Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2

THE BAD:
clumsy game play

SUMMARY:
Okay so when I heard that this game had the King of Pop himself as a playable character, I had to pick it up. I found the graphics and animation in this puppy excellent. The voice acting is also very well done. The characters are diverse and varied in appearance and manor. Playing each of the characters is a laugh riot, testing their taunts and sending them into "Rumble Mode" is just loads of fun to watch and hear. Although you should shortly get sick of the phrase "Let’s get ready to rumble!" because the soundbyte is used more often than the punch sound effect. Sadly the characters aren’t the only thing to laugh at in this game, the gameplay itself is laughable in a frustrating way. Defense is a difficult thing to accomplish in this style of fighter, and you’ll spend most of your time getting beat down by the computer. I played through it once on Easy just to unlock Michael Jackson as a playable character, but I couldn’t bring myself to play the single player game more than that. I also tried my hand at the two player game, which had all the frustrations of the single player game, except for now TWO gamers were throwing their controllers at the screen. Admitably this is a ‘realistic’ fighter, and I’m just not a fan of realism in my video games, so maybe I’m bias. If you happen to like the style this game is forged in, it’s probably one of the best out there. The graphics are smooth, the sound fun, and the tone humorous. There are tons of extra fighters to unlock, encouraging players to try their hand at the single player game over and over again.