Creed: Rise to Glory PS4 Review: "A solid VR Boxing experience that will test your fitness."

Credd: Rise to Glory Ps4 Review

Don't forget to follow us via Twitter or Facebook to be among the first to learn of new reviews and updates.

Patch Version:  1.06

The last time I played a boxing game was on the Nintendo Wii, and that was a good ten or so years ago!  Things have changed a lot since then, including my fitness level, but with the technology that is VR, it’s not surprising that there’s a boxing game to experience in this new age of gaming.  What did surprise me though, is that it’s a Rocky inspired, or in this case Creed inspired game.

I wasn’t born when Rocky initially hit the cinemas back in the late 70’s, but I’ve been a fan of the franchise ever since I watched them and it remains something special for so many reasons that differ from person to person.  I think one aspect that we can all agree on is that the music in the films goes along way at making the experience immersive and emotional.

So when Creed: Rise to Glory boots-up on my PS4 and that giant white glove emerges out of the smoke accompanied with the theme tune that Rocky fans know and love, I'm immediately pumped and ready to see what this game has to offer.

Armed with twin move controllers, the game requiring these in order to play it, I don my gloves and select career mode from the front end menu.

My first choice is to pick between three difficulty options:  Rookie, Pro and Champion.  It doesn’t stipulate what these difference will do nor the impact it will have on the game, but I consider myself around the average setting of fitness, so I plump for Pro and load on in, eager to either hand out a beat down or receive one.

Immediately finding myself in an old style boxing gym I look around and see the typical equipment you would expect to find, but I’m drawn to the structure in the centre.  The ring.

It’s empty though, not a sole but myself do I see.   The only thing of note is an objective marker.  I have the typical amount of freedom to move within the game (a few steps in any direction), but with the guidance of an in game menu instructing me on how to navigate this virtual world using the controllers I make my way towards it.

Suddenly, there’s a phone a call and I hear a voice.  I assume it’s my character talking to, well, I'm not sure exactly, but it seems no one will train me, I assume this is a link to the movie, where my mother doesn't want me to follow in my father's footsteps, so I need a fake name to train under, and with a fake name chosen for me, I'm told someone will meet me soon to begin my journey to greatness.

After a quick load, I’m back in the same gym and a trainer is present who takes me through a few exercises.  The general gist is that every time I throw a punch I will expend stamina, this being called the exhaustion metre.

To regain stamina I must put up my guard and avoid being hit by dodging. Easier said than done, let me tell you!  But you can dodge, weave and sidestep.  This though, not being taught; this I have to learn on my own from seeing what I can do in the ring during my first fight.  This is a game where you need a decent amount of room, that’s for sure.

However, before my first fight begins I’m put through what the game calls a training montage.

It doesn’t last long, around 2 minutes or so, and tasks me with combatting several different boxing exercises, such as the reaction bag, pad training, treadmill to name but a few.  This whole sequence meant to be feel like a Rocky training moment, the music from the film being played as you train as well to add to the experience.

I soon learn that the better I do during these montages, the more stamina I will have when it comes to the proceeding fight.

After a brief load, the lights come up and I’m in a ring with my opponent across from me dancing around and warming himself up.  I must admit, I’m looking forward to this.  And after the announcer… announcers us, the ref does his spiel and then tells us that the fight will begin when we touch gloves.

Initial Score after 2 hrs of play

Full Playthrough Score after 9 hrs of play

Overall Impression

So let’s begin with the fighting system, most of the time your attacks track nicely and are also very responsive.  Where you throw, the punch will land, Jabs especially being quick.  However, uppercuts, hooks and round houses do not seem to be as good, I wasn’t sure if I was throwing them too quickly so slowed my punches down.  It helped a little bit, but I eventually figured out that due to my arm reach, (I have long arms) that my swings were out of the camera’s peripheral vision, so when they did come into view this accounted for the problem.  After a little jiggle with the camera and making sure I stay at the best distance, the tracking handled it self a lot better.  There were times of course where I’d get a little too into it and move too much to the left or right and encounter the problem again, but all in all, this side of the tech is pretty damn good.

Texture wise, it’s really clear, so clear that you can actually see the bruises on your opponent after a few well-placed hits, this, doubling as an indication as to where keep hitting if you want to up your chance of knocking them out.  

Another immersive aspect is when you are fighting in a ring and your opponent is rather large, it is somewhat intimidating as they stand there in front of you.   Looking around and seeing all the people watching the fight is also really cool.  It really does feel as if you are in that ring. 

After a few fights I was hooked; fighting in Creed is amazingly addictive.  The campaign itself building up to the championship bout, which will see you fighting through seven chapters, each chapter pitting you against a different fighter.  These seven fighters all have their own strengths and weaknesses for you to overcome and get harder and harder because of it.

The key to giving you a good chance of success is making sure you finish each exercise montage before the fight to the best of your ability.  This will be important if you stand a chance of winning against the top tier fighters, especially on the highest difficulties as you will need all the in game stamina you can muster.

But here lies the frustrating aspect to the game, and that’s the stamina system.  Don’t get me wrong, after 4-5 rounds on the championship difficulty I’m very fatigued in real life.  My punches are slowing and my reactions are reduced.  It’s great!  However, the game’s stamina system in no way shape or form matches my own real life capabilities.  How could it?  Still, after, two to three combo’s I’m forced to put my guard up and recoup as the in game stamina is totally drained, which is frustrating and very unrealistic.

I’d understand if the A.I was stupid, but on championship level they dodge and block extremely well and are extremely difficult to beat let alone knock out.  So outwitting them and countering them is important.  And let me tell you something, it’s very hard indeed but not for the right reasons.

