Any name from the wide world of professional sports is usually a welcome addition to any videogame. Not only do monikers such as Tiger Woods and John Madden add a dose of reality, they just give that seal of approval from the people that know the game best. So of course 2K thought the same logic could be applied to making a boxing title with the endorsement of Don King, the renowned agent for decades of great fighters ranging from Mohammad Ali to Mike Tyson. But while the name may add something to the surface, it’s no substitute when it comes to Prizefighter’s underwhelming gameplay inside the ring, and shallow portrayal of the world surrounding it.

The career mode of Prizefighter encompasses a fictional storyline involving you, the player, as an upstart in the boxing world known as “The Kid.” Your rise to the top, whilst coming to terms with the harsh reality of the boxing industry, is told in documentary form through FMV sequences featuring real world fighters and of course the Don himself (who is surprisingly not your promoter, but rather your rival’s). It isn’t such a bad way to tell the story, considering Prizefighter tries to present realistic depiction of the sport.

The first step is to create your custom character in the “fighter factory.” Besides a fairly robust facial creation system, you can also choose your equipment, fighting style, and even entry music, which can be swapped for others during the campaign. Before you begin your first of many fights you’ve got to do what every boxer does: train like you’ve never trained before. Actually, the training is similar to what you have done in prior sports titles, with exercises such as the shuttle run, speed bag, and jump rope that all entail a variety of face button presses. If going through these mini games gives some of you the nauseous feeling of real exercise, there’s always the montage approach through auto training which speeds up the process, but at the cost of earning less skill points.

I don’t believe that after EA’s Fight Night Round 3, every boxing game should have to use two analog stick control to stay current, but Prizefighter’s clunky and sometimes confusing control scheme did make me wish for something more. Both the B and X buttons serve as your left and right jabs, A your straight, and Y the left hook. Pressing either XA or YB simultaneously will result in an uppercut. All of these moves can be modified to target the body using the right trigger, while the left allows you to lean.

Prizefighter’s controls are not necessarily terrible. For example, moving around the ring (left stick) and blocking (right stick) works well, but the disarticulated button and trigger layout will have you mashing away rather than building up any sort of combination or technique found in other boxing games. Be careful not to throw too many punches at once, as your stamina meter depletes whilst you expend energy trying to hurt the other guy, making momentary defensive rests a must. Once you do land a couple of good dingers on your opponents melon, a focus meter will charge, allowing you to let loose a powerful signature move (LB), or you can hit both bumpers to trigger a slow motion mode giving you the edge around your opponent’s blocks.

These functions are nice, but they’re fairly standard in most boxing games, and aren’t enough to make up for Prizefighter’s other problems. As you work your way up the ladder of fighters, none of which are real world pros, the difficulty seems to be a bit inconsistent. On the final tier of fights, I was able to whoop one guy in a single round, but went up to eight rounds, and lost, on the next opponent. Prizefighter also possesses some pretty bad hit detection, and in a boxing game, that kind of issue is as glaring as a baseball player having a steroid injector built into his bat. Several times, I witnessed fighters throwing punches into thin air that still counted as a hit. It isn’t exactly enough to make Prizefighter feel unfair when playing, but brings the depth of the experience down from “boxing videogame” to Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots.