Better than FN. Near perfect boxing simulation with great music and even better controls.
But guess what? Boxing is real. And 2k is one of the best at capturing realistic sport gameplay while still maintaining arcade fun. This game does just that. Its not Fight Night, its not Punch Out. In real boxing you can go 12 rounds without a bigshot, or you can go 15 seconds and get knocked out. The rounds are generally 1 minute 30 seconds long in real time. The same as FN default 3 minutes at double time. But in Prizefighter you end up going into the 12th and past the 6th round more often than not. FN would see 2 maybe 3 round matches, every single time. Even on the hardest difficulty in lighter classes, not very realistic is it? Prizefighter has flash knockdowns, flash knockouts, even injuries like a broken hand, bruised ribs, even blindness, one match in career mode your blinded by your opponents dirty drugged gloves and have to fight your way through fuzzy tunnel vision images. Albeit the injury system is not like you would expect, but not many people are concerned about or enjoy injuries in games, so it fits well here the way it is.
The online 8 person party is awesome. With a good point system to boot. Eight boxers square off to determine who is the best. Certain outcomes bring different point amounts to the players with the highest score winning of course. With some good friends you can never have enough fun playing this mode.
The GS review wreaked of an incompetent athlete who is looking for arcade action as opposed to a realistic simulator. Its the equivalent of a child who doesnt like his vegetables telling the rest of the world why they arent worth eating.
From glancing blows to hard shots, with complete control of your boxing angles, a myriad of punching variations with an extremely easy control scheme. Anyone coming over from FN will find themselves at home, no control stick here for punching, but the feel is not lost. Instead the right analog stick controls all blocking techniques, which is actually much more efficient than the FN controls.
Notice the GS reviewer had so many problems early on with the game, but by the time they understood the controls they were winning with no problem. This shows the lack of thought that went into their review, the majority of the review was made by someone who sucked for a good couple hours and decided all the downfalls he had were the game.
This game deserves a 10. But gets a 9 from me. Why? Xbox360 has been out long enough. We should have at least 2 or 3 titles to be comparing this to. All we have is FN. And Prizefighter destroys that game. Prizefighter has a story mode, online 8 person multiplayer, CAB beyond that of any boxing or wrestling game out now, and near perfect boxing simulation.
If your a boxing fan or a boxer looking for a sim, get this game. If your looking for a arcade fighting game that looks like boxing, get FNR3 or just get VF5 or SF4. Just leave the realistic fighting games for people who know what real boxing is.
FN is for amateurs.
Prizefighter is for champions.
Hit me up for some boxing action. Gamertag v SiXGuN v