Don King is one of the biggest names in boxing who never fought in the ring. The promoter has been involved in organising big fights for over 30 years, including legendary bouts like “The Rumble in the Jungle” (Ali vs. Foreman) and “The Thrilla in Manila” (Ali vs. Frazier) and others featuring names like Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield and Bernard Hopkins. His flamboyance and legendary hair are known the world over. Not everything the Don touches turns to gold, however, as evidenced by last year’s rather bland release Don King’s Prizefighter for the Xbox 360. Now the Wii version, simply titled Don King Boxing has finally hit shelves courtesy of 2K China, and sadly, the result isn’t any better.

Don King Boxing follows the design of last year’s Don King’s Prizefighter closely, offering up exactly the same documentary style career mode. This career mode features some high production values and appearances from some B-Grade actors, film stars and boxing legends, but really lacks the grit of a real boxer’s career. It also forces you to constantly interact and fight with your rival, even if your domination of him is so bad as to end a regular boxer’s career. You create a fighter known as the Kid, and take him from dirt kicker to world champion through a series of bouts, with mini-games in between. Unlike real boxing (well, depending on who you ask), not everything is on the straight and narrow; you have to deal with opponents bribing judges, throwing bleach in your eyes, and in one case, abusing a substance with effects similar to PCP. This is slightly amusing, but really seems to make the game parody the serious problem with theatrics that plague modern day boxing.


The key difference between Prizefighter and Boxing is control; the HD consoles utilised standard controllers, while the Wii game makes use of motion control, and also gives players the option of using the Wii Balance Board. Like most boxing games on the system, Don King Boxing uses the Nunchuk as your left fist and the Wii Remote as your right, with the buttons on each controller component used to alter the height of your blows. As mentioned in just about every Wii boxing game review we have done to date, the Nunchuck lacks the consistency and accuracy of the Remote, leaving your left arm abilities somewhat incapacitated. Fortunately, Don King Boxing is a lot more accurate than Facebreaker and Ready 2 Rumble, so it’s not entirely broken, but it’s nowhere near as accurate as Wii Sports’ boxing game. I seriously do not understand why they just don’t opt to use two remotes in these games, or wait for the Wii Motion Plus attachment to come.

Since only three out of every four of your hits are going to connect, you need to develop a fairly intimate knowledge of the game’s defensive capabilities. The Nunchuk’s analogue stick is used to steer your boxer around the ring, while holding A and lifting the Wii Remote and Nunchuck will raise your guard – you can tilt the controllers to angle your guard and parry incoming shots. If you have a Wii Balance Board laying around, you can use it for ducking and weaving (the same affect can be achieved using the standard controller combination too, though). The game can be somewhat physically demanding – if you’re out of shape, you’ll start to feel the burn after a couple of rounds of throwing punches and wobbling around like a fool.


The control system is far from perfect, but the boxing action fails to patch up the gaps. Don King Boxing’s fights feel lifeless and shallow; you never quite feel the intensity of a real boxing match, despite essentially being in the ring in the first person. The other problem with the first person perspective is that the game gives you a poor sense of depth perception, so you can never quite judge the reach of your fighter correctly. Getting combos in can be a problem, not just due to depth perception but also due to the previously mentioned control issues. Perhaps the most annoying thing about Don King Boxing is that the punches in the game don’t have enough impact or feedback – fights look and feel very stiff. Fighter AI isn’t much to write home about either; players can get through fights simply by wailing away on their opponent, rather than putting together a calculated offense. The lack of difficulty kind of makes up for the inaccuracy of the motion controls in some distorted way, but it doesn’t seem to be the right thing to do.

Don King Boxing’s best component is its training mode, but it feels slightly disconnected from the rest of the experience. This is largely owing to the fact that most of the training mode has been developed for the Wii version of the game, so it feels out of sync from the portions of the product previously used in Prizefighter. Mini-games consist of the usual boxing training activities – heavy bag, speed bag, and skipping to name a few. The Wii Balance Board can also be brought in for use in a shadow boxing game that’s a bit like Dance Dance Revolution, in that it works on your footwork as well as your punches. The game incorporates a training regiment if you want to develop some sort of daily exercise plan, but your performance is only tracked in one mini-game per day. Unfortunately, the training mode succumbs to the same motion control accuracy issues as the rest of the product.


It’s also disappointing to see that 2K China hasn’t done a lot to push the Wii’s graphical capabilities with Don King Boxing. The product looks pretty rough overall; fighters just don’t have the level of detail you look for in a modern boxing game, animation is less fluid than expected, and the whole game has a sort of blurry look to it. Most aspects of the game’s presentation aspects look either simplistic or rushed - there are a few nice licensed music tracks on the menus, if that’s any consolation. The only exception comes from the live action cut-scenes that are featured in the career mode, but those are just recycled from the Xbox 360 game released last year.

Don King’s Boxing could have been a lot better than it is had 2K been prepared to take the game up an extra notch. The game’s biggest problem is the control system, which just is not accurate enough for an entire game to be built around, and as any builder will tell you, if you are trying to build something on a shaky foundation, it is going to fall apart quickly. Accuracy of motion seems to be an issue that affects every boxing game on the Wii, but let’s face it; if a developer can’t bring their product up to the standard of Wii Sports’ boxing game, a small portion of a pack in game released in the Wii’s first year, they really should not bother. Had 2K China gotten the control system right, Don King Boxing might have been worth a look, but for now it is probably best that you forget about it.