Well before he became hip-hop music's preeminent pimp, Calvin Broadus (more popularly recognized as "Snoop Dogg") starred as a wide receiver on his high school football team. But we don't know if the athletic Snoop was much into pugilism, because, if so, he wouldn't help but feel a little let down by Snoop Dogg Boxing's tepid gameplay. Sony Pictures Mobile has paid liberal homage to the NES boxing classic Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! in this third-person boxing game, but its tough controls and bland presentation make the final product only partially successful.
Snoop Dogg Boxing pits your choice of three aspiring ring kings against a range of hip-hop boxers. Fighters like Buck Fitty and Miami Ice are obviously inspired by real-life rappers, but the derivation of many of the other boxers is obscure. Each boxer has his own combination of strengths and weaknesses, which is based on a loose stat system that rates power, speed, and defense. As in Punch-Out, these rapper-rumblers also make use of particular fighting styles, which consist of a few fairly obvious patterns. Unraveling these sequences and exploiting a particular opponent's weaknesses leads to victory, while simply punching away usually results in a pretty convincing defeat--at least past the first few opponents.
Unfortunately, Snoop Dogg Boxing's controls aren't laid out very well, so responding to opponents' swings appropriately is tougher than it should be. Sony Pictures Mobile tried to make Snoop Dogg Boxing playable with one hand by limiting the controls to the D pad. This scheme works well for most mobile games, but it seems unnecessarily limiting in this instance. For example, you can readily throw straight head and body punches by pressing up and down on the D pad, but hooks are only accessible by double-tapping the appropriate side key, which, with a single press, also makes your fighter dodge to the left or right. Getting a solid double-tap in on the fly is often a challenge, as is dodging twice in quick succession. It's frustrating to accidentally throw hooks in the middle of a tight round when you mean to dodge, or vice versa. In addition, there is no way to defend besides dodging, so this problem looms larger as you rise in the ranks and have to play more defense. As a result, the inclusion of either a duck or a block command would have added another key element to the mix--and it definitely would have been worth it.
Snoop Dogg Boxing's gameplay sports a few welcome depth-adding features, such as a combo system. Each of your fighters begins the game with a particular combination of punches that will do increased damage, and you will earn additional flurries as you progress through the game. These three-button combos are usually very simple to execute, and they help leaven the basic dodge-and-punch gameplay with a little more strategy. On the other hand, the combos are really just routine punches that are strung together into a particular sequence. They don't produce any other effects or animations, and there's no special knockout blow to turn a match around. The same goes for the other boxers, whose fighting techniques are mostly limited to three or four basic swings.
Aesthetically speaking, Snoop Dogg Boxing does a slightly better than average job of presenting the sweet science on the LG VX6000. Although all of your cartoony opponents correspond to a few fundamental body sprites--skinny, medium, and fat--they are nicely animated and produce a wide range of comical expressions as they fight. Unfortunately, a great deal of the fighting takes place in a dreary, nearly featureless gray parking lot that is graced only by Snoop's purple Pimpmobile in the background. Whatever visual novelty Snoop Dogg Boxing possesses doesn't last for long. After playing for a while, your opponents' snarls and sneers will begin to bleed together, and you'll feel like you're fighting the same match every time around. There's a status bar at the bottom of the screen that keeps a running commentary on the action, but it's basically superfluous and can prove distracting as the action heats up. It is possible that Snoop Dogg trucked in some of his production team to work on the boxing sound effects, which are quite sharp, but the game's music doesn't keep pace. In fact, the only notable melody is the weak rendition of Who Am I? (What's My Name?) that plays at the beginning of the game.
Overall, Snoop Dogg Boxing is a reasonably competent, if fairly unambitious, boxing game that's good for an hour or two of gameplay before it goes stale. It sports little original content that would make it recommendable over its competitors, but it may be worth a look if you enjoyed old-school boxing classics like Punch-Out!! or if you're a big Snoop Dogg fan. Otherwise, you may be better served with titles like 3D Boxing or Knuckle Up--or by downloading some quality Snoop ringtones.
