Head Boxing Review
For the mobile game “Head Boxing”, we give you a full review for game play, art & sound, story and value for the money . Enjoy this Head Boxing Review by Brandon’s Game Reviews!
Head Boxing Review - Game Overview
| Title: | Head Boxing |
| Type: | Sports, Boxing |
| Developer: | D&D Dream |
| Free or Paid? | Free |
| In-App Purchases? | Yes |
| What can you purchase? | Coins. With coins you can buy in-game upgrades and attire that offers power-ups to upgrade your character’s power and strength. |
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GAME PLAY
Overall Game Navigation
For the most part the overall game navigation is good.
When I first started off I was drawn to tap/click on training, yes, there is a training mode in the beginning. Here I was able to get a feel for controls for movement and punch attacks.
After I was done playing around in the training environment it was unclear where to click to exit it, but after a while I found that you can tap or click on the timer up in the top middle of the screen.
It pulls up a menu to resume, give up or navigate to go home. Tap or click on home and immediately after that you are taken to the home screen.
So, starting off it can be a little bit confusing for this game. But, the buttons are big and easy to see.
I did notice that when you’re clicking on the arrows to select the game modes the mode selections move the opposite way. So, when you click on the right arrow, visually you get the item to the left.
This works the same way when you’re in the ‘Player Select’ screen. It’s annoying but everything else about navigating is good.
Menu Navigation
The menu navigation is also pretty good, big buttons and easy to see.
There’s a lot of areas to click around to and it can be confusing at first but you quickly get the hang of it.
Under Achievements you can scroll up and down, but there’s nothing that indicates that unless you’re are just swiping or clicking around.
Settings Navigation
Navigating around settings, I’d say, is better than good; big buttons and easy to see.
Nice contrasting colors with text and icons. I would imagine that the icons help with identifying each of the sections in any language.
All this makes for easy navigation around settings and other areas of this game. We are talking about settings though, so it’s not that big of a deal!
With all that said, for the ‘overall game navigation’, I give it a 3 for good.
Game Modes
There are 7 game modes and they are all pretty good and fun to play.
The crappy thing about these modes is there’s nowhere in the game that tells you how each mode section works, you just have to play it to figure out what is or what it does.
Each mode has its own background setting and after hours of playing I haven’t seen any background changes. Either way the backgrounds are different for each of the mode and they all look pretty cool.
In any of the modes, and while you’re waiting for the match to load, there is a tip message before the match starts.
They give you tips on how some of the mechanics of the game works, but for me I felt it goes by too fast and the tips can be hard to read at times.
List of Modes:
Arcade (Mode 1):
Staring off your only playable character is Dolse and you’ll need to unlock other usable characters to select different players.
There are up to 15 CPU characters to fight but starting off you can only fight the first two character CPUs.
You’ll need to fight through to unlock each character for battling them, one after another.
When you unlock the 3rd CPU it’s called stage 3 and unlocking the next CPU, it’s called stage 4, and so on (this is kind of weird way to name the stages in arcade mode).
Once you do unlock all CPU’s in Arcade mode you unlock King as a playable character.
If you want to learn how to unlock other playable characters you need to select the locked player and click “Next” and a message pops-up showing you how to unlock the character you want to play with.
Speaking of characters, I’m noting some similarities with characters in this game from other games.
For example, Bucola reminds me a lot like Dhalsim from Street Fighter 2, and he even has a yoga flame type move like Dhalsim. S.Dragon reminds me of Dragon Chan from Super Punch-Out from SNES back in the day.
Mircop from Croatia reminds me of the UFC fighter Crocop, who is a cop from Croatia.
The background for this mode is of a training ring with lockers, weights and an office desk with a computer in the background.
Championship (Mode 2):
The Championship mode works much like a double-elimination tournament style competition.This mode is challenging but if you can win in the finals untouched, you unlock Hikari.
Here’s a tip, instead of spending coins in the shop, go and work on upgrades for your character and try to level-up everything, this will help you in Championship mode.
Survival (Mode 3):
Survival mode is perfect for gaining coins, quick! They’re one round fights and they go by pretty fast.
There is a rank system, you start with “F” and if you get better and the higher you rank. Finishing with higher ranks sometimes wins you a belt (kind of like a trophy) and a big lump of coins.
To read more about my pro tip for earning a ton of coins in survival mode, read below in the “Game Value” part of my review.
The background is cool in this mode, reminds me of Utah’s national park Arches because you see a red arch rock. Also, kind of looks like a cowboy desert background setting.
Death (Mode 4):
Death mode is cool. It’s kind of like a thunder dome ring or like a WWE wrestling with on-going matches with different types of tasks to win rounds.
