Another Prizefighter preview
April 17, 2008 by pastapadre
Eurogamer has posted up their preview of Prizefighter. You can check it out in full here. This follows the IGN preview which expressed some gameplay concerns but seemed encouraged by the story mode and presentation.
The alarming thing that came out of this preview is the news that losing a fight will result in your career being over.
As interesting as the documentary style of the game is, it’s also a somewhat limiting factor, since the developer hasn’t created any branching storyline elements within the format. Lose a fight, and you don’t get to stage a comeback - you just get a Game Over.
That basically means it would leave people resetting their console at the signs of it happening or going back to a previous save. Not exactly an ideal way to play a game. I believe there will be at least one scripted loss in the story (citing the corrupt judges) so it won’t necessarily mean a 50 win streak. I didn’t mind the linear storyline as it seems quite intriguing as is, but knowing it all ends due to an unscripted loss is bothersome to hear.
The main outside the ring strategy seems to come in the form of choosing between media and training opportunities.
While the advantage of additional training is pretty obvious - it boosts your power and stamina, for instance - the advantage of a high media profile is subtler: the game has a system that factors in the adulation of the crowd. With the crowd really behind you, you get an adrenaline boost that allows you to pull off special moves - not ludicrous overpowered specials, but the haymakers and so on which can really batter an opponent
Also touched on are the controls which are known to use the buttons as opposed to the right analog as was the case in Fight Night.
The game is also fast - very fast, if the bouts we saw are anything to judge by. While acknowledging that Fight Night Round 3 is the main competition - and arguably the benchmark for the boxing genre - 2K Sports has chosen to go entirely the other direction. The game still looks great, but seems to have sacrificed detail for speed, with a control system that owes more to Street Fighter (albeit with simpler combos) than to Fight Night, replete with really immediate, responsive controls and a fast and furious rate of play.
Now, I may be wrong, but I don’t remember an outcry regarding Fight Night being too slow. I’m not sure if the sped up action and button combos in Prizefighter will make it seem more of a sim or less.
So, you lose and it’s done? I don’t like that at all.
Sounds great except for the one loss thing Why 2k Why!!!
Look at this as a STORY mode rather than an actual career mode. The fight, train, fight, train, pick a generic opponent to fight-formula has miserably FAILED in the Fight Night series. Again Pasta harps on this “negative.” You talk as though FNR3’s career mode was better. There was never a sense of achievement and progress in the previous FN games. Every fight was just another fight against an uninteresting, generic fighter randomly generated by the computer. The only “reward” you got was being able to fight in bigger venues. Prizefighter’s story approach isn’t any different from FPS games like COD4, where you get a game over when you die (or at least reset at the last checkpoint).
Did you forget to mention how TACTICAL MOVEMENT WILL PLAY A MAJOR ROLE in Prizefighter’s game mechanics? Fight Night is still based on the 2D fighting system where the fighters are always locked on to each other. Sure you don’t remember “outcries” that FNR3 was too slow. Outcry or no outrcy, FNR3 IS ridiculously slow. You get used to the speed and don’t notice it anymore, but watch a real boxing match before or after playing FNR3 and you’ll immediately notice the difference. The moves aren’t crisp or snappy in FNR3. The punches look as though they were motion captured from a guy doing a demonstration on how to throw punches properly. Seriously, even without the 5-second parries in FNR3, which Pasta conveniently never mentions, the fighters just stand there wide open to get hit and the opening is always there.
No game (even on genesis) was a one loss and its over game, I will see it when it drops… That is silly.
Also, why not talk about the fact that you can actually customize your clothing and gloves during the fighter creation process?
LOL. Prizefighter is such a disappointment, right? I guess Pasta better get his licks in before the game actually comes out since at that time EA’s hired gun won’t be able to lie about Prizefighter’s stellar gameplay.
Saint, the more posts I see from you, the bigger 2K mark you appear to be.
