Punch-Out!! is such a great game that it’s a surprise the formula doesn’t get “borrowed” more often. Knockout League does nothing to hide its Glass Joe shaped inspirations, delivering a PlayStation VR experience that owes its entire existence to Nintendo’s legendary boxing series. But while it is shameless to an extent, it certainly seems entertaining enough to survive all 12 rounds.

With a PlayStation Move controller in each hand representing your fists, you must fight your way through a series of colourful battles in order to become the ultimate king of the ring. Unlike motion controlled fighting games such as The Fight: Lights Out, however, this adopts more of a puzzle format, with attack patterns you must learn and dodge in order to find openings in your opponent’s guard.

Knockout League PS4 PlayStation VR Hands On 1

It can feel a little bit trial and error as you learn the tells of your adversary, but the developer’s done an outstanding job with the animation work. While the title isn’t much to look at outside of the ring, it’s clear that all of the studio’s effort has been invested into creating large, colourful character models – and they animate outstandingly well. This allows you to learn exactly which attack is coming.

Much like Sprint Vector, the gameplay is pretty physical because you need to squat and swing in order to land hits, but the title smartly includes some calorie burning statistics which adds to the fitness element. There are also minigames that you can complete to test your reactions and precision in the ring. It seems like a fairly meaty package.

We’ll have a full review of Knockout League over the coming days, but wanted to get up some quick impressions and gameplay footage so that you can see what the title’s all about. As mentioned at the top of this article, it’s very much Punch-Out!! for PlayStation VR – but with Nintendo’s fighting franchise dormant, it’s nice to see someone else putting on Little Mac’s gloves and doing a good job.

Are you down for some virtual reality boxing? Do you think that Knockout League looks like a, er, knockout? Throw a haymaker in the comments section below.

[source bit.ly]