| Don King Presents: Prizefighter |
| Posted on 23rd August 2008 by Sean Evans |
For better or worse, Don King's gregarious and sociable personality has given the world of boxing some degree of greater personality beyond the primal spectrum of pitting two angry men against each other in testosterone-fuelled matches of "mine is bigger than yours".
2K Sports and Venom Games decided that notion was proficient enough to lend the famous promoter's name to a career-focused boxing sports game. It's just too bad that Fight Night, the only real competitor in the genre, had a fantastic release a couple years ago just after the 360 launched. It looked gorgeous, had an innovative control scheme and was satisfying to play. So, surely, after having enough time to perfect its game, it's now Prizefighter's turn to step into the ring and become the new champion of boxing on Xbox 360...?
At the sound of the bell (sorry), let's answer that question up-front: no. Right down from the graphics to the controls, Prizefighter does almost everything worse than what Fight Night Round 3 achieved at the beginning of 2006. Prizefighter's apple pie is its career mode, allowing you to create your own boxer with a competent character creation tool (although, perhaps realistic, it is impossible to make a good-looking boxer), and from there you set out to train your fighter and climb up the ranks in the boxing world. Arguably the most entertaining aspect of the game is its presentation throughout your career, intersecting fights with real-life cut-scenes that range from the surprisingly short and kind of cool, to the laboriously long and tedious. Third-rate director Mario Van Peebles shoots "interviews" with various boxing personalities, some real, some not, as they reminisce about your character's trials and tribulations as if your journey has already taken place. It's a lot like watching the Biography Channel, except the script is lousy and the direction is fairly poor, but nevertheless it can prove an entertaining segue into the next series of fights if nothing else. Throughout the story development (and I use that term loosely), you will come across a few peculiar little twists and turns, which makes for far more interesting progression as opposed to the repetition of match after match, even if they don't set the world on fire.
In terms of gameplay, Prizefighter again falls under the shadow of Fight Night Round 3's slick thumbstick-directed fighting. Prizefighter maps the controls back to the face buttons, allocating heavy and light attacks to the tired form of simply bashing on the pad, a far cry to its contrasted competition. Because of this, Prizefighter feels beleaguered by comparison and simply isn't as engaging as it potentially could have been. The wooden animation doesn't help either, often portraying boxers in the ring like 'Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em' toy robots more than realistic fighters. Poor clipping issues also contribute to a mismatch of animation that can regularly plague fights; failing to align your hits correctly and robbing you of sometimes crucial succession. In general, the game is graphically underwhelming. It doesn't look terrible, but the details that Fight Night Round 3 pushed so hard are shamefully missing in Prizefighter. In addition to the single-player career, you can take your created boxer into some basic online modes, with welcome features such as a tournament mode. From my experience, there was little to no lag during bouts, although finding someone to fight against wasn't always easy.
Although it's not an awful game by any means, the underlining sense of judgment I felt whilst playing Prizefighter didn't help its cause when paired-up against its strongest competitor. With such a gap between both games, I have little intimation as to why Venom weren't able to develop a game that was at least comparable on some level to its rival. With all the time they had available and also what I imagine would be a sizeable investment from a company such as 2K Games - who bring out some of the best sports titles such as the NBA 2K and NHL 2K series – it is disappointing to find that Prizefighter does little in the way of innovation for the genre. Clearly, with such little competition in the boxing simulation market, it's evident that 2K and Venom should have invested more money into making a better boxing game rather than acquiring King's name to shove on the box.
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Single Player Score: 6/10
Multiplayer Score: 5/10
Overall Score: 6/10 |
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