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By Keith B (2nd Aug 2008)

It’s probably fair to say that the glory days of boxing have passed us by; when as a kid I’d stay up until 4am to see Tyson hammer someone around the ring. The failure of boxing to capture the imagination of the masses also might have something to do with the rise of UFC and mixed martial arts combats across the television networks. But one thing remains, one remnant from that era that still stands tall in the boxing world, and that one thing is Don King.

I don’t know much about Don King as a person, but I’d imagine that everything in his life sparkles and glints like the gold that hangs from his fingers. Everything about Don King presents Prizefighter is the very same, because for production values alone, and the work that went into the overall package, this is a unique product. It’s just a shame then that the actual boxing is so completely, utterly poor.

But let’s not go there yet, because I’ll have an uppercut ready by the ending paragraphs. Let’s start at the beginning.

Once you stick the disk into the machine you’re invited to create a character, as per usual with most modern sports games. You stick some stats onto him, make him look as you want, then off you go. Your career starts with some dust-ups in the local gym with poor opponents but soon enough you’ve got a manager and you’re on the road to glory. The thing that will probably strike you right off is the number of real life boxers (like Joe Calzaghe), promoters and managers that make appearances in the video cut scenes, and the story they tell about “The Kid” and his rise to fame is entirely believable. From the first trainers outside their mechanic lots to the assistants and others that make up the cast, all is filmed in proper video and conducted like interviews. The plot becomes murky later on and you often come across opponents who have some nasty trick up their sleeves – from coating their gloves in something to make your eyes water to forcing you to avoid certain punches because you’ve been injured by a dirty trick, the actual unfolding of the player’s career and the ups and downs are handled very well.

After each bout you have two weeks to train for your next fight, which you book on your computer in the office and then use your PDA to receive communications from all manner of people. And it’s right about here that things take a turn for the worse. First of all, in the two weeks you have to prepare for a fight, more often than not you’ll be asked out to film advertisements, attend functions, date models – all of which raises your public profile. The higher the profile, the more money you earn. Except money isn’t used for anything, so to do anything else other than train is pointless. It becomes so predictable that one wonders if the chicks asking for dates aren’t all working for the opponent camps.

After you decide to reject the advances of the public, it’s down to training, and we revert back to the exact same system used in Fight Night and others – let the computer train you and you get stats, you do it manually and you get more. I let the computer do the training and finished the game without losing a fight. So training isn’t important then (unless you’re playing on the hardest difficulty or plan on taking your boxer online).

Things look up when Don King takes over as your manager, and in fairness to the game, King gave a lot of his time to make this feel authentic. Before each fight he sends you a video clip with advice and encouragement, and even opens your eyes to the world behind the bright lights and smell of ammonia salts. He discusses special training camps he has that many world champions have worked at, and he constantly references historical bouts. So for does-what-it-says-on-the-tin value, it’s right up there, but in the ring, it looks more last-gen than current-gen.

The audio also has glorious moments, when some 60s soul blares through the speakers it’s easy to think that Don King selected the tracks to suit his era and that works well. That’s until the faceless techno-pop effluent starts trickling into the whole thing and it suddenly loses all its charm.

Thrown into the mix are some strolls down memory lanes for boxing fans, which allow players to replay key moments from boxing history. Presented in a sepia display, they feel authentic, but don't have any effect on your boxer that I could tell and are therefore nothing more than a momentary distraction from the business of winning a world title.

And now, the boxing. And this is the real sucker-punch (sorry). It’s so atrocious that I really wonder how it could have hit the streets in this unfinished, underdeveloped and completely under-tested format. First of all, the collision detection is nothing short of comical. Swinging a punch and seeing it pass through the head of your opponent only to hit him as you draw the arm back happens every few seconds, as if there is a disc on the end of the glove and another on the face of the opponent, and whenever these discs meet a punch resisters, so you’ll hit your opponent as many times from pulling back a punch than throwing it forward. Then there is the shocking system where you can click a button for a punch only for it not to be released for two or three seconds.

Now, if that wasn’t bad enough, you have an endurance bar and a power bar, again nothing new. The endurance bar is how fast you can punch, while your power bar allows you to pull of signature punches at specific markers on the bar. But because of the whole three-seconds-to-swing-after-you-hit-the-button, I’d estimate that about 70% of the shots are wasted by hitting air (and signature punches don’t have that magical pull-back action of the other shots).

Which is a crying shame really, because this had all the potential of being a masterpiece. It’s has wonderful content, a compelling campaign (which is lacking from ALL boxing games) and a whole cast of characters. But as the boxing is awful, the game ultimately fails. Smelling salts to Prizefigher’s corner, please.