Rocky

Pros

• Re-creates the look and feel of the Rocky movies
• Multiplayer capability
• Features all of Rocky's movie adversaries

Cons

• AI quickly becomes predictable and easy
• Scoring system has an 8-point minimum per round
• Complicated training exercises can limit progress

Playing on Movie Mode is a lot of fun. It is cool to see scenes from the Rocky movies and hear audio clips. And in the gameplay, it is really fun to taunt your opponents with actual Sylvester Stallone audio clips. (I taunted Clubber Lang several times in the game on purpose, just so it would be like the movie :) It also has taunting audio clips for Apollo, Clubber Lang, Drago, and Tommy Gunn.

It feels like you are in the movie while you are working out with Mickey. Then later Apollo becomes your work out guy. It is a great game. Man, Ivan Drago was so hard to beat! "I will break you." Well, you didn't buddy!

You MUST master the training games if you want to be able to beat the tough guys later in the game. This can be really frustrating, and it is tempting to use Autotrain exclusively. But you are going to stink later on if you do that. Here are some tips for getting a "Champ" rating every time:

1. Strength - This one is easy. Just concentrate on hitting the right button combinations. Don't worry about your speed. You'll get a perfect score.

2. Speed - The small punch bag is tricky at first, but this one CAN be mastered, no sweat. Just start out tapping the button slowly, getting into a rhythm. Watch wear your gauge is, and slowly start speeding up your tapping (not too fast) to move it up. When you have to change hands or change to doubles, you will momentarily drop down in speed. The way to compensate for this is to speed up on the new button for a few moments, then as you see your gauge start to go up, then drop your speed back down, then work it back up slowly. Before long, you'll be getting +10 every time!

3. Determination - One way I found to get a really good score on this one is to use your left thumb for the B button and your right thumb for the A button. Just tap them alternately as quickly as you can to do the situps, and hold down X when the trainer chops you. +10 Determination, no problem.

4. Movement - The heavy bag is intimidating because it looks like you can never win, but there is a secret. Just do your super punch over and over. Forget doing combos, forget doing anything else. Unlike the real fight, in training you have unlimited super punches. So tap that R button then tap X. Do it over and over, and stay in the green zone. Every super punch earns you 320 points. Get over about 9750, and you've got a perfect score!

5. Stamina - Rope Skipping. This is tricky, but it CAN be done. Just watch the green light, and tap the A button in sequence with the flashing. Push down on the control pad to get a trick going. It will show you the sequence. To make it work, substitute the different buttons in the sequence in place of your regular rhythm with the A button. Be sure to keep the exact same rhythm, and you will complete the trick. At first I thought that you were supposed to hit all those buttons in between jumps. Not so. You hit those buttons in place of your jumps, and it works.

This is a fantastic game. The multiplayer exhibition fights are really good. You can choose to be any of the players you have unlocked. You can even play with up to 15 human players at once in the knockdown tournament! That part is really great if you can get a bunch of friends together.

When you beat the Movie Mode you unlock the Knockdown Tournament mode. You can unlock different tournament levels by beating the tournaments. Beating the Movie Mode on Contender and Champ Levels will unlock the Rocky Statue and Mickey. That scrawny old man still packs a punch!

Be sure to watch for Clubber Lang's intro where he punches the camera...

Pros:
1. Large selection of boxers to play with.
2. Smart AI that is very tricky.
3. Great graphics and sound effects.
4. Excellent and intuitive play control.
5. Good use of movie license.
6. Fun to see blood splatter on the screen when you hit the guy, and blood stains stay on the mat as well.
7. Good challenge.
8. Great boxer intros and music that is unique for each boxer.
9. Very replayable.

Cons:
1. The crowd cheers need a little more "oomph" behind them (sounds like not enough people cheering).
2. We don't get to hear "Eye of the Tiger" anywhere in the game.
3. We don't get to see Thunder Lips, a.k.a. Hulk Hogan.
4. While all boxers can taunt, only 5 of them have audio clips.

Eye of the Tiger - It's the ITALIAN STALLION!!!


Getting Strong now..   December 16, 2003
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I bought this game and Need For Speed Underground last weekend. I can't stop playing Rocky though. It was only $15 at BestBuy. I took a risk of buying it without renting or reading about it and it turned out to be my favorite Gamecube game yet! Really fun! Better than Punch-Out for Nintendo 8-bit. My only complaints about it, is that I'm going to wear my thumbs off from playing it. You'll get real sore. The training sessions in movie mode are possible and they get you more points if you do them instead of that autotrain. The movie parts of the game are comical to me. It's also a two player game, where you can box your friends or participate in a tournament with them. Etc.. etc.. Awesome game!


A little, uh, Rocky.   September 9, 2003
Matthew Ivester (Cambridge, MA)
Sorry, couldn't resist.

Rocky is actually a pretty decent boxing game. The characters look good, the controls are actually fairly tight and feature a wide variety of moves, and the storyline follows the Rocky films pretty well. The whole thing is pretty entertaining.

For a while. Then you start seeing the flaws.

First, the AI falls for simple combinations way too easily. You can actually go through pretty much the entire game doing the "jab,jab" combo over and over -- the CPU will either block it (90% chance, which slowly wears him down), try to punch you and take a jab in the face (5% chance), or actually hit you with a jab, from which you will probably recover fast enough to hit him with your next punch (5% chance). If you avoid the combos that the AI just can't deal with, it's actually challenging and fun -- but that's a pretty big hole to avoid falling into.

Second (and perhaps more fatally), the game doesn't make enough use of its movie licensing. The core gameplay is actually pretty good, but if you changed the characters' names and looks, it certainly wouldn't feel much like a Rocky game. They use a few short snippets of "Gonna Fly Now", but that's it! Where's the symphonic score? Where's "Eye Of The Tiger"? Where's that song from Rocky IV that Survivor sings while Rock's getting ready to fight the big Russian dude? Furthermore, the atmosphere of the game just doesn't seem to keep up with the storyline -- it always sounds (and often looks) like there are about 20 people actually cheering for you -- they could use some much better crowd audio and visual effects. Compare this with something like Def Jam Vendetta, where they manage to do this much more effectively. It's particularly noticeable in some of the larger arenas, where you can see that there are really about a dozen "people" that are just copied over and over (and move in perfect synchrony). For a movie series whose high point was always the dramatic conflict in the ring, the game just doesn't capture it.

Sadly, I can't recommend this one for more than a rental. If you really like it (and you might), you can probably get it cheap now. But hey, at least it's better than most movie translation efforts you see...