Hello Enthusiasts,
Are you ready to go the distance with Apollo? Do you feel like you have the eye of the tiger that you'll need to beat Clubber Lang? Do you feel...American enough to beat Ivan Drago? I'm also not too sure what I would say for fighting Tommy Gunn, but you get the idea. Today's review is on the 2002 movie tie-in, Rocky, released on GameCube, PlayStation 2, XBOX, and the Gameboy Advance.
The story is pretty much what you would expect it to be. You play as the Italian Stallion, working your way through the first five movies. There are more fights in this game than there are in the movies, but most of the extra fight are names you would have heard in the films, like Mac Lee Green , the fighter that Apollo Creed was supposed to fight in the first movie before deciding on Rocky.
There are training opportunities between each fight, with the chance to increase two of Rocky's stats. You can work on his strength, speed, stamina, movement, and determination, each one having it's own assigned minigame. If there are any training minigames that you're just not good at, you can auto train and get 5 points added to that stat (the most you can earn in a minigame is 10 points). I, for one, was good at all but the stamina training, which involved making Rocky jump rope, so that became an auto train for me.
It does feel great to go through the big moments in Rocky's career, fighting for the title and working to keep it. There are original bits of sound used during the cut scene clips and when fighters taunt each other in the ring. Several of the cut scenes are also direct recreations of scenes from the movies, which is a nice touch the get the player more involved. The fighting controls are pretty solid, with multiple types of punches, dodges, and blocks. There are a few different locations that Rocky travels to throughout the game, though they will repeat as Rocky's career progresses. The graphics for the game aren't bad, but they also aren't anything special for the time; the game looks like it fits in with a lot of the other games that were released in the early 2000's.
Much like Rocky's career, there are some low points to this game as well, the largest of which is the opponent's AI. The fights in this game are pretty easy on every level. I beat this game on easy, medium, and hard (though not in that order), and I did not lose a fight during any of my runs of the game. That is a feat that even Rocky in the movies couldn't pull off, since he lost to Clubber Lang the first time. Outside of the enemy AI though, I also take issue with some of those cut scenes. Yeah, they use some original sound from the films, but I didn't feel like the short scene from every movie showed the most important part of the movie. For example, the Rocky IV scene shows Ivan Drago hitting the machine that measures his strength, he kills Apollo (spoilers I guess), and then the fight starts. No arguing with Adrian, no training montage, they didn't even include a short clip of Rocky tearing down the picture of Drago off of his mirror. I feel like they wanted to take as little time as possible on these clips, but I would have appreciated just a little bit more, with the option to skip them still remaining for those of us who beat the game a couple of times.
Overall, this game is fun, but easy. Unlocking all of the fighters (including the statue of Rocky and Mickey) is rewarding, but the game rushes through its enjoyable cutscenes, and therefore source material. Despite any negatives, it's a fun game, otherwise I wouldn't have gone through every difficulty. It's certainly above average, but I wouldn't call this a must-own for anybody with a compatible system.
I give the 2002 game Rocky a 7 out of 10.
Sincerely,
The Bored Enthusiast
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