So you just bought your Wii and you're looking through the titles for a game that takes your fancy. You don't want a game dealing with elf boys and wolves, silly mini-games, or bounty-hunting women. You want a game based on a sport - and a real man's sport at that! You want boxing! But Wii Sports wasn't enough for you with its free boxing game that came with the system. You need an even manlier boxing game; one that's based on a Japanese cartoon. You want Victorious Boxers: Revolutions! Look at that cover, with its blue boxing gloves, staring you in the eyes, all intimidating-like. It's pretty much telling you that you must play it, or it'll punch you in the face and knock you out! And that's pretty much how Victorious Boxers: Revolutions is - you bring it home, believing it to be a winner and it gets KO'd in the first round.

Let's get to the most important aspect of any game for the Wii: the controls. In order to have a great boxing game, you're going to need great controls; Wii Sports proves this point and then some. Surely a retail game has to do it just as well - if not better? Well, let me tell you the absolute truth, as blatantly as I can.

IT DOESN'T!

Victorious Boxers will disappoint anyone and everyone with its horrid controls. Even with six control schemes, only the ones that utilize a Gamecube controller or the Classic controller work well. But who wants to play a boxing game on the Wii without motion control? That's completely defeating the point! Yet you won't have any choice in the matter, unless you enjoy punching the air multiple times while trying to get your on-screen character to land a single punch. Unless you enjoy getting beaten down by a flurry of punches by your opponent while you struggle to dodge, block and punch back. Unless you enjoy a truly disappointing experience. To make matters worse, the camera is ridiculous. You would expect it to have your opponent always in focus, but often it turns where you turn and you end up losing sight of your opponent - the end result of this is obviously not in your favor.

The sound in Victorious Boxers is just as disappointing. While boxing, the sounds are of typical boxing fare and the music is pretty good; it's very upbeat and it gets you in the mood to pummel someone. However, drowning all this out is the horrible commentary. The announcer of your fight literally has to say everything that happens, and when your boxing match is as fast as lightning he has trouble keeping up, stopping in mid-sentence to start a new one. Trust me, it's no pleasure to hear the announcer continuously repeating himself and you will probably be on the prowl for spare pencils so you can shove them into your ears instead.

In addition to the boxing, there's a story that explains what is going on in the Fighting Spirit world (the Japanese comic upon which this game is based). It's your choice to watch this snooze fest or skip onto the next fight. If you're a ard-core follower of the Manga (comic) or the animé (television show) then you'll probably want to watch them. On the contrary, if you're just interested in the game for boxing then this is a show that you want to miss. And even if you find the story interesting, the lackluster voice acting will turn you right off. Really, the only information you're missing from not watching the cinematics are typically overdramatic animé scenes, creating bizarre tension between your character and your opponent that will most likely be irrelevant when all you want to do is make him fall flat on his face on the mat. As a person who enjoys animé I just couldn't bare watching these cut scenes.

One thing that I do like about Victorious Boxers however is its look. A very unique art style has been utilized and while it's not going to impress anyone, it does make you believe that you're playing in an interactive cartoon. You're presented with something of a comic-book feel mixed in with cel-shading, which equates to pure 3D cartoony goodness. The animation is nice and fluid and it can be a pleasure to watch. The characters look just like their cartoon counterparts, albeit in 3D. The only real area for complaint is all the jagged edges - and there are plenty of them. They make the game look slightly less appealing, but still don't take away from the fact that the characters look good.

If you've been paying attention to everything I've written - and I hope you have, because there's a quiz coming up after this - you would have realized by now that Victorious Boxers doesn't quite match the… anything of Wii Sports Boxing. Except possibly its replayability. But there's extra emphasis on the 'possibly', the reason being that there are around fifteen boxers, as well as dozens of special attacks, to unlock. The reason there is emphasis on the 'possibly' is because you're going to have to withstand the awful gameplay and ear-wrenching voicework to unlock anything. Also, the unlockables really don't do anything. Sure you can use different characters, but you're limited to characters from the show who really are no different from one another besides their physical appearance. With Wii Sports, your creative juices can wildly flow and you can finally pit yourself against your high school English teacher that failed you! The special attacks here however have pretty much nothing special about them. In order to use them you have to fill a bar but due to the poor game mechanics you won't be finding yourself filling it often, if at all, and thus you won't be finding yourself using any special attacks often, if at all.

In one corner we have a freebie that came with your Wii that not only gives you boxing, but four other sports to play, and pulls them off mostly with flying colors. In the other corner, we have a retail game that lacks in about every department that is crucial to a game being any good at all, and most importantly failing to deliver on the most important aspect of any boxing game for the Nintendo Wii, the motion controls. While Victorious Boxers: Revolution may look better than Wii Sports Boxing, I think if you're going to take the time to admire the pretty pictures during a boxing game then you're going to find yourself on the mat faster than you can say, "Ooh, pretty graphics… hey wait what's that blue glove-like object flying towards my face?" Victorious Boxers: Revolution is a game with plenty of potential that's just devastatingly disappointing in every sense of the word. Don't place your bets on this fighter, because it'll just get KO'd before the bell even rings.

Reviewed by Ryan Brenner for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).