Because some disputes can only be settled with Clubber Lang vs Ivan Drago.
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Pros:
+ Satisfying Fighting: It's pretty important for the punches in a boxing game to feel hefty and satisfying, so it's just as well that they do here!
+ Use of License / Music: Right from the opening cutscene, this game oozes Rockyness - this is the crucial advantage it holds over any other boxing game, and it tries its best to wring what it can out of it, featuring almost everything Rocky-related on some level or other. The game's crowning achievement in this regard is the music: while Eye of the Tiger is sadly missing, the fantastic cheese of the Rocky IV instrumentals and the rousing music that plays as a KO approaches really seals the deal.
+ Training Games: The mini-games you play to level up your characters' attributes are a nice, varied way of breaking up the boxing, and certainly help make the career mode more addictive. But why no jogging?
+ Unlockables: While not all of it is especially brilliant, there is at least a lot of stuff to unlock and keep you playing the game for a long time.
+ Multiplayer: Of course it has multiplayer, and of course it's more fun than single-player - but because of the Rocky license and characters, every fight feels 10 times as epic as anything you get in other games! After all, Call of Duty may be all the rage, but it's got nothing on Rocky vs Drago in Moscow on Christmas Day...
Cons:
- Half-Hearted Storytelling: While the career mode is pretty addictive, and while the Rocky license is generally used very well throughout the game, the actual plots of the films are only very hurriedly (almost non-existantly) crammed into brief little starting and finishing segments in the 4 seperate careers. Making the stories a lot more prominent throughout the careers would have amplified the 'Rocky' feel even more, and countered the mood of just fighting randomly that you get.
- Voice-Acting: God, the voice-acting is awful! The voice for Mick is pretty good, but the rest of the characters are a lesson in dodginess - highlights include the drunken comedy rendition of Sylvester Stallone, and the Dolph Lungdren subsitute who bears no (and I seriously mean zero) relation to either him or Ivan Drago. It's even more mystifying when you realize that Sly and Mr T were both involved in the original game, but have somehow gone MIA here!
- Starting Characters / Padded Roster: One of the inherent problems with using the Rocky license is that you'll never want to play as anyone but the main characters from the films, which if you include 'joke' picks like Paulie, Mick and Tony, comes to 8 characters (charitably including Tommy Gunn) - that leaves a lot of characters that are there for no reason. Perhaps attempting to work in some real-life boxing legends could have made matters better? Also, the only 'big' character from the film you start with outside of the career mode is Rocky, forcing you to play quite a considerable amount to unlock the others - this is a mistake, since it limits multiplayer considerably until you unlock them, and results in the player who goes through the career mode to earn them becoming a lot better than anyone else, making things a lot less even.
- No Training Progression: While training increases your fight skills well enough, it's a shame that your actual ability to train and gain high scores in the process doesn't improve at the same time - this would have made skill progression even more noticable and satisfying.
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All in all, it's far from perfect, and it's not exactly an experience you'll be recalling on your deathbed - but if you have the appropriate respect for the Rocky franchise, as well as a friend in need of a beatdown, you could do a whole lot worse!