2K Sports presents Don King Boxing, a portable spin-off to the Prizefighter games that’s also the first significant boxing title to grace the DS. From the opening of ‘Eye of the Tiger’ playing alongside the King’s flashy smile at the exuberant menus it’s clear to see some polish has gone into bringing boxing to the DS, a more risky platform that both benefits and suffers greatly from the hardware potentials of the portable platform.

2K has taken full advantage of the touch screen in Don King Boxing, with most of the action happening on the bottom screen and playable by the stylus. Using a first person perspective, players can move around the ring with the D-Pad and use the left shoulder button to duck, dodge and weave around an enemy boxer’s blows. When it’s time to throw some blows back, the touch pad can be jabbed or swiped in the appropriate part of the screen to punch at a target on the enemy.

A quick tap will perform a jab punch, while a sweep left or right will throw a heavier blow from whatever side the motion is executed. Swiping upwards can throw the most deadly uppercut move, and when all the action builds up a Power Combo can be unleashed by following tight flashing markers on-screen one after another.

It’s a great control scheme that really suits the sport of boxing, but what lies beneath is a harsh difficulty curve that forces a player to learn the trickier aspects by taking beating after beating. The tutorial has a coach who’s quick to teach you all of the above controls and how they’re used, but not really when, which happens to be the most important thing. Some of the extra training modes can be helpful in teaching attack approaches and hit points, but the single matches provided in the 21 rings in Exhibition mode are best when set on Easy for anyone new to the game.

After a player learns the ropes a Career mode awaits, where a custom boxer can be born into a world of infinitely superior boxers eager to eat an ear or two off any anxious newcomers. Each boxer has individual stats on their strength, dexterity, agility and stamina that can be leveled up via the training mini-games that are gradually unlocked as more fights are won. Unfortunately, until the ability to level up is unlocked, any new player will have seriously underpowered stats compared to all other opponents, making it unnecessarily difficult in the earliest matches of the career.

If the unfair statistical advantage isn’t enough, some of the opponents can also be quite fierce in the ring, throwing out combos and ducking and countering all sorts of blows. The control scheme helps a lot in handling the more intense moments of battle, if only the action wasn’t continually hampered by poor visuals and frame rates that slow everything down and throw off a sequence of attacks. Played without sound, it can be hard to simply tell when a hit lands or misses with jarring player models throwing static animations around that can look terrible. Not to mention the audience, taking the cardboard cutout crowd back to the 90’s.

Despite poor visuals Don King Boxing is still mostly playable, and it really feels like 2K Sports put a lot of effort into a game that pushes the DS just a little too far. A variety of game modes with training mini-games are all easily accessed from the menu that cranks full yet highly compressed songs rarely seen on the DS, and a few in-game announcer voice segments add up to a decent audio package for a boxing game. Included multi-card multiplayer support lets you duke it out with a friend, so there’s a little more to do other than fight after fight with the AI.

Don King Boxing sacrifices little in bringing the boxing experience to the DS. 2K Sports have gone for the full effect first-person technical boxing game and from a gameplay stand-point it mostly works. A strong difficulty curve will force players to learn the finer points of the game and force some patience and dedication. If you can overlook some unpleasant visuals and erratic animations, there’s fun to be had with Don King Boxing.