Punch-Out!! Review For Wii
It’s hard to find anyone who owned a Nintendo Entertainment System that doesn’t have the original Punch-Out!! in their Top Ten. The game is rightfully held in high regard among console gamers because of its intensely challenging and satisfying gameplay. It’s also one of the most difficult action games to master because of its dependence on pattern recognition and almost split-second response on the controller. Nintendo’s franchise has been in unofficial retirement for nearly 15 years now; that’s the last time the publisher wheeled out a version, in this case Super Punch-Out on the Super NES. Two Nintendo consoles have past since then without a true sequel, and while we’ve been content with releases of the classic games on the Wii’s Virtual Console, the idea of a next generation Punch-Out!! has been bouncing around the wishlists of Nintendo fanboys for years. Yours truly included.
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After a decade and a half, Nintendo’s finally revived its old-school arcade boxer with the help of developer Next Level (Mario Strikers Charged), and the studio absolutely nailed the essence that made the original such a hot property on the NES back in 1987. Everything that made Punch-Out!! a classic on the 8-bit system has been recreated in a beefier current generation game production, but it’s clear that fans of the original release were involved in the Wii version’s creation.
Punch-Out!! isn’t a boxing simulator, and it never makes any attempt at trying to be one. This is not the Wii version of Fight Night, so if you’re looking to realistically pound some professional boxers into submission I suggest you put the box back on the shelf and walk away. Of course, if you do this you’ll be missing out on one of the most challenging old-school inspired action games available.
Punch-Out!! is essentially a “rebooting” of the classic NES original, a title inspired by the arcade version of the same name, as well as its sequel that Nintendo released before the NES console. In Punch-Out!!, you’re “Little Mac,” a fighter rising through the ranks of the fictitious World Video Boxing Association. Each of the 13 fighters within the WVBA are over-the-top caricatures (read borderline stereotypes) of cultures and regions. You’ve got Glass Joe, from France, who crumples to the floor if a housefly lands on his chin, the fish-loving lumberjack Canadian Bear Hugger, and thirsty Soda Popinski from Russia who gets his super strength from a bottle of “carbonated beverage.”
If these names sound familiar, they should: they’re all characters from existing Punch-Out!! games, either on the NES version or the Super NES series. There are two different sides of the coin here for Punch-Out!! fans: these characters are pretty much what made Punch-Out!!, so their inclusions are expected. And for those who’ve never plowed through any Punch-Out!! games, these players won’t care about a roster recycling. On the flipside seeing the same characters makes the Wii version lose a sense of discovery; the only new fighter is one called Disco Kid, and thanks to the developer’s attention to Punch-Out!! detail, he fits into the Punch-Out!! universe like a glove…pun intended. But working through the ranks, it’s hard not to wish that there were fresher faces to fight, instead of being faced with the familiar, done up in 3D. It’s almost as if Next Level was afraid that it was going to dishonor Nintendo’s Punch-Out!! by designing new fighters that weren’t conceived by the original, internal team.
And it’s not because of laziness, because it’s clear that Next Level poured every ounce of effort it could into building an excellent, contemporary Punch-Out!! experience. First of all, the gameplay is absolutely spot-on to the classic material: Punch-Out!! is all about counter attacking, reading what the opponent does before he does it, and dodging out of the way to put him off-guard for a flurry of jabs and body blows. Each of the 13 fighters has his own style of fighting and attack patterns, and through trial and error (and many punches to the face) you learn how best to approach their different jabs, roundhouses, and uppercuts. Each fighter in the rankings gets increasingly faster and stronger with wilder tricks up their sleeves, and by the time you get to the World Circuit each victory feels like a mission well accomplished, a satisfying conclusion to all that control and determination.
