Once upon a time, the gaming landscape was absolutely chock-full of great boxing games to play. During the PS2 era, franchises like Fight Night and Ready 2 Rumble gave boxing fans lots of options when it came to their boxing game experiences; whether you wanted something more realistic or you were more on the arcade side of things, you’d find a game that would cater to your tastes.
Now, as we enter the ninth console generation, it’s much harder to find boxing game experiences, and the same was true of the eighth generation as well. With that said, if you’re a PS4 owner and you’re looking for a good boxing game to check out, then you’re not entirely without options, happily. Here are the 8 best PS4 boxing games that you can play right now.
1. Creed: Rise to Glory
We’re kicking off with a game that needs you to own a PSVR headset in order to play it, but it is technically available for the PS4. Creed: Rise to Glory is a boxing title set in the Rocky universe and revolving around Adonis Creed, Michael B. Jordan’s character in the 2015 followup to Stallone’s movies. You can play as Creed himself, of course, and a series of other Rocky characters are also available in both online and offline play. There’s a full career mode to play through, too, so if you want to relive some of the glory days of Rocky and Creed, now’s your chance.
2. Punch Club
If you veer more towards the management side of things and you don’t mind a more cartoony aesthetic, Punch Club is the game for you. It’s an irreverent take on the boxing management sim genre, which is woefully underpopulated at time of writing. You manage a young boxer at the outset of their career, and you must guide them through a wacky world chock-a-block with pop culture references and humour as they compete to become the best boxer around. There’s also a narrative to follow involving discovering the truth behind your father’s death.
3. UFC 4
EA’s UFC franchise is a pretty reliable workhorse when it comes to a solid depiction of mixed martial arts fighting. Of course, one of those martial arts is boxing, so you’ll find plenty of fighters who utilise boxing techniques here. We might be cheating somewhat with this one, but trust us when we say that if you’re a boxing fan, UFC 4 is worth your time, even if you’re not usually into MMA fighting. The visuals are great, the fighting is reproduced with unsurprising verisimilitude given EA’s skill in this area, and there are plenty of fighters to play as.
4. Pato Box
Do you love Punch-Out!!? Do you wish there were more games out there like it? If you answered yes to both of those questions, then Pato Box is the game for you. It’s a black-and-white boxing game that takes inspiration from Nintendo’s legendary boxing franchise, pitting you against a series of opponents with tells and weaknesses you’ll have to identify. If you’ve played the Wii Punch-Out!! remake, then you’ll be familiar with the gameplay loop and presentation of Pato Box, although it’s got a certain extra charm thanks to its comic book aesthetic.
5. Knockout League
This is another PlayStation VR extravaganza, but if you like the more out-there cartoony side of boxing, you shouldn’t miss this one. It bills itself as an “arcade-style boxing game built from the ground up for VR”, and it’s very hard to argue with that designation when the banner image for the game is an octopus with boxing gloves on the ends of each of its tentacles. This being a VR game, the main draw is the way in which your movement is translated to that of your on-screen boxer, so if you want a more immersive boxing experience that’s still fun, try this one out.
6. Big Rumble Boxing: Creed Champions
Here’s another boxing game set in the world of Creed and Rocky, but this one doesn’t require any kind of VR headset. Instead, it’s a fairly straightforward boxing arcade game that features 20 characters from the aforementioned movies, including favourites like Apollo Creed, Ivan Drago, and more. As well as the core boxing engine, you can also look forward to “thematic mini-games” based around the movies, as well as a series of faithfully recreated and all-new boxing arenas. Don’t worry if you’re not much of a boxing game fan, though, as the game also boasts intuitive controls anyone can enjoy.
7. Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 The Official Video Game
Alright, so this one’s a game about the broader Olympic Games and not boxing specifically, but since boxing is one of the disciplines featured as part of the Olympics, we’re going to bend our rules a little and include it here. Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 is, as you might expect from the name, the official video game of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, so you can expect to find all the athletes and teams that you’d expect from a game like this, as well as plenty of different sporting events and disciplines to try out. There’s something almost reassuringly old-school about this game.
8. Undisputed
Okay, so now we’re really cheating. Undisputed hasn’t actually arrived on the scene yet, but it’s promising to be exactly the kind of PS4 boxing game that you should be looking forward to if you’re a boxing fan. The game will offer authenticity on an unprecedented level, with plenty of licensed boxers to choose from, as well as painstakingly-researched movement and combat mechanics that evoke real-life boxing. We don’t have an Undisputed release date yet, more’s the pity, so hopefully we will get more information about this game in the near future.