Review
Das Gamer Reviews Don King Presents: Prizefighter
July 03, 2008
Like most sports, boxing games usually fall into one of two categories: simulations such as the Fight Night series, and silly/arcade-style brawlers, such as PunchOut! But it’s hard to tell who the intended audience for Prizefighter is, since it’s neither realistic enough for boxing fans, nor silly enough for to make it into the arcade genre. While it has real pugilists - both current (Nate Campbell, Samuel Peter, Andre Berto) and classic (Larry Holmes, Rocky Marciano, Floyd Patterson) - and makes them look enough like real people (at least on the 360) that you’ll wince when they get hit particularly hard, the controls are decidedly more of the simple arcade variety, making this play more like a Dead Or Alive-style fighting game (sans the boobs) than a boxing sim. Except that it doesn’t go far enough with the arcade play.
Peeling your back off the canvas after a bulldozer of an uppercut requires some God Of War-like button mashing to recover, and there are button combos. But they are very rudimentary, and don’t result in any crazy moves. They didn’t even include some cartoonish characters, like the guy with a big afro who seemed required by some unnamed law in all arcade boxers a few years ago. You can’t even make your own custom goofy bastard in the create-a-player mode either, since the options are pretty limited.
Which is fine, since the Career mode, in which you create your own pugilist and help him go from local bouts to headlining Pay-Per-Views, doesn’t offer anything new or unique either. Even Don King seems oddly restrained here. In fact, the most excited we got was when we realized our intro music could be “Godzilla” by Blue Öyster Cult. Which is probably why, after just a couple of rounds, we threw in the towel. Not because we were battered and bruised, we were just bored.
Das Gamer rating: Das is not so gööd.
The technical info:
Don King Presents: Prizefighter
(2K Sports)
Xbox 360, Wii, DS
-Paul Semel