Pasta never mentioned anything about FN career mode and you say “You talk as though FNR3’s career mode was better.”
He didn’t even say the style was bad! He just said the “one and done thing” is. This is supposed to be a Sim boxing game not Tekken or Street Fighter, correct? A game over screen after one loss can be considered disappointing but that doesn’t mean that FN’s career mode is head and shoulders above it.
Now Pasta, you had to have heard some complaints about FN being slow. It put a bit more strategy into the game, but compare it to an actual match, like Saint said, and you can easily see a major difference.
chris wrote:
I didn’t care much for Fight Night so I can’t recall the complaints other than the haymakers and thin career mode. The last Prizefighter post I even added that the 50 fight linear storyline is more than you would get out of Fight Night’s career mode and is certainly sufficient for me. I’m definitely not disputing that here. Just head over to the 2K forum or OS and the topic of the one loss and its over story mode is pretty significant.
While I don’t agree with Pasta’s negative vibes on everything not made by EA, I do agree with him on the whole “game over” after losing one fight. Let me sum it up with the following sentence:
Even Punch Out for NES allowed you to lose and make a comeback with a blemished record.
Personally I’d be more into this game if I could lose and comeback- branching storylines would make this game a blast, and add a ton of replay value to it.
Even Rocky lost…and it wasn’t game over for him.
Bumble14 wrote:
While I have zero problem with the whole game over thing, we don’t actually have the whole picture. It could very well be that certain milestone fights in your career will result in game overs should you lose, while the fights in between those milestone matches won’t result in instant game over.
While I haven’t played FN3… I do have FN2. I actually thought the game was much MORE realistic due to it being slower paced. As a matter of fact, I still seemed to throw an insane amount of punches during a match, even with the analog punching. But, where I’d throw 150 punches in a 3-4 round KO, it was MUCH worse in Knockout Kings that utilized the button mashing punching. I remember throwing around 500-600 punches or more.. Simply because it was so easy to hit the buttons quickly. (I remember pummeling people with “Butterball” this way).
The Saint has a point about looking at this as a STORY as if an FPS… but I think most people were hoping for more of boxing simulation.
FNR3 was a joke! That game was terribly slow as well as unrealistic. I can’t see Prizefighter being worse that FNR3 i don’t care what’s not in it! The one & done thing i’m not a fan of but the rest of the article was VERY promising( which a lot of Pasta mysteriously failed to mention by the way)!
C’mon Pasta! How could you not have heard the complaints about FNR3 being too slow? That was one of the MAJOR complaints about the game! I think Pasta has selective hearing when it comes to EA games!
Prizefighter will SMASH that garbage FNR3 and all you EA fanboys will BOW DOWN!!!
i find the hypocrisy that when there is just a little bit of information given on prizefighter..its ok never negative when it obviously is. but yet when Ncaa comes out with no field goal nets or refs and even with the past knowledge that this years game wont be that good..people never see that as negative. quite the pot calling the kettle black.
It’s funny when you see a fanboy call someone else a fanboy.
So Night Owl, just curious, since I never played it… was FN3 slower than FN2?
And also.. why was everyone complaining about the speed? If you ask me, boxing IS a slow sport with occasional periods of flurry. Am I not right? The matches are not constant pummeling… there’s a lot of dancing around, a lot of hugging… a lot of feeling out the other guy, especially in the early rounds. That’s how I see boxing anyway.
I felt FN2 was a huge step in the right direction from Knockout Kings where you could throw a few hundred punches in a single round. If FN3 slowed it down even more… it sounds like it would be pretty realistic.
“Lose a fight, and you don’t get to stage a comeback - you just get a Game Over”
That’s all I needed to hear to know that this game is not for me. Linearity in sports-games is not my idea of progressing the genre in my opinion. In sports-titles I want to be free to follow my own path and experience the ups&downs of my OWN career.If I wanted to play through someone else’s life-story I’d play a Final Fantasy game.