The game controls in a variety of ways: either with the nunchuk or without. Using the nunchuk turns on motion controls: punching is handled via thrusting the left or right hand while dodging, blocking, ducking and changing high and low hits is all mapped to the analog stick. When you earn Star Punches by hitting the opponent at strategic moments you can activate these special moves with a tap on a button. You can choose to use the Wii Fit balance board to dodge and duck by leaning or thrusting downwards, but the less said about this option, the better. I will say that it’s nice that the developers made it easy to disable it after you’ve enabled it, because it’s just a control device that doesn’t work for the quick responses that Punch-Out requires.
Because the game mimics pretty much the entire NES design, Punch-Out!! is best played without the nunchuk. Without the plug-in peripheral you hold the Wii remote like an NES controller, with the 1 and 2 buttons handling the punches, the D-pad taking care of the dodges and ducks, and the big fat A button used to activate any earned Star Punches. While motion control might seem like a good idea against weaklings like Glass Joe, once you get higher in the rankings you’ll find that button presses are far more responsive than Wii Remote/Nunchuk thrusts…even if they feel more like actual punches do.
Where Next Level put most of its effort is in the game’s visuals. Back in the classic Punch-Out!! days the graphics weren’t much more than two-frame animations for the different attacks, a technique that worked surprisingly well considering the limitations of the system hardware. For Punch-Out!! on the Wii, Next Level created fully 3D versions of the characters and animated them accordingly. There’s a real professional polish to each of the fighters in the game: they all move with incredible fluidity and lip sync all the dialogue provided to them, all using in-engine assets. Between circuits you’re given some well-rendered cutscenes that make reference to Little Mac’s training back on the NES, but the same attention wasn’t applied to the opponents’ backstories: before a fight you’re given four stillframe cutscenes that tell their tale. These comic panels are admittedly painted with incredible detail, but they seem like a slight shortcut when compared to Little Mac’s extended video sequences. Yeah, it’s picking nits.
The real worry is whether Punch-Out!! still has what it takes to attract a new generation of gamers. After all, the core mechanics were conceived on basic two-button controllers more than 20 years ago, and those mechanics haven’t changed at all in the two decades since Punch-Out!!’s birth. It’s hard to approach Punch-Out!! without some sense of nostalgia, but I will say that the game doesn’t miss a beat in giving players a challenge that’s uniquely Punch-Out. I guess it depends on what newbies expect out of a Nintendo boxing game, and I can’t imagine anyone walking away from a fresh take disappointed, unless they truly expect some sort of realistic boxing simulator for their Wii. And it’s easy to see Punch-Out!! in its original context because both the NES classic and its SNES sequel are available for play through the system’s Virtual Console.
And even though 13 fighters seems a little short, the fact that you’ll face them at least a second time with completely different moves and strategies – and at a much faster speed – means that there’s a good amount of gameplay here. And this isn’t including the Exhibition Mode that challenges players with specific goals for each opponent to unlock additional content. Some of these challenges range from damn hard to freakishly difficult, and I can imagine the message boards are going to be set alight with people wondering how the heck to knock out Glass Joe in only five punches, or punch the crown right off of King Hippo’s head.
Punch-Out!! has always been a single player experience, but gamers have wished for a versus option for years. Next Level has answered these calls with a Head-to-Head mode that’s pretty clever in incorporating the Punch-Out!! mechanics that have always intended on being human vs computer. In this mode, each player controls Little Mac in a split-screen view. Players attack and dodge each other using the standard Little Mac moves, trying to land a punch that’ll steal a bit of “mojo” from the other person. When that meter fills, Little Mac becomes Giga Mac – essentially a usual, over-the-top Punch-Out opponent – and the screen shifts to a single view where the other player fights in traditional Punch-Out!! fashion. This head-to-head mode is fun with a good sense of strategy…if a just a little stiff in control due to the limitations of the Punch-Out mechanics. It won’t sell you on buying a copy of Punch-Out!! , but it’s a nice supplement to the single player component.
