Just tapping with more than one finger will speed up the meter, easily winning the minigame. The other peripheral add-on of a tapping minigame when you go down or clinch (man-hug your opponent to regain health) seems fine, but it’s far too easy to manipulate.
The addition of a “stamina bar” (every thrown punch depletes it and the depleted bar weakens your damage output) helps little, because a few successful blocks or dodges will have you back at full power in no time. Since so many of the decisions are automatic, there’s little in the way of strategy, so relying on an overly simple punch/dodge/block pattern over and over works too well. Although you can control which punch you throw (jab, uppercut, or hook) and which direction (left or right), you can’t control where the punch will land, so the computer decides if your fist moves towards the head or the chest. So since the computer controls all that for you, the punching itself must be really in depth, right? Wrong. The same goes for dodging, since a tap of the dodge button will automatically have you duck, regardless of the incoming swing’s direction. In other words, trying to vary your punches won’t make a difference, because you/your opponent can’t specifically control what part of their body they are protecting. While this is a good, simple control scheme in concept, it’s far from practical in execution.įor starters, there’s no way to block specific punches, since all blocking is automatic while holding the “block” button.
The in-ring action tries to be as basic as possible to “work with” iPhone controls, so all fist movement is controlled by various taps and swipes, and all boxer movement is automatic. The basic gameplay remains constant throughout all the modes, and the same goal drives you along: knock out your opponent by depleting his health bar.
Good presentation alone doesn’t make games automatically winners, though, so how do the game’s fundamentals hold up? Effects like hearing the boxers’ heartbeats when they are weak and having the crowd noise drown out during intense moments are neat little additions. The sound, while not as good as the graphical presentation, does back up the game reasonably well. The advanced engine allows for other effects too, like having lights reflect on the fighters and having cuts appear on their faces as the rounds roll on. The boxers duck, punch, and physically react in a true-to-life way, rocking with each received swing. The Unreal Engine-powered graphics are quite a spectacle, since the engine allows your fighters to look realistic in a manner unheard of in older iOS games. It’s a familiar setup, due to the devs trying to emulate the ever-lusted-after “console-quality on a mobile device”, but does it deliver? Real Boxing, by developer Vivid Games, puts you in the virtual gloves of an up-and-coming boxer, and gives you a handful of modes to battle through: Career (where you level up your boxer’s statistics), Quick Fight (spar with AI opponents), and Multiplayer.