On the one hand the A.I. is good, really good, not to mention bloody fast, but it’s slow to react if you get too close, and when I’m struggling for in game stamina and dodging and weaving like a madman but still getting hit through my blocks and just waiting for my stamina to return, moving forward to take some of the sting from my opponent’s swings should force him to step back so I can then step back out of range.  However, due to the delayed response of the AI moving away from me you end up inside each other for a time, which is not the best experience.

To be fair, I only had to rely on such tactics in the hardest difficulty against the hardest fighters, but it annoyed me.  It would have been interesting to have a mode where you could turn off the stamina restriction for attacking or at least increase the stamina before you tire.

Aside from the basic movement you have yourself, a couple of steps at most if you want to stay in range of the camera, there’s the advanced movement system, which basically allows you to move around the ring by holding down a button on each controller and rolling your hands the direction you wish to travel.  However, this only allows forward to sideways movement, not backwards, and in the heat of the fight when you need it most, doing this comes at the expense of guarding, a fact the A.I. will take full advantage of and put you on your ass!  Due to this, you’ll probably spend most of your time standing still and duking it out.

These frustrations and limitation aside, the fighting is still enjoyable and addictive, and unless you knock out your opponent or they knock you out, be prepared for 12 tiring rounds that last what felt like varying time frames of two to three minutes.

If you are knocked down, you will experience an out of body moment, where you have to swing your arms to return to your body.  Each time you are knocked out, the distance you need to return being longer. Any more than three KO's will render the fight over.  This goes for your opponent too.

If you do win a fight you will be presented with your scorecard that shows your fighting stats. Nothing particular special but it is interesting to see.

My only other gripes regarding the campaign is that it isn’t really very long, and, if you are fit enough, can get through it in about one to two hours if you don’t lose a single bout.  For the average person though this won’t be possible and you’ll have to take breaks for sure. So this at least will prolong it, but if you can play through it in one go, and at each difficulty, it would technically take about three to six hours minimum, which isn’t all that bad for a VR game in all fairness.

The other aspect that was disappointing was there was no end cutscene or outro after the winning the championship bout. After winning I expected at least something, but it was a total anti-climax, the game just returning me to the main menu.

Freeplay and PVP modes

Aside from the campaign, the game comes with a freeplay and a PVP mode that allows you quicker access to certain aspects you experienced during the campaign.

For example, you can load straight through to any fighter you faced, skipping the training montages and match introductions, allowing you to get to the action much faster.  You can even turn off the rounds if you choose.

This comes in very handy if you are chasing achievements.  Furthermore, you can choose to fight as any fighter and fight any of the campaign fighters in any combination.  You can even fight the man himself, Rocky, or fight as him.

Inside the freeplay menu, it also gives you quick access to the training Montages, which will load you straight through to the one of your choice. Again, handy for achievement hunting.

If you choose the exercises, it will allow you to load into any gym and practice on the nine exercise types.  You even get to see how your performance fared in comparison to any friends who have the game, and also to the global charts.

If you are a regular to my reviews, you will know I rarely venture into PVP and focus primarily on the campaign aspects, but I was having so much fun with Creed that I felt compelled to see how PVP handled.

Choosing PVP will start the search for a hosted game.  If one is not available, you will host and wait for someone to join you.  On average it took around 2-4 mins and on a couple of occasions over five to find someone to fight.  However, instead of just being stuck in a lobby with nothing to do, you are totally free to move about the gym and participate in any of the exercises if you wanted to pass the time.

Once a player has been found and joins your game, you get to choose who to fight as.  You cannot choose a fighter your opponent has chosen, so choosing quickly is advantageous if you have a particular favourite.

Sadly, this experience is dogged because there is no notification that a fighter has joined you, which is especially jarring if you are in the middle of an exercise, because suddenly you will see another fighter standing next to you or in front of you.

It lacks polish for sure, but it’s a not a deal breaker in any shape or form.  Like freeplay, you can turn off the rounds and the introductions and fight in any location too which I appreciated after the wait.

Depending on your latency with the person you are fighting, the fight will handle much like it did in the campaign.  Only once was I fighting against someone with a bad connection that caused a little lag and made the fight a little painful.   However, other than that one experience, it felt really good fighting another real person.  It was more unpredictable than fighting an A.I. opponent and was a real rush.

However, and this is a big HOWEVER, there is no ranking system or scoring system whatsoever, meaning, as far as I can tell, you can fight someone who has never fought before or someone who is a season professional.  This seems like a serious failing for a PVP game to me of this kind.   And if I had to wager is perhaps a reason I was not seeing more people in PVP.  A ranking leaderboard system would really help this mode, and would definitely keep me coming back.

Summary:

Ultimately, this lack of a leader board system is the major failing of Creed, and though it is super fun and addictive to play, eventually the challenge ends, leaving you with nothing to chase. 

Is it worth purchasing? Hell yes, and it has more life expectancy than a lot of other VR games I've played and might see me coming back from time to time, but is it a game that will enter into my normal rotation, no.  Once you've completed the campaign on all the difficulties, there's not really much reason to play it anymore, which is a real shame.  Few VR games grip me like this one did, and above anything else, would have kept me bloody damn fit if there was a reason to play it more regularly.  If you have a few friends that have it too, the PVP side of things will give it a little more legs, but the lack of leaderboard that tracks you bouts and stats only hurts it.  Still, overall, Creed: Rise to Glory is a solid VR Boxing experience that I do recommend.

Found this review useful?  Why not share it using the below links.