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Platform: Xbox 360
Rating: 6.0 | 0 User Reviews | Send to Friend
By Scott Hesel
Jab/jab/straight: It’s the classic combination that many a boxing career was built upon. In Don King Presents: Prizefighter, however, you could easily build your career on straight/straight/straight, as this competitor to EA Sport’s Fight Night is more an arcade-style throwdown of brute force than a boxing simulation. The meat of Prizefighter’s game play is through its career mode. Here, you can build your fighter through a number of customization fields and then raise yourself through the ranks. Generally, the progression of your career works like this: You train in five different exercises to build attributes between fights, and when you win two fights, you open up a “boss” style-match. Once you win the boss fight, you are treated to a series of cut scenes in which trainers, promoters and ex-girlfriends reminisce about your career to date in a documentary. This is a clever device, although the reliance on real boxing celebrities in Full-Motion-Video (what is this, Sega CD?) is a bit dated. Where Prizefighter gets interesting , however, are the twists that are thrown at you for certain fights in career mode. For example, in one match, your right hand is broken and you have to win a battle of attrition with your left, and in another fight, your opponent loses motivation if he doesn’t win by the 6th round, making him easy pickings if you survive that long. Not only are these plot twists entertaining in a Punchout! with polygons kind of way, but they inject some much needed strategy into the actual fighting. Too often, the fighting is simply a button-mashing affair, more stick’n’stick than stick’n’move. Basically, you will get hit and knocked down a lot, your opponent will get hit and knocked down a lot, and neither of you should really be living after some of the fights in this game. Nonetheless, the arcade aspect can be entertaining for a while, and the controls, once mastered, allow for a lot of different punches and combinations. Prizefighter, however, is not up to the usual quality standard of 2K Sports offerings, although it does show potential to be improved in subsequent incarnations, should the arcade fighting be toned down.
GAME PLAY: 6.6
The boxing is pure arcade mayhem; fun mayhem for a while, but tiresome once you progress through the game.
GRAPHICS: 5.5
The player and crowd models are competent but not spectacular. The graphics don’t really feel next-gen.
SOUND: 6.0
The sounds fx in action are uninspired, although the voice acting is good.
VALUE: 6.5
The career mode has some interesting twists to it that will keep you coming back, but the predictability of the fighting via the arcade style hampers the value of Prizefighter in the long run
OVERALL: 6.0
Good for a rental, but not up to the standard of 2K Sports.
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