When Midway launched the original Ready 2 Rumble Boxing on
the Dreamcast, its mind-blowing graphics and smooth animation sold skeptics on
the power of Sega’s next-gen console. The game harkened back to the glory days
of arcade boxing, and provided a simple yet fun gameplay experience with
memorable characters and entertaining multiplayer. Now, Atari hopes to bring
back the good times with Ready 2 Rumble Revolution, an all new
motion-controlled slugfest built exclusively for the Wii. Unfortunately for
fans, a lot has changed since the old days.
The roster of this title is made
up of 18 boxers that are loosely based on popular celebrities. These ‘parodies’
include doppelgangers of Jack Black, David Beckham, John Travolta, James Brown,
Brad Pitt, and Antonio Banderas, each with a super-deformed look that
accentuates their defining characteristics. The major problem is that the
developer’s forgot to include any semblance of humor in these imitations. Sure,
the Simon Cowell character has a British accent and a big mouth, but that seems
to be where the joke ends.
The gameplay of Revolution relies almost entirely on
motion control. The lengthy tutorial will fill you in on the intricacies of the
fighting system, which has the Wii remote controlling your boxer’s right glove
and the nunchuck controlling his left. There are a surprisingly large amount of
punch types for each hand, all of which are executed through a different
controller motion. There are also five different block or juke moves that can be
used to avoid the wrath of your opponent, as well as the special RUMBLE attacks
which can be triggered after you fill up the on-screen meter. If you think that
this sounds a bit too complicated for an arcade boxing title, you are absolutely
right. Unfortunately, things only get worse once you leave the tutorial.
To put it plainly, the motion
controls of Ready 2 Rumble Revolution are horrific. There are just too
many functions available to you, and none of them are easy to pull off when a
lumbering behemoth is charging your way. Some of the punches are simple, like
swinging your remote upward to do an uppercut. The problem here is that the
boxer’s animation takes awhile to finish the move, so you have to either hold
off on your next attack until he is done or just crazily swing the controller so
that he launches the next swipe as soon as possible. Neither of these options
produces fun.
There is also a baffling lack of
strategy to the game, and you will find that the best way to win is to wildly
throw your arms through the air as if you were swatting imaginary flies. The
more damaging maneuvers—like the hard jab—are nearly impossible to execute
in-game. To perform this, you have to swing the Wii remote to the right, wait
for the character to cock his arm back, and then thrust the remote forward to
complete the shot. Of course, this takes awhile to do, leaving you open for just
enough time for your opponent to slug you in the face. Had the attacks been more
Wii Sports Boxing-like in their simplicity, Ready 2 Rumble’s
gameplay might have been fine. In its current form, the game will do nothing but
fill you with disdain for its creators.
While the controls are
frustrating enough to keep you away, the AI contributes to this by sending you
into a furious rage. Since the computer-controlled opponents don’t have to deal
with the same motion control problems that you do, they are usually able to
weave around your attacks and execute all of the more complex maneuvers with
perfect efficiency. Things get no easier once you activate your RUMBLE power,
which supercharges your punches for a limited amount of time. While these shots
should be able to level your combatant, most of them will be instantly blocked
by the omniscient AI. I played through the game on Normal, and my constant
losses in the first ten minutes of play left me with no desire to continue. That
might be a new record.
Visually, the game looks
marginally better than the 1999 Dreamcast original. The models all have a weird
‘caricature’ design to them that hovers somewhere between ugly and unpleasant.
While they have some nice detail–like the jiggle of David Hasselhoff’s belly
fat—the characters lack any defining personality or play style that would make
you want to choose them. The environments are generic as well, each looking like
a real boxing or wrestling arena with no flair or pizzazz to them. Also worth
noting is the crowd, which is made up of about six blurry people repeated
several hundred times, all doing the same animations at once.
The audio department doesn’t
fare much better, as the tunes sound more suited for Peggle than a boxing
match. Michael Buffer introduces each fight with his signature catch phrase, but
it is the same every time and not interesting in the least. The sound effects do
the job, but don’t stand out in any particular way. The faux-celebrity voice
actors tend to sound nothing like their real life counterparts, relying more on
bad accents than witty dialogue.
It is unclear to me who the
audience for R2RR was. The celebrity parodies lead me to believe that it
was made for the casual gamer, but the complicated controls and baffling
gameplay make me think otherwise. With Punch-Out! arriving in a few short
weeks, there is no real reason for Ready 2 Rumble: Revolution to exist at
all, and I implore everyone to stay as far away from this palooka as possible.
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Review Scoring Details for Ready 2 Rumble: Revolution |
Gameplay: 2
The gameplay amounts to ferociously throwing your arms through the air as the
unreliable motion controls keep you from ever pulling off specific punches.
Playing it once will leave you with no urge to come back for more.
Graphics: 4.5
The character models are nicely crafted despite their lack of artistic flair,
but the arenas are bland and the crowd is abhorrent. When taken as a whole, it
looks marginally better than the decade old original.
Sound: 3.5
Michael Buffer does his best Michael Buffer impersonation, but the rest of the
voice acting is painful. The music sounds like something you would hear during
an infomercial, and the sound effects are acceptable but nothing special.
Difficulty: Hard
Unlike a human player, the AI can read exactly what moves you are about to pull
off and blocks them with Neo-like speed and flexibility. Battles will range from
boring to maddening depending on how perfect the opposition decides to be.
Concept: 6.0
There are a ton of modes to play, including an Arcade mode, a Tournament mode,
offline multiplayer, and a Championship mode that has you lead a new fighter to
future greatness. There are also plenty of boxers to unlock and decent creation
tools that you can use to make your own character. The only thing that R2RR is
truly lacking is any semblance of fun.
Multiplayer: 2.0
Revolution plays a bit better with friends than it does solo, but not by much.
Once your buddies learn that RUMBLE moves can be blocked, the gameplay breaks
down and becomes an exercise in tedium.
Overall: 2.5
When the Wii first hit store shelves, some purists worried that motion control
would be shoehorned into games that didn’t need it, while others believed that
playing a Wii title would amount to nothing more than flopping your hands around
aimlessly. Ready 2 Rumble Revolution shows that both of these can be true in
some cases, amounting to nothing more than exhaustion and anger for all those
unfortunate souls who play it. Avoid at all costs.