No thanks 2K, no thanks…
DLaren wrote:
Good one. I guess it’s back to the good old 5-second parries for you. No thanks, EA, no thanks…
Darkheath wrote:
The reason you have “occasional” flurries in boxing is because of a thing called footwork. You can’t just throw punches mindlessly because you first have to track your opponent and be in proper punching position before you can unleash a meaningful punch. But when you’re in that position, you can let your hands go. In FNR3, you’re ALWAYS locked into your opponent, and therefore are ALWAYS in proper punching position. FNR2 was a heck of a lot faster than FNR3. The speed of the punches themselves were fine, it’s the fact you’re always lined up with your opponent that makes it unrealistic. The solution is to make a realistic footwork system like Prizefighter is doing, not slowing the punches down.
Thanks Saint. That’s a great explanation. yeah… if they can work on the footwork so you have more flexibility about where you are in the ring, I can see that would make a difference. It did seem constraining to be locked-on like that.
Actually… it reminds me of Superstar mode in Madden ‘07 (I haven’t played ‘08). I really wanted the camera to just let me go. I know it was trying to point me at the ball, but it was very unnatural and hard to control. Especially on defense.
I’m not much of a boxing fan. I don’t watch it. But I do like playing the games occasionally.
Thanks again for the good explanation.
o’rly wrote:
well I think it’s a different issue is the thing. This is an actual mode of play, not just a lil detail like refs, so it’s obviously gonna get more attention. many of the reviews I’ve read on sites never mention the refs or field goal nets in the football games even though it’s something that should be in.
I just don’t think it’s deemed by the sites as something worthy of as much discussion as it gets. Ask yourself, if this game had no ref would it be thought of as a major issue? I doubt it, but maybe I’m wrong. I certainly wouldn’t care either way. But I guess since the game does have the ref, it’s another reason to hate on EA
I would like there to be more contact between fighters . That is to say that boxers do not stand 2 feet away from each other and just beat each other in the face. In real boxing there is an element of long term contact especially in the last few rounds.
Darkheath wrote:
was that to me? no im not a fan boy infact, im calling out all the EA people here calling out the faults in this game when the exact ones are the first to defend Ncaa 09 or madden collectors edition with the persistant error. to me i dont care 2k and EA are a business…so the odds of them knowing my name is slim to none. I want whats good and makes sense.. whether EA or 2k. all i say is keep it real…
Actually no. That message was to Night Owl. Any time you can say something like this:
[i]Prizefighter will SMASH that garbage FNR3 and all you EA fanboys will BOW DOWN!!![/i]
…about a game you’ve never played before… you are a fanboy.
Personally… I’ve been buying and enjoying 2K products for about 6 years now and haven’t needed anything from EA. Although a friend bought me FN2 for the Xbox and I picked up Madden ‘07 (HoF Edition) used recently. But that was my first Madden game since 2001 for the CPU… which I also bought on sale somewhere.
darkheath wrote:
oh OH ok yes well darkheath ive always known you to be the one to tell it like it is….a point indeed and quite still a good point.
Guys lets face it, this game better be as good as Fight Night or else it’s a total failure. I for one am hoping that it is as good if not better because boxing is my favorite sport. There’s nothing like one on one fighting it out. It’s unlike any other sport. Point being that if the gameplay is not up to par then that would be unexcusable on 2K’s part. They’ve had plenty of time to study Fight Night & develop a competetor. All the cool story mode stuff wont mean anything if the gameplay isn’t as good. I don’t know about you guys but I was expecting a little more then what I’m seeing so far. Let’s hope the final product doesn’t let down.
The Forum Administrator (ronnie.singh)over at 2ksports forum said and I quote “Let me answer something that is causing issues:
Career mode is NOT one and done. I am not sure where this rumor came from.”
you wrote:
This was Eurogamer’s fault. There is no branching storyline and they assumed it was one loss and game over, which I personally don’t mind even if that was the case. Still, I hope the moderator is accurate.