Waggle Hurts The Affair
From the dustbin of the golden days, Nintendo unearths Little Mac and places him back in the ring to fight Mik...Mr. Sandman. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Not going to lie, no Tyson killed this game for me. I never bought the non-Tyson re-release of the original classic and it's not like Tyson could be worth that much money.
Nintendo has brought back Punch Out, slapped some waggle on it, and we now have their big release for the time being.
For starters, as I said early on, this isn't the same game as Punch-Out...it's what you remember Punch-Out being. That is a key distinction. They do boil the game down to its sheer essence (for starters, it is NOT a boxing game, nor was it ever a boxing game) and build an experience around it. But...has time left the game behind?
You get most of the old favorites. They are, honestly, much tougher (I used to be able to blow through the original without getting hit...I have trouble staying above .500 if I use the Wiimote and nunchuk) but they are fundamentally the same. And that is a bit of a problem.
The first game was about discovering patterns. If you already KNOW the patterns, then where is the challenge? Well, dodging, to me, seemed really dicey and the waggle controls were beyond useless far too frequently. The classic opponents are still pretty fun to fight (Don Flamenco, who used to be the 2d easiest guy in the game...isn't that easy any more)...but the newer additions are just tedious and miserable to deal with.
Let's look at Aran Ryan. For me, this was the breaking point. This fight wasn't fun in any way, shape, or form. It was just a boring grind. Few of the new additions really did much for me.
And that is the problem. Nintendo has their original guys who are still great...but a lot of padding of guys who are not very good. That makes the game that much more of a chore to grind through.
I cannot say the game is awesome. It's not bad...but it's not good. And don't waste your time waggling. It's a pointless endeavor.
