Don King Boxing Review

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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.