Do you think you have what it takes to be the greatest boxing champion of the iPhone world? Well it’s time to man up, as Chillingo attempts to put you in a 3D boxing arena against the toughest boxers in Touch KO.

Review
Touch KO is a 3D boxing simulation game that begins with you playing the role of an amateur boxer with the goal of building your legacy and fighting your way to the top.

There are two modes of play, Quick play and Career mode. Quick play will immediately throw you in a boxing match, in the hopes of a fast victory, but Career mode is where it’s all at. Career mode is where your journey begins. Money, fame and titles are earned here. Upgrading your abilities are done by training, of course! With training, you can improve your power, speed and healing time.

The most important of any fighting game is the way your boxer is controlled. You’ve got three types of punches: jab, hook and uppercut. These are thrown by tapping, stroking horizontally or stroking vertically on the side of the screen corresponding to the hand you want to use. Stroke up on the left of the screen and you’ll throw a left uppercut; tap on the right side and you’ll throw a right jab. All these can be chained together for different combinations, letting you really pulverize your opponent.

Offensive controls work well, but the defensive end is not so good. By pressing either side of the screen, you’ll raise the corresponding glove to block and a tilt of the device either side will make your boxer dodge. It’s good enough, but you have no control over the foot movement of your fighter and the same goes about moving around the ring. This makes the game feel more of a slug match most of the time.

Let’s talk about the knockout system. You have two bars on the top screen that represent energy and stamina. The red energy bar fills as you take damage which prevents the green stamina bar from refilling completely. A knockout happens when your stamina bar is completely gone. This means you can tire yourself out by throwing punches and then be hit once by your opponent and hit the deck for a knockout. It just doesn’t feel fair, does it? I know it happened to me time and time again!

Over the course of my first five career fights, I didn’t need a second round, ending every fight on a Technical knockout after knocking out my opponent three times within the three-minute round. The upgrade system simply hands out stat increases without any effort on my part which means I can be a devastating powerhouse of a fighter after less than hour playing the game.

On a graphical standpoint, Touch KO delivers quite a punch and pushes the iPhone to the limits of its 3D capabilities. The fighters were well animated and the textures add a depth and realism to the human characters that has rarely been seen on the iPhone. This level of detail and quality does take its toll on the CPU. The game regularly warns you to reset your device before playing, which I did, but still resulted in the game freezing or crashing. Dropped frames sometimes occur during the slow motion replays and moments of intense animation. The audio accompaniments add a vital showmanship that really makes Touch KO come live and breathe, plus you can also add in your favorite playlists while you’re fighting. So if you want to get inspired and listen to the Theme from Rocky while you’re dishing out some serious hurt on your opponent, you can do that too!

There are a few quirks, I found within Touch KO, the most important one being the game freezes or crashes. Now, I enjoy beating up my opponent just like the next guy, but when I’m in Career mode winning my match and the game locks up, well you’ll know what I mean. In future updates I would be better game stabilization and an added multiplayer mode to round up the experience.

Tips
Keep an eye on the energy meter. Make sure you have lots of energy, as it dwindles away with each successful punch. Also, remember not to absorb too much punishment or you’ll be seeing stars and be knocked right off your feet.

Recommendation

Touch KO truly delivers a high-octane boxing game for your iPhone. It has gorgeous visuals, awesome cut-scenes and customizable music tracks. It simply is a fun game. It’s not perfect, but for $4.99, there’s no reason to avoid it.

Since this posting, Touch KO has been updated to include the following improvements:

• Pause the game by tapping the timer
• Tap the screen to skip slow-mo replays
• Fixed positional audio bug for users wearing headphones
• Added hard mode with steeper difficulty ramp and new AI
• Combos are now more powerful
• Fixes bug that causes southpaw players to crash when knocked out

Photos

Please post your comments, tips, and your own reviews below in the comments area!

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