What’s baffling is the fact that Punch-Out!! doesn’t support any sort of online component. With Next Level’s work on one of the first Wii games to hit the internet (Mario Strikers Charged), you would think that it would apply that networking knowledge in getting the two player component working over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Not supported. And also not supported are worldwide leaderboards to let players show off their best times and knockouts against the different characters. A huge opportunity missed. Any sort of record you earn in Punch-Out!! stays firmly in the system that you performed it on, and while we can live with the developer’s decision, it’s just flat-out disappointing that Nintendo decided to skip over any sort of online option in the Wii version.
Closing Comments
But I’m not going to let the lack of online kill the experience for me: Punch-Out!! on the Wii is a fantastic recreation of the NES original and retains every element that makes the game one hell of a challenge and insanely addictive. The Wii version also looks fantastic, with animation that puts a level of attention to character personality that’s rarely seen in a Nintendo first-party title. I’m thrilled that the formula’s been retained but I do wish there were more original characters to the roster. Luckily the second half of the game brings back that sense of discovery with character upgrades that change things considerably. Punch-Out!! nuts have nothing to worry about, and I think that the game design holds up really well, even for players who aren’t familiar with the brand’s unique offering of pattern-focused gameplay.
Guitar Hero Smash Hits
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When the original Guitar Hero hit the PS2, it was clear that the music genre that we’d known for a while, dominated by the likes of Dance Dance Revolution, would be changed forever. Guitar Hero II was met with even more enthusiasm as people who’d played the first for hundreds of hours wanted more, and it indeed delivered.
And then Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the ’80s was released. And then Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. And then Guitar Hero Aerosmith. And then Guitar Hero: World Tour. And then Guitar Hero: Metallica. And now we have Guitar Hero: Smash Hits, to be followed up later this year with Guitar Hero: Van Halen, Guitar Hero V and Band Hero. Oh, and then there’s the offshoot DJ Hero.
And let’s not forget about Rock Band. And Rock Band 2. And the forthcoming The Beatles: Rock Band. Or the three Guitar Hero DS games. Oh, and Rock Band Unplugged on the PSP.
I think you get my point. By my count, I’ve listed nearly 20 titles right there, and it looks like we’re only just getting started. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably played at least a couple of these games, and they’re probably starting to grow a little stale. Or if, like us, you’ve played them all, a lot stale.
So that brings us to the version, I’ll say, at hand, Guitar Hero: Smash Hits. The game is a compilation of some of the best tracks from Guitar Hero 1, 2, 3, Rock the ’80s and Aerosmith. The song list is great, to be sure, though there are certainly some we would drop in favor of others (where’s Clapton, for instance?). But on the whole, it’s a great setlist.
But, we’ve played all of these songs before. It’s possible that you’re relatively new to the franchise and in that case this will all be new to you. But whatever the case may be, it doesn’t change the fact that this is simply a rehash of existing songs with the only “new” thing being the ability to play them as a full band. While that’s cool and all, this really should have been DLC or even multiple track packs.
The game’s main feature set is largely the same as Guitar Hero World Tour, with a couple of the additions seen in Guitar Hero: Metallica tossed in, such as the Expert+ setting for drummers on select songs (roughly about half of them it seems). It forgoes the gig-based structure of World Tour and instead goes by the setlist-based setup of GH: Metallica, where you unlock the next handful of songs (and their corresponding venue) by accruing a certain number of stars. While the requirements in GH: Metallica were pretty low (I “beat” the game with only 40% complete), you’ll need much more to move on here, which I’m happy to see as it means you have to work harder to progress. But the result is the same where you can skip songs that you’re not good at (or don’t like) and still make it through the game, which is nice.
While the setlist is indeed great as a whole (featuring nearly 50 songs, all of which are master tracks, though two of them are live versions), there are three main problems that I have with the songs. Firstly, the note structure has changed on seemingly every track. If you’ve memorized these songs in other games, you’ll find that you have to play them differently here, and many times it’s not for the better. Note progressions sometimes don’t make sense when compared to how you’d play it on guitar, and things just generally feel “off” if you’ve played them before.
