Don King Presents: Prizefighter [X360]

Temptations are another very real part of Prizefighter's career mode. If your fighter toils away year after year with little recognition, his post-fight purse will be lower. Raising his media profile by making public appearances, like attending movie premieres and going out on dates with starlets, will increase his fanbase and drive up both ticket prices and attendance. On the other hand, it comes at the risk of losing attributes, since your boxer won't train as hard for the next bout.

Training, of course, plays a heavy role. Just like Fight Night, if you train one attribute before a bout, you'll lose some of your stats in another. Various trainers will offer their services, and it's up to you to decide whether to work with them or not. As per usual, the pre-bout training consists of mini-games. We'd describe the jump rope training as "reverse Guitar Hero." Button prompts fly up the screen into a box; your fighter moves according to the combos that you hit as they land in that box. Besides jump rope, Prizefighter also offers a heavy bag, focus mitts, speed bag, and shuttle run, which is allegedly also rhythm-based.

The gloss of career mode aside, Venom describes Prizefighter as "more Street Fighter than Fight Night." Since we couldn't play, we're interpreting that as "it's a boxing game that uses face buttons, just like Rocky." As we watched recently crowned The Ring Light Heavyweight Champ Joe Calzaghe take on Kelly Pavlik in Madison Square Garden, we started to get an idea of Prizefighter's core combat, even if we couldn't touch a controller.

In spite of a few passive-aggressive comments tossed EA's way, the controls look a bit like Fight Night's do if you eschew that game's analog-stick control scheme. Jabs and hooks are mapped to the face buttons, and rear shoulder buttons are used to modify leans and body punches. If you're knocked down, you mash a button to get up. You can exploit the ref's count and keep mashing the button to get more energy before standing up to fight again.

According to Venom, a few things are still being tweaked, such as the ability to build up power punches. The team's incorporated three icons on the HUD, representing energy, stamina, and adrenaline. Venom wants to be more conservative about power punching. The biggest complaint that the team has about Fight Night is that the haymaker system makes power punching too easy. Prizefighter's solution is to reward aggressive fighters with adrenaline increases, which unlock big blows. We'll have to see how the team balances out aggression rewards with tactical counterpunching once we get hands-on.

Although we're concerned that we couldn't actually play Don King Presents: Prizefighter with less than two months until it's in stores, we're intrigued by its fleshed-out career mode. The mockumentary-style presentation and the unorthodox approaches to your boxer's ten-year run look like a fun change from the status quo. The glitz and glamour aside, we're much more interested in how the game controls. Hopefully it'll end up being a decent representation of the sweet science.

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