5.5? Give me a break! This game is downright fun to play.
The career mode is interesting and is where Prize Fighter excels. It does just enough to keep it interesting and providing a feel that you are coming from the ground up rather than Fight Night's monotonous approach of just simply fighting again and again up the chain of boxers. The fights themselves have interesting quirks you have to deal with, such as a match where a judge is payed off so you must win by a KO (not a decision), or another match where one of your hands is injured so you have to avoid using is or else you will hurt yourself. This, along with other things, give the fights a unique feel instead of the same old boring thing over and over again.
The boxing itself is pretty realistic and is the other strength in this game. The other choice we players have, again, is Fight Night with its questionable techniques. Fight Night relies heavily on the super parry move that stuns the opponent, followed by a hay maker punch. This approach is quite gamey since the user can simply parry, and hay maker again and again until the opponent is on the mat. In Prize Fighter, there is a more realistic approach in the sense that parries and blocks do not stun an opponent, rather, you have to block and move and strike when the opportunity presents itself. There is no magic move or parry to do again and again, you have to actually wear your opponent down.
That said, the graphics in Prize Fighter is not quite up to par with Fight Night, with some clipping and unrealistic lip movement by the characters when they speak. On the other hand, the sound effects are pretty realistic and do a good job of keeping the action intense.
Prize Fighter also does a good job of making you feel like you are starting at the bottom and working your way up to the top. As you play, the game will get more interesting by presenting you with decisions to improve your fame (and thus give you more money) or to train yourself. You are also introduced with more characters on your journey to the top, and the local and overall atmosphere noticeably changes throughout the ordeal. The Gamespot review states that the game starts out slow and gets more interesting as it goes, and it gives a demerit for it. In the age of ADD -- I guess that is a bad thing but, in my opinion, it is another strength of the game to make you feel like you are making progress, instead of bombarding the user with everything you are going to see in the game, in the first 30 minutes of play.
Prize Fighter does have room for improvement but when you strip all of the shallow and superficial (and overly critical) complaints away you have a fun and interesting game of boxing with an interesting change in scenery.