Game Reviews

Super KO Boxing 2

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Super KO Boxing 2

Because I have no interest in finding out what it feels like to be punched in the face by a man who spends five hours a day building up his face-punching muscles, it's safe to say that you'll never catch me stepping into a boxing ring.

Even if I did fancy myself as a fighter, I don’t think Glu Mobile would consider me a good fit for Super KO Boxing, with its larger than life stereotypical characters that just manage to stay on the right side of offensive.

It’s a knock out

It’s been two years since Super KO Boxing 2 first landed on the App Store, and despite its age it still looks good, with stylised cartoon graphics and vibrant colours.

You play the KO Kid, fighting his way through a diverse bunch of well-built boxers. Rather than each new opponent just taking more hits than the last, each boxer has his own tactics and attack patterns for you to learn and counter.

The original touchscreen controls allowed you to punch high, low, taunt, dodge, block, and punch from the left and right. It's quite a wide selection of functions for touchscreens to handle, but the game managed it with several combinations of touch and touch controls.

Down for the count

Super KO Boxing 2 feels a lot hollower on Xperia Play's physical controls. Everything is now on the D-pad and buttons, clearing the screen of clutter and making bouts a bit more straightforward, while exposing the game's enforced touchscreen limitations.

This is compounded by the fact that hammering the 'punch' button seems to queue up hits in quick succession, meaning you can be left waiting quite a while for the KO Kid to catch up, assuming your opponent hasn’t beaten the life out of you in the meantime.

The other problems we highlighted in our iPhone review remain, too. You only play as the one character, the pretty bland (compared to his opponents) KO Kid, and in a one-on-one brawler it’s slightly disappointing that the shortish single-player campaign is not supplemented with some kind of multiplayer.

It’s so often the case with old games rediscovered that the graphics are a bit ropey, but the gameplay still shines through.

Oddly, here the polar opposite is true. Super KO Boxing 2 is still entertaining and charming, but most Xperia Play owners will quickly find themselves looking for something with more depth for their money.

Super KO Boxing 2

It still looks the part, but like other Xperia Play games, the gamepad highlights its weaknesses, rather than making it unmissable
Score
Alan Martin
Alan Martin
Having left the metropolitan paradise of Derby for the barren wasteland of London, Alan now produces flash games by day and reviews Android ones by night. It's safe to say he's really putting that English Literature degree to good use