 Review By: Nick Arvites |
Developer: | Venom Games |
| Publisher: | 2K Sports | |
| Genre: | Sports | |
| ESRB: | Teen | |
| # Of Players: | 1-2 | |
| Online Play: | Yes | |
| Accessories: | Xbox Live (online play), HDTV 720p | |
| Buy Now: |   |
As a sport, boxing has seen better days. As it loses ground and TV share to MMA, you would be hard pressed to find a casual sports fan that could name 5 current fighters. However, there is one name that everyone in the country is familiar with: Don King. The famous (or infamous) fighting promoter has been a fixture in the boxing world for decades, and you’ll find him connected to almost every high profile fight in the last 30 years.
Boxing has a long history with video games, though it hasn’t exactly been a pretty one. The initial focus was on less realistic, yet fun titles like Punch-Out!!. Games eventually evolved into a more realistic tone with EA’s Fight Night series. Much like boxing in real life, boxing video games feel like they’ve been pushed to the side over the years. In recent years, EA’s Fight Night series has been the only game available for boxing fans. While Fight Night was being put on a hiatus, 2K announced a partnership with Don King to develop Don King Presents: Prizefighter.
Prizefighter is 2K’s first attempt at the world of boxing. The game sports a roster made up of several contemporary boxers and several legends of the sport. While you will occasionally hear references to Tyson, Holyfield, Ali, and Foreman, they aren’t included in the roster of legends. Instead, you get Lewis, Baer, Braddock and others. However, considering the average person out there couldn’t name 10 boxers, the roster really doesn’t matter. The robust create-a-boxer mode allows gamers to create their boxing avatar in the game. The mode is extensive and allows you to edit your fighter’s facial appearance. The immediate problem I had with the mode was the way you input your fighter’s height and weight. Instead of using measurement units, Prizefighter forces you to judge with your eye while adjusting an unmarked slider. The first time I created a fighter (for career mode), I accidentally skipped over the name, nickname, and class. While I was glad that it defaulted me to heavyweight class, I was annoyed that my boxer’s name was FIRST “The Kid” LAST and I couldn’t edit this until I beat career mode. The initial clothing and music selections available in create-a-boxer are limited, but more are unlocked as you advance through career mode.
Dropping into a fight is awkward at first. The controls feel kind of sluggish, and I often found myself “overpressing” buttons so that instead of a left right left combo, I’d get a left left left right right left action. Hit detection can sometimes feel “off,” and I would often see knockdowns that weren’t the right reaction for where I hit the opponent. For example, I’d see a bodyblow land and the opponent fly down like he took a shot to the jaw. Grappling with an opponent is an exercise in futility. I was rarely able to connect with it, even though I was standing as close to my opponent as I could get. More often than not, a grapple was just opening myself up to a sucker-punch. I can understand not being able to grapple every time, but I had like a 95% failure rate when trying, regardless of how the fight was going, what my health was and where I was in the ring. Landing combos and successful defenses builds up an adrenaline meter. Once you get enough points into this meter, you can throw a special punch. These punches hit harder and are more likely to knock out an opponent. If you fill up the meter, you can enter a basic slow motion mode where you have unlimited stamina and can pummel your opponent. I rarely used this simply because I found the special punches by themselves more effective and didn’t feel like spending the multiple rounds building up the meter.
The biggest problem I have with the in-the-ring portion of the game is the AI “cheating.” Yes, I know saying the AI “cheats” in a sports game is usually the first sign of someone who doesn’t know how to play. However, the AI actually cheats. Knockdowns are the prime example of this. When you get knocked down, your screen switches to a first person point of view. Here, the world is in slow motion and depicts your eyes-opening with a blurry vision of the ref counting you out. By jamming the ‘A’ button, your eyes fully open, the world speeds up, switching back to the normal 3rd person view. This is a cool effect, but it is just executed unfairly. The recovery speed of a human is significantly slower than the recovery speed of an AI opponent. On their first knockdown, they start recovering health by the two count. It takes a human up to the three or four count. Subsequent knockdowns are worse. While I understand that it should be harder to get up after each knockdown, I would like to see the CPU held to the same standard. If my fighter struggles to get to his feet after the third knockdown, the CPU fighter shouldn’t be unphased after their third knockdown. The CPU also seems to get breaks with how the ref counts them out after knockdowns. For my character, he has to be completely at his feet and standing straight up for the ref to stop the count. The CPU will occasionally have its counts stopped while it is half-standing, stooped over. I had multiple losses from my character being counted out in the exact same position, which simply isn’t fair. Difficulty should focus more on reactions and strategy, not providing the CPU fighter faster regeneration and a more lenient ref.
Posted: 2008-09-06 11:42:23 PST