Prizefighter's Journey

Published July 21, 2008 

Don King Presents Prizefighter™for Xbox 360® takes the sweet science in a new interactive direction with its rare documentary-style presentation. You play as "The Kid," an upstart raw talent striving to break through the professional ranks and carve out your own legend among the boxing greats.

The undisputed super middleweight champion of the world.

The Kid's Journey
You begin Prizefighter by creating your own boxer with all the customization features you would expect as you tweak sliders for every facial feature, right down to the depth of the dimple on your chin. Once your career begins though, you might be surprised at how the story unfolds.

Catch your opponent flush with one of these jaw-shattering, body-crunching signature punches, and you can rock even a still-fresh opponent with a single shot.

With Don King settled comfortably behind his desk, cigar in hand and gravity-defying hair on end, the man himself ushers in the live-action, documentary-style cinematics with a few choice, word-chewing phrases that only he could come up with.

Though the man himself features prominently throughout these sequences, you'll also spot the likes of Mario Van Peebles, Andrew Golota, Joe Calzaghe, and many more pitching in their two cents—solicited or not—on your career and the people in your posse. This includes a number of actors brought in to play friends, promoters, and other acquaintances.

Like the sport itself, these sequences aren't glossy and over-produced, but rather raw, sometimes even contentious, interview sequences that help round out the story, and consequently give your character and his journey a rare level of depth and drama.

The Sweet Mechanics
Prizefighterutilizes a face-button boxing mechanic, mapping your jab, straight, and both hooks to X, Y, A, and B respectively while the A-B and X-Y combinations handle your uppercuts. Modify these basic punches with the right-trigger to land body blows. Meanwhile, the right control stick handles your guard. Hold it up to guard your face, down to protect your body, and left or right to better absorb blows from those directions.

Gather your thoughts before the fight.

Successfully landing blows and combinations will slowly fill your Adrenaline meter, which you can then use to either lash out with a vicious signature punch or trigger an all around adrenaline surge. Catch your opponent flush with one of these jaw-shattering, body-crunching signature punches, and you can rock even a still-fresh opponent with a single shot. However, if your opponent blocks the punch, counters, or you flat out miss, you'll have wasted all that hard-earned adrenaline.

On the other hand, the adrenaline surge sends your fighter into a short but frenzied burst of speed and power. While no one landed blow will do anything like the kind of damage of a signature punch, it does wonders for overwhelming and wearing down your opponent, particularly at the end of a round

Career Path
Pitting your wits and skills toe-to-toe against your fellow boxers may take up the bulk of your time, but there's more to Career Mode than just in-the-ring action. For example:

• Training:You need to hit the heavy bag, speed bag, target mitts, and jump rope to build up each of your fighter's attributes in these quick, timing-based mini-games. You'll even have the rare opportunity to work with a specialist trainer from time to time for substantial yet automatic stat increases.
• Legendary bouts: Throughout your career, you'll be granted an active role in some of boxing's most historic fights. For example, early on, you'll re-enact the James Braddock-Max Baer fight made famous by Ron Howard's Cinderella Man starring Russell Crowe.
• Media management: Training may earn you victories, but heading out on the town, attending movie premieres and celebrity poker tournaments helps raise your profile and consequently your prize money. You'll need to carefully manage both training and media events though. You'll have to sacrifice one for the other.

He looks out to me.

Extra Prizefighter
Career Mode may very well attract the most of your attention, but there's a great deal more to explore in Don King Presents Prizefighter. The Exhibition mode on its own lets you relive classic bouts or even create your own dream-fight matchups as you take control of the game's substantial stable of licensed fighters, including Joe Louis, Ken Norton, Rocky Marciano, Joe Calzaghe, among many others.

You can take your pugilism online on Xbox LIVE as well, participating in fights as pre-made characters or any one of your custom-made boxers available from the Fighter Factory. Engage in standard one-on-one Versus fights, but also in a point-based Fighter Club league with up to eight players, as well as one-and-done competitions in Tournament mode.

Also of interest is the Extras menu, which includes unlocked Career mode cinematics and fighter interviews along with Classic Challenges, such as the aforementioned Braddock vs. Baer, and Leaderboards.

In the words of Don King, courtesy of his Letter of Introduction in the game's manual, "If you have just purchased this game then I wish you the very best in your pugilistic endeavors. Winning isn't easy but that's why it's worthwhile." Well said.

Article by Ryan Treit