Don King Presents: Prizefighter Review

Written by: Darren Cartledge Posted: 14th July 2008

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We aim for the ultimate prize with Don King Presents: Prizefighter.

Don King Presents Prizefighter Details:

Goto Don King Presents Prizefighter Game Page

	Sports
	Xbox 360
	2K Sports
	2K Sports

15+

Out Now

N/A

There was a time when plenty of boxing games graced the various console platforms, however the sport seems to have dwindled in popularity in the videogames industry of late. So when 2K Sports announced Don King Presents Prize Fighter to stand toe to toe with EA’s Fight Night we were looking forward to an excellent bout.

Prize Fighter features the game modes you would expect to find in any decent sports game, Career, Exhibition and multiplayer. Like most boxing games, Prize Fighter is a mix of simulation and arcade action which works pretty well, allowing you to compete in brutal bouts.

The games career mode takes a rather different approach to what you would expect, it’s presented in a TV documentary style about an upcoming fighter (ie your created boxer) and his struggle to get recognition for his fighting skill as he works his way up the ranks. Various famous figures from the boxing world talk about your fighter including Don King himself.

As mentioned already the games career mode requires you to create your own boxer and Prize Fighter offers a lot of options to customise the appearance of your fighter, you are also able to determine the fighting style and what type of guard he uses.

As you play through the games career you are able to develop your characters attributes through training, the games training system could be described as a series of mini games that require you to perform various button combinations in time with on screen prompts, some are fairly simple to get to grips with whilst others require a little more skill and can often frustrate the development of your fighter.

As well as developing your fighting skills, you also have to build up your media reputation by going to special training opportunities and other media events. Of course the media events usually have a negative effect on your boxers fighting skill but open the way up for you to command bigger fight purses, whereas the special training opportunities can dramatically improve your fighter’s abilities.

Also in the games career there are a number of historical fights that you have to compete in and complete specific challenges, these are presented in a classic film style, however they seem to have simply been added in to pad out the games career as they don’t appear to have any bearing on your boxer.

Apart from the games career mode Prize Fighter sadly has very little to offer, yes there’s multiplayer action via Xbox Live allowing you to take your created boxer online and a versus mode that allows you to fight across three weight classes but other then that there’s very little to hold your attention once you have finished playing the games career mode.

Fights themselves are fairly enjoyable and the game features fairly challenging AI, each fighter in the game has their own fighting style and you will have to watch how they fight in order to find success against them. The game can be fairly frustrating at times as AI controlled boxers seem to easily be able to come back from the beating of their lives only to rapidly put you down before you know what has happened. Another annoyance I noticed was that AI controlled boxers seem to be able to carry on punching when receiving a beating where as you can’t, this gives the game a very biased feeling and leads to much frustration.

Adding to the challenge the game implements a stamina system which requires you to be careful about your offence, needlessly punching away rapidly decreases your boxer’s ability to effectively fight. This is a good system that means you have to carefully time your attacks in order to inflict the maximum amount of damage without leaving yourself open to counter attacks.

As you fight your boxer builds up adrenaline which can be used to perform powerful blows on your opponent, these moves can come in useful when you find yourself on the back foot and quickly turn a fight in your favour, although only for a short time.

Visually Prize Fighter doesn’t look that bad, character models are fairly good and feature detail such as sweat dripping down their backs. There does seem to be a few problems such as fists going through opponents, although this is more apparent during the highlight replay at the end of each round rather then during play. Arenas in the game are a little bland and the games bruising system also isn’t the best.

Sound in the game is a little exaggerated especially the sound of punches landing on the fighters. Voice acting for the most part is good, there are a few dodgy moments during the careers modes cut-scenes but on the whole the game sound is pretty good.

Overall the Prize Fighter isn’t a bad game, the career mode is fairly enjoyable to play through but I don’t think you would want to do it more then once, with this in mind and the lack of different game modes, Prize Fighter does lack any real lasting appeal meaning the game doesn’t quite deliver that knockout blow.