Review
Don King Boxing. This game can only be about one thing and one thing only. If it was a true testament to the man himself, they'd be a "fraud mode" and a "take him for everything his got" mode, but fortunately the makers of this game decided to stick with the boxing instead.
It's quite funny actually; Don King takes on an almost cartoonish grandeur in real life with his big hair, his quick tongue and his outlandish dress sense. But Don King Boxing tries very hard to offer a realistic depiction of the sport. Does it succeed? Well, it features plenty of boxers from this era as well as days gone by, and the slow-paced defensive orientated fights certainly reflect the nature of the sport well. It's as authentic as a boxing game can be in that regard.
Your view in the ring consists of an in-body perspective much like the one on Wii Sports. The controls are pretty much the same, with thrusting forward jabs, swiping hooks and jerking upwards unleashing the same motions on screen. Holding B releases a body blow whereas doing the same with the A button raises your guard, allowing you to duck, dive and wiggle out the way of any oncoming onslaught.
It sounds ok in depth, but in practice the execution is very bland. Story mode allows you play as an uncustomisable character called 'The Kid', where the goal is to fight your way through the ranks to become the greatest of all time. Your career is punctuated by a range of ludicrous documentary cut scenes involving Don King and big names like Joe Calzaghe. I actually liked this element of the game, it was a good idea to help fully immerse you in the game but again, the overall execution is debatable and you just find yourself skipping these scenes after a while.
With a range of real fighters and motion controls that accurately replicate real-life boxing, you'd think that Don King Boxing has everything to be a smashing success. But in practice, it just doesn't have what it takes. If this game had been a boxer, Don King would have pulled the plug on his career a long time ago.
