more I loved it. But isn't that always the way with games that have a lot of depth?

KO Kings 2k1 has some elements of strategy involved so you can't just go in there and pound your opponent relentlessly until they are unconscious. Players must learn to pace themselves depending on how long the match is. If you are up against a rather tough competitor, you may want to wear him down slowly and then in the later rounds come on strong and knock him out. There is a health and a stamina meter that is displayed to gauge the state of your boxer in the fight. The health bar is basically your level of consciousness, it decreases with every hit you take but slowly increases again.to a point. The more of a beating boxer has taken the shorter the overall length of the bar and they will not be able to recover to full health. This measurement acts as a guide to tell how much you are wearing down your opponent. The second bar is for stamina; this bar wears down over time as well and basically tells you how much punching power you have left. If the bar runs out then you're in trouble. In all, the game becomes much more rewarding and strategic with this combination of health and stamina bars so the matches are much more than just an all out slugfest.

There is really only one problem that stands out and that is loading times. There is loading before a match, loading after the ring announcer, loading between rounds and there is even loading for the developer and publisher logos at the beginning of the game! You can eliminate some of these loading screens by turning off ring intros and intermissions but then you get a rather bland experience. I just don't see why EA Sports had to have so much loading.

Graphics
KO Kings has some very nice visuals that will catch your eye immediately. Those are mainly the authentic boxing arena's complete with sponsor ads and character models that are amazingly well detailed. The movements are very realistic and smooth; maybe not quite as smooth as in Ready 2 Rumble but very close to it. The textures are very high quality with subtle details on the boxer's bodies like chest hair, blemishes and facial features that are very true to real-life. I only wish that their trunks had some more movement in them instead of being stuck to their bodies and that there were a bit more facial emotions on the boxers. To be honest, they don't seem to show any emotion at all, just a spaced out, stoned look. Heck, they don't even acknowledge the fact that a beautiful polygonal babe holding the round number sign just walked by! Oh well, at least their faces can be messed up and bloodied by taking punches.

One part of the game that really stood out was how realistic the fans at ringside looked. It appears EA Sports has taken real-life photos of people and mapped them onto sprites. The effect is quite convincing and each person is animated independently and sits in their own chair but they will also jump up and cheer too. They don't look that great up close but from the normal viewing distance the crowd looks very real.

This game definitely has awesome graphics but there isn't anything in this game that couldn't be done on say, the Dreamcast. One thing that would have added more life to the boxers is moving lips when talking as well as other facial expressions and possibly sweat and shine from lights on their skin textures.

Sound
This is yet another well done aspect of the game. First and foremost the sound of punches connecting sound very good, not necessarily realistic but it helps convey the impact of those punches. You will also hear grunts and moans from those lethal body shots as well. All the voice commentary is of high quality. There is literally no difference from hearing the in-game commentary from the real thing on TV! Furthermore, the commentary itself has been done very well. The announcers keep up with the action in the fight and rarely ever miss a step. They even throw in the odd trivia question and comments on the fight that sometimes help you determine how well you are scoring with the judges.

To further set the mood for todays boxing, you've got plenty of rap tunes with lots of bass and it seems to suit the game very well. Even though I'm not a big rap fan, I thought the tunes were pretty good and it definitely beats listening to ones made by the developers. The only thing I found a problem with is that when the volume is turned really high, the voices become a bit distorted. It's hard to explain but you may not even notice it anyway.

Value
The game has a lot of challenge to it and things to do. First of all, the career mode will keep you playing for a very long time if you want to beat out the entire game because you have to fight up the ladder in light, middle and heavyweight on all three difficulties. Easy is indeed pretty easy but medium and hard are a whole other ball game. Your opponents are smarter, block more, punch more, use more vicious combos and power punches. It can be a very hard game if you want it to be!

Don't forget about the two player mode either, which you can have hours and hours of fun with someone of relatively equal skill. The bottom line is that KO Kings 2k1 is simply one of the best boxing games ever to be released and I highly recommend any boxing or fighting fan to buy this game.