Ready 2 Rumble: Revolution

With Wii Sports harbouring a vaguely amusing boxing mini-game and EA deciding that the naughty public deserved a Facebreaker-shaped punishment, the resurrection of the classic Ready 2 Rumble franchise was only ever a matter of time. Back when the Dreamcast first launched, the original was among the most entertaining and popular multiplayer releases for some time. Never particularly technical or accurate, the cynical could argue that it’d be perfectly suited to the Wii’s somewhat vague controls. But the truth of the matter is that after playing this, most other Wii games seem clinically precise by comparison.

This control confusion is the greatest of Revolution’s shortcomings, employing a similar set-up to the equivalent fifth of Wii Sports despite a side-on view. Even if you do manage to adjust to this crazy dimension flip, you’ll likely find that the motions themselves are easily confused and unresponsive, with some of the more situational ones such as weaving being next to impossible to pull off with the degree of consistency that would make their inclusion worthwhile. It didn’t even appear to be a learning process as it was in Fight Night Round 3 – several bouts in and we were still chucking out jabs to inadvertently waste perfectly good openings or accidentally charging power punches for no reason. With precision and planning proving impossible, even the classic Wii flail failed to produce any real results, again with characters acting as confused as the player rather than unleashing the barrage of blows you might expect.

And while this messy control system seems leagues away from the original games’ admittedly mash-happy thrills, the characters too have taken something of a wrong turn. The old clichés and stereotypes that were dug up again recently for EA’s horrible Facebreaker are gone, replaced with ‘hilarious’ caricatures and parodies of real-life celebrities. While most are obvious enough (and more often than not excruciatingly poor), others seem to be the result of trying far too hard to disguise the celeb in question and losing all semblance of them in the process. And of course, it doesn’t help that Revolution’s visual style can only be described as scrappy and disproportioned, making the whole thing feel cheap and nasty.

Wii Sports Boxing with a little tweaking and a healthy solo mode could have been a fair prospect and while this seems to be exactly where 2K is with its port of the Don King game, we’re surprised how wide AKI is of the mark. As a cheap and cheerful distraction for the kids, there’s a chance that Ready 2 Rumble’s rebirth might raise the odd playground snigger. But when you can comfortably call Facebreaker a technically superior fighting experience, you know there are serious issues with the game in question.