Punch Out!! Wii Review

Mac’s move set is very small. Jabs and body blows from each hand round out standard attacks while you can accumulate stars to pull a special attack out. Stars are gained by punching your opponent at a certain point (typically when they glow yellow). Mac can hold up to three stars, and when you use a special punch, it depletes all of them. You can do a minor one with one star or a devastating blow with three. The catch though? If you are hit even once, your stock is depleted.

Along with the stars and energy, Mac also has a stamina gauge that decreases each time you fail to make a hit-when that hits zero, Mac is left powerless until he can dodge some moves and regain some stamina.

The game controls in one of two ways. You can either break out the motion controls and the Wii balance board or go old school and play it like it was on the NES. While the motion controls sound inviting and could bring this to the party scene, they are implemented poorly. That isn’t saying they don’t work, you can easily make it through the Minor Circuit using the Wii motion controls and be fine. Once you hit the later fighters however, the quick dodging that is required just can’t be done with the Wii’s controls. Playing the game old-school is the only way you are going to finish it-we aren’t kidding.

The game offers three modes of play. Career, Exhibition and Head to Head. Career mode is the real meat and potatoes of the game, and if you’ve played the original Punch Out!! on the NES-expect to breeze through the game in one sitting. The fighters are essentially carbon copies of their NES counterparts all the way up to methods of defeating them. While several have new moves-if it worked in the NES version, chances are it’s going to work here. Bald Bull still gets knocked down if you hit him on his second hop during the ‘Bull Charge,’ Piston Honda still gets knocked out if you nail him at the right moment during his Piston Punch, Mr. Sandman can only be knocked around with body blows until later-same things different packaging.

After you beat the game once, the second “half” begins. You now are tasked to defend your title, this time with everyone having changed their tactics. Body blows aren’t as useful against King Hippo unless you take that manhole off his belly, and Piston Honda has a significant speed increase. While the second run adds for more replayability, one can’t help but think that some of the boxers with minor improvements could have been replaced with brand new boxers altogether. Regardless, beating the second round of career mode is satisfying and just like the games before it-grants bragging rights.

After you beat both modes, Mac is randomly given opponents and must survive without losing three times.

Exhibition takes the characters from Career Mode and gives you certain conditions for defeating them like say, knock a guy out in five punches. It’s very addicting even if it may feel thrown on, and adds a lot of replay value for someone trying to find more to do after they squashed their competition in career mode.

Head to Head is the games multi player component. Both players are handed the controls to Little Mac and are trying to get his alter ego Giga Mac, an Incredible Hulk rip-off to show up and beat the hell out of you. While Head to Head isn’t disappointing, it would have been nice to have more characters to select in this mode. While it may be unbalanced, the joy of taking control of King Hippo would be too good to ignore. The fact there is no online multi-play isn’t really a deterrence. The Head to Head aspect makes for a good party game, but never gets to the degree of a game like Halo.