While bumming around at my local Blockbuster, I was hunting for games to rent. However, there was a distinct lack of anything I wanted to play in the aisles, and everything I did want to play had gone conspicuously missing. (Gee...you think you might want 2 copies of Kingdom Hearts, Wild Arms 3, Time Splitters 2, and Red Faction 2?)
So, I figured, hey, sports games, those are fun, and easy enough to get the hang of quickly. Unfortunately, I hadn't played a boxing game for a long enough time, that I thought this might actually be pretty fun. Since Blockbuster doesn't give you a manual or anything, I had to wait until I got home to realize that this game was by Codemasters, the same group of people who made that piece of garbage, Prisoner of War.
Hoo boy...expectations falling faster than Eddie Murphy after Pluto Nash. Anyway, I went and played through the damn thing. Which was probably a mistake. It was taking valuable time away from Hot Wheels: Bash Arena, but I figured if I was paying $5.99 to rent this I may as well, play through it far enough to write a review, and make sure nobody else does the same. You've got 3 different modes you can go into while playing single player. You can fight a quick Exhibition match, go for the title belt, or do Speed Boxing. They're all essentially the same, except for the way you can win and lose a fight. Oh yeah, and you can also spar with Tyson from your character creation screen.
The mode most people would try and play would be Title Belt mode, where they create their own fighter, and level him up, until you can go and beat up Mike Tyson. Codemasters has 4 different fighters from you to choose from. You've got the token White, Black, Hispanic, and Japanese fighters. You can adjust their facial attributes quite a lot, and that seems to be the most thought out part of the game.
That being said, if you delete a fighter you created, that body type is gone. For good. You can't create a new fighter to look like the one you deleted. This is retarded. I can understand giving players the option to delete the profile, but there should be a way to bring it back, no? In addition, this is where you'll encounter the most horrid menu interface ever seen in a game. You have to go through 5 to 6 different prompts to go from one menu to the next, and everything has a huge load time. Want to make changes to your boxers skills?
Here's the steps you have to wade through:
Are you sure you want to make changes? Yes/No
Save your changes? Yes/No
Hit Triangle to Exit Mode
Are you sure you wish to exit this mode? Triangle to Continue, X to Exit. (Read
that and decide real quick which button does what.)
Do you wish to save your changes? Yes/No (Didn't I just answer this?)
Choose save file.
Do you wish to Overwrite? Yes/No
*5* different prompts. What the heck is going on here? I'm not trying to get a driver's license, I just want to add one point into my boxer's skills? Can't you guys at Codemasters do ANYTHING right? Anyway, after all that, I'm fightin' mad. Time to do some fightin'.
Fightin'Fighting in this game works much like you'd imagine from a button masher. This is the worst boxing game I've played, ever. Here's how it works. You've got 4 basic buttons. Triangle jabs, X is an uppercut, O and Square are left and right shots. Holding down, then tapping X, O, and Square will give your shots more power. You block with the right analog stick. Move with the D-Pad.
You can add "modifiers" to your punches by holding down one L2 buttons and hitting a punch. R2 will deliver your combo attack once you have the little stars in the bottom corner spinning. Anything seem odd here...like the fact that there are WAY too many buttons to press? With this much depth in the controls, the fighting has to be complex, right? Wrong. Totally wrong. The computer and you will likely trade a series of continuous punches until one of you drops over.
It's all button mashing. I've connected with 20 straight jabs before. See, with all the various blocking and stuff you have to do with all your other fingers it gets fairly difficult to try and switch up your punches. Since the punches at breakneck speed you really don't have much time to do anything tactical. What's the oldest adage in boxing? "If you take out the body, the head will fall." Not in this game. I've drained the guy's stamina bar, and nailed him to knock him to the canvas. He gets back up. Not my character. He takes a nap. I still have my stamina bar half full. Whatever.
Using the little modifier button to do your punches, you can switch off body shots, but wait, what happens if you hit modifier and then the uppercut button? Of course, what's a Mike Tyson without CHEATING! L2 X = Low Blow. When you're trying to switch up punches and do fun stuff like that, you'll eventually find yourself smacking X...and getting yourself disqualified. POW! Right in the Mean Bean Machine! Here's the best part. If you manage to win your fights and progress, you get money to build up your fighter. so, what if you win the first couple fights, but want to pump up your stats with your hard earned money? First off you have to go through a bunch more prompts. Then you go back to the Title Fight mode...and you HAVE TO FIGHT EVERYONE ALL OVER AGAIN.
How is this anything like real boxing? If Roy Jones Jr. takes a week off, does he have to fight his way through all the contenders again? No, and just another reason why this game is stupid. Codemasters is all about redundant gameplay apparently. The "big" draw, aside from the fun cheating Mike Tyson parts, is the damage textures applied to the face and the little blood spurts, and sweat coming off your boxers face after he takes a punch...Once you take so many hits your boxer will go from bruised, to cut, to Face Critical! Whoopty-doo. One feature doesn't make your entire game, Codemasters. So, after my 12th or 15th bout, I ended my crotch punching career and set this back on the shelf at Blockbuster, where I am sure it will remain for a long, loong time. Don't buy, don't rent, don't look at the cover, and lose the phone numbers of friends you know that bought this game.
