Don King Boxing Review
Ouch.
Version tested: Wii
In 1966, according to Wikipedia - which I've certainly never known to be wrong about anything - Don King stomped an employee to death over a debt of 600 dollars. I mention this only because it makes Don King's Prizefighter the first videogame series I can think of that's endorsed by somebody who's actually killed a man - well, at least since Lesley Grantham's Super-Trick Snowboarding gave us so many hours of fun on the SEGA Megadrive. Still, it feels a little churlish bringing it up, really: King's served his sentence and deserves a second chance. He's done his time, and now, with Don King Boxing, we're doing ours.
When it appeared on the 360 last year, Prizefighter was widely lauded for lacklustre graphics, unwelcome difficulty spikes, and collision detection so bad that you almost felt you were playing a boxing simulation on the Holodeck of the Starship Enterprise. If you're the kind of person who suspects that all this wonky game really needed to snap it into shape was the addition of Wii controls, I should very like to meet you - presumably once you get back from New York City, where you've been optimistically waiting for the Titanic to finally arrive.
Clear your mind and hope for the best, though. Oh dear: things start in a distinctly unpromising manner. After an unconvincing intro sequence with an astonishingly juddery frame rate, you're dumped into an unskippable tutorial, which attempts to introduce you to the game's controls. They're pretty simple really: holding the remote and nunchuk upright, a push forward handles jabs and straights, hooks are activated by a swing to each side, and uppercuts come via a gentle flick. Pushing either B or Z directs blows to the body rather the head, and, with movement handled by the stick, there are further options for guarding, dodging, and accessing the pleasantly unshowy special moves - more powerful variations of each punch, which leave a brief trail of red light lingering behind them.

Historic matches interrupt the campaign mode. That generally means it's time to reach for the scratchy film filter.
As move-sets go, it's actually rather elegant - an entirely instinctive range of controls which are easy to memorise and full of punchy promise. Sadly, what the tutorial is really teaching you is that none of this matters much.
Don King Boxing, it turns out, is woefully imprecise. And not just, "I pressed the wrong button in the elevator and now I'm on the wrong floor" imprecise, but, "I set off to drive to the laundrette and somehow ended up in Ukraine" imprecise. While the game can just about distinguish your inputs while it's teaching you each separate attacks one at a time, as soon as you reach the combo stage of the tutorial the frustration jolts into overdrive, with every shake of the remote or nunchuk offering you an entirely unexpected outcome, while the too-subtle variations in the punch animations leave you with little to distinguish between jabs and uppercuts anyway.
That the tutorial asks you to fill in chains of specific moves in order to proceed is bad enough, but throw on top of that a focus on timing, which the game leaves you to discover for yourself - and which the remote can rarely handle anyway - and it becomes clear that the game has managed the impossible: it's found a magical plateau of annoyance where precision and imprecision become inextricably knotted - the game demanding a level of strict control over your inputs while offering you tools which mean you can only achieve them through a mixture of luck and sheer bloody-mindedness.
Whatever option you plump for - I opted for bouts of screaming followed by a smattering of bitter tears - a mere four minutes into the tutorial, even the most elegant and controlled of players may start to wonder if they'll ever get to see the rest of the campaign at all, or if they'll spend eternity struggling to chain together three simple straights, while their Wii registers hooks, dodges, uppercuts and a weird ghost attack where the boxer's arm passes spookily through his enemy's torso. As tutorials go, it does an admirable job of providing a guided tour of the game's many frustrations and limitations.
It's a pleasant surprise, then, to discover that the game waiting beyond the tutorial is dull rather than wretched. As expected, once mastering the moves is out of the way, you can largely forget about them, as Don King generally requires nothing more of you than a concentrated succession of grand mal seizures to work through its range of bouts. The fighting system itself has a hint of tactical grace to it, success theoretically lying with a balance of health versus stamina, softening opponents up with simple jabs before striking out with a super-powered special. The truth is, however, that by this point you're so depressingly aware of the game's inability to distinguish between anything but the most simple of attacks that there's very little sense in trying to plan your moves, and when the campaign ramps up its difficulty and demands specific patterns to beat later enemies, you know that it simply can't be trusted to play fair.
It's a shame, as the game's story mode isn't that bad: its tale of a journey from obscurity to stardom is traditional, yet strangely wholesome, and the sprinkling of famous talking heads that crop up along the way add a certain appeal for fans of the sport. And graphically, the game is better than you might be expecting, too: backgrounds are simple but often characterful, and the fighter models are fairly good, even if each boxer appears to be stuck with a single facial expression throughout the match, whether you're taking a pummelling from them or knocking them out of a nearby window (possibly, however, this is a subtle reference to the dangers of brain damage inherent in the sweet science).

Say what you will about him, King's occasional interjections are by far the most entertaining and characterful part of the game.
Elsewhere there's a two-player option, training modes, which are suitably exhausting, and tacked-on support for the balance board - used for simple things like dodges - that never quite justifies the pain involved in taking it out of the cupboard, dusting it off, and finding four AA batteries.