Secondly, the changes to the note structure sometimes introduce the purple lines/notes for using the touch pad on the newest guitar. You can play these notes without strumming, and unlike hammer-on/hammer-off notes, if you miss one, it doesn’t break your string (in other words, you can play a note just by tapping even if you missed the one before). In these cases, it makes these sections way easier than they were originally as you can just tap your way through a solo instead of having to pair proper strumming with the notes. Even in situations where the purple notes weren’t added in, many solos are now just giant runs of hammer-on notes, which make them a lot easier to hit.
The result here is that I’m now able to breeze through solos and sections of songs that I used to struggle with. While I had a hard time getting through the opening to “Through the Fire and Flames” on Expert, as the entire opening is now comprised of purple notes, I can tap my way through and usually come out still in the green. So it’s now no longer a question of, “Can you beat song X on Expert?”, but rather, “Can you beat song X on Expert in Game X?” because many of them are way easier here.
My third complaint is that some of the mixes sound off. Queens of the Stone Age’s “No One Knows” is a good example – the guitar is drowned out (even when you’re only playing guitar), the bass is cranked up and the whole thing sounds too boomy. I’ve heard similar complaints in the office about other bands that I’m not constantly running on my iPod, but it’s clear that something isn’t right here. When you’ve heard a song a hundred times and the mix is slightly different, you can tell immediately. When it’s way off like it is here, you don’t even want to play it. Now, that’s not to mean that the whole thing sounds bad – I didn’t notice a problem with most of the songs here. But if you’re thinking about buying the game for one or two songs in particular, buyer beware.
One odd thing that I found with regard to the Career mode is that when you start up the game for the first time, you create a logo and set your band name. However, you can’t do this separately when you’re playing as a band. The interface for this in World Tour was convoluted, but it worked. However, you don’t even get the option here. One problem with this is that you can’t have two active bands at a time, so if you like to play with different sets of friends separately, you can’t really do that. Granted, the progression is very simple and you’re not building up fans or anything of that nature (sadly), but still, you can’t have the reward of working through the tracks with more than one group of people at a time. I guess you could load up a different account/save and work from that (which is trickier on the Wii than the PS3 or 360), but that’s a back-door solution to this issue (though, admittedly, some people will never care about this).
One carryover from Guitar Hero: Metallica is that every song is immediately unlocked and available for play in the Quick Play mode. Love it or hate it, you can jump right into the hardest tracks right from the start.
One last, very important thing that I need to mention here is that the game is as standalone as it gets. It does not support any of the DLC from World Tour, nor even have the option for playing downloaded tracks at all. It does allow you to play stuff made in GH Tunes, but I think most people tried that a couple times and forgot about it. While all of this is par for the course on the PS2, it’s a crying shame that nothing you’ve downloaded for the other Guitar Hero titles can be played here, and this content can’t be moved over to any other game in the series. At this point in time, why would you pony up for songs (which we’ve played before) that you can only play on this one disc?
Closing Comments
Guitar Hero: Smash Hits is the definition of “milking”. Sure, the setlist is great, and if you’ve somehow never played these tracks before, they’re a ton of fun. Even if you have played them all, being able to sit down at the drums or try out your vocal abilities with them is great. However, there are a number of presentation issues that bother me (though they may not bother very casual players), and the fact that this wasn’t either DLC or released as multiple track packs is a big mistake.
The Ratings:
7/10 The Presentation: The progression works, but it’s very simple for this day and age. Why can’t you customize individual bands?
7.0 The Graphics: The animations are only passable, and while the visuals work well enough, they’re nothing to write home about.
8.0 The Sound: The song list is great, but some of the tracks have mixes that sound off and, in some cases, just downright bad.
7.0 The Gameplay: We’ve played these songs before, though tackling them as a band is nice. The note structures and easier level of difficulty is not good, however.
6.0 The Lasting Appeal: While it’s still a great party experience, I can’t score it higher here given that these tracks can’t carry over, nor does your existing DLC. Where’s the cross-game love?
7.0 Overall score
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