None of these offerings will distract you from the realisation that 2K's game is a fairly slight work, and, despite King's winningly verbose interjections, its hip-hop soundbeds and clinical menus make it pretty characterless too. The sad truth is, if you already have a Wii, you've already got a better boxing title in the shape of Wii Sports - a game that not only allows you to pummel away at a cartoon representation of your sister, but also effortlessly possesses more charm, more wit, and - worryingly - a lot more precision than anything this can offer. Overall, Don King Boxing is one fight you might want to walk away from: not because it's dangerous, then, but because it's an irritating bore.
3 / 10
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Comments (39) Latest comment 3 years ago
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And therein lies the problem with the Wii, that not every game works with its imprecise controller, particularly as the motion-sensors on the Nunchuk are a lot more primitive that the ones on the main Wii Remote. Far too many third-party games squander any potential it might have and it seems like only Nintendo know how to use it effectively. Trouble is Nintendo's games come once in a blue moon and they're not always good. Some are truly dire like Wii Music for example.
Thankfully, not all games on the Wii are cack (although it seems like 99% are!). Little King's Story and Excitebots look great, especially the latter, and I've added them to my Wanted list to pick up at some point once I've tired of the PC for games. That said, I still think the Wii is absolutely the worst console I've ever owned, simply because there's so few decent games on the platform compared with the other formats.
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Great times to be a Wii-only owner
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You mong.
Shit on 360, shit on Wii, what a shocker eh?
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My Wii is collecting dust.
I've sold my Wii on Ebay.
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At least if you're gonna do a shovelware title don't have a crook as your cover name.
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How can it be gathering dust if you've sold it? Back under your bridge, idiot.
/hits ignore
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See also:
-Kiddie console
-I've bought a 360/PS3 and a Wii and the former has by far more playtime
-Stuff about grandmas and toddlers
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You mong.
Shit on 360, shit on Wii, what a shocker eh?
not exactly. it was mediocre on the 360, it took the the wii to make it shit.
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Sorry for boring post.
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Other than that, a fun review of what looks like an atrocious game.
Also: my Wii is getting much more playtime than my 360 these days due to Blast Works and Gradius ReBirth and if stuff like Pikmin 2, FF Crystal Chronicles Echoes of Time and Little King Story is not enough to convince you otherwise then, yes, you should sell your Wii on eBay and get yourself a proper man's console.
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Seriously guys, all the 'Wii is shite' comments are just pointless now. Not only are they boring, they are just wrong. EG has given 7 games on the Wii 8/10 or higher since the start of the year for chrissakes!
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doesn't change the fact that the console is bad. and if i remember correctly, wasn't one of these games Little King's Story? i can't think of the other 6 (was house of the dead overkill out this year?)
EDIT: i just checked that list. Let's Tap? Pikmin? might get high review scores, but - as with Little King's Story - unless your less than 10 years old, it's still useless
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What are you talking about? What do you mean by 'bad' because if you mean 'doesn't have any quality games' then you are wrong as there patently are.
And what's wrong with Little Kings Story? Not manly enough for you?
EDIT:
i just checked that list. Let's Tap? Pikmin? might get high review scores, but - as with Little King's Story - unless your less than 10 years old, it's still useless
Your are obviously somepme who thinks that all games must be fit into your narrow definition of what is 'acceptable' therefore there's no point talking to you, but (likewise) there's really no point you posting in these threads.
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i never said they weren't acceptable as games, just useless unless you're a kid. let me put it this way: i know quite a few gamers in my age bracket (25-30), a number of which own a wii, but none of them would ever purchase something like Pikmin or Let's Tap, simply because it's not made for them. It's designed, made and marketed for children.
but you have a valid point, so let me rephrase my original statement. the wii is a bad console for adults. there seem to be plenty of good games around if you're a kid.
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Oh but you define games solely on their appearance rather than whether they are good games, am I right? How do you feel about games like Katamari? World Of Goo? LocoRoco?
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I've enjoyed World of Goo, that was quite ok; Katamari was an interesting idea but got boring quickly, and I've never played LocoRoco.
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And the Wii just sucks. I'm embarassed to have had such high hopes for it.
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I dunno, the CD-i was pretty bad...
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I know quite a lot of adults who don't hang about with black people, but their kids do at school.
Therefore black people are for children.
No, wait a second, that's what we invented the concept of 'prejudice' for.
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You think it's one of those mystical creatures who are employed by Sony or MS to spread a bit of FUD about the console? Hell, I don't think they're necessary around here.
Anyway, another "ignore".
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This is on the wii, not the ps3!
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LMFAO!!!
You're not 25.. With a comment like that - I'd guess you werent even a teenage yet.. Because you still think a game needs to be grey and brown with lots of blood to be good.
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Thank god however for the few that do.
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When I was a kid I'd amuse myself for hours with an empty box or some old radio parts picked up from the local tip.
Kids are stupid.
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