League (Mode 5):
A lot of these modes are self-explanatory. This mode is like championship but not with the double elimination.
There are 18 rounds total and you win first place depending on wins vs losses.
Background setting is cool because in this mode you are in the streets and you see a highway overpass in the background, it also looks like there is a construction zone where you are fighting.
2 Player (Mode 6):
This one is like Arcade mode but you can play with a friend. Nothing special about this mode.
This background is the training room, same as arcade mode.
Multiplayer (Mode 7):
With Arcade, Championship, Survival, 2 Player and other modes available in this game, Multiplayer mode make this game full-on and complete.
This is pretty darn good for a free game.
Are the modes good or bad?
Overall, all the game modes are pretty good and will keep you hooked for hours of game play, even if you’ve come here to play this game for free.
I’m going to rate Game Modes as Lit! Score = 4/5
Game Mechanics
Let’s go over the game’s mechanics by covering, “Combat & Controls”, “Character Movement”, “Attacks & Punches” and “Special Moves”.
Combat & Controls
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I have to say, I was really skeptical at first and right off the bat I was turned off by the punching mechanics because I felt like the combo’s animations were slow and got in the way of follow-up punching.
But, the more I play this game you get used to combos and it’s not that bad because you can get up to 10+ hit combos.
For a brawler type boxing game, the combos are pretty good actually and you begin to get hooked.
You have 2 punch buttons and a 3rd button for specials – so controls are pretty simple and easy to use.
This game gets pretty fun so I’m going to rate this game as, lit = 4!
Character Movement
The footwork in this game is pretty cool, for a boxing game.
You can walk, side step, run and slide. Tap forward or backwards to make quick steps forwards or backwards.
Holding back allows you to step back once and then the character begins to walk back for as long as you hold the back button. Holding forward allows your character to make one quick step forward and then you begin the run for as long as you are holding the forward button.
You can do slides forwards or backwards (the character’s animations for this appears to be standing step slides) by double tapping forwards or backwards. Also, you can do a constant slide by rapidly tapping forward multiple times or the same for backwards.
Once you get the hang of your character’s movements you get pretty good at the footwork. I’m going to rate movement as good. Score = 3/5
Attacks & Punches
First off, what’s really cool about this game is you can break bones in a fight.
There is a diagram by your name that shows which bones you broke on your opponent, or which bones your opponent has broken on you.
This is a really cool feature and makes this game fun.
It makes you want to go break all your opponent’s bones in a single match, which I haven’t done, and I’m not even sure you can, because usually the CPU loses all HP before breaking all their bones.
Punching and Combos kind of sucks at first but once you get a feel for it, it gets easier.
The punch/combo animations are slow and it seems like they get in the way of follow up punching. So, you’re stuck mashing the punch button but nothing is happening or coming out and you’re waiting for the combo animation to end.
But it is cool you can even combo in this game. Different characters have different animations. And, as you upgrade your attacks get faster.
It’s pretty sick when you can do juggling combos. This is when the CPU is in mid-air and you can combo them without them hitting the ground. At most I’ve got 15 hit combos like this with Dolse, and you can probably get more!
Slide uppercuts are lit, and it’s how you can get an air-juggle combo going.
This is when you double tap forward + punch at the same time. Punching can suck at times but when you get the hang of combos, they are cool if you time them right.
Attacks and punches, and breaking bones, are lit! Score = 4/5
Special Moves
I’m just going to say it upfront, the special moves which is the character’s ‘Skill’ are beast!
Each character has their own Skill move, and they are different animations for each character. For example, Dolse has the “Fire Punch” and usually these attacks break bones.
The animations do zoom in and you can see these moves close-up in action – It’s pretty beast!
| Overall Game Navigation | 3/5 | Good |
| Menu Navigation | 3/5 | Good |
| Settings Navigation | 3/5 | Good |
| Game Modes | 4/5 | Lit |
| Combat & Controls | 4/5 | Lit |
| Character Movement | 3/5 | Good |
| Attacks & Punches | 4/5 | Lit |
| Special Moves | 5/5 | Beast |
| Total Game Play Score | 4/5 | Game Play is Lit! |
ART & SOUND
Does the game art look good or bad?
For a free downloadable game, the 3D graphics look great!
Sound for music and effects can be easily muted in settings, and super easy to find.
As mentioned earlier the animations look cool with close-ups, slow motion when breaking bones, spin-arounds and cool sound effects.
The art and sound effects + music, this game is full on and good in every area – I get total Street Fighter vibes from this game.
For example, the character Bucola has the “Yoga Fire” type skill move that has SF2 written all over it. Street Fighter started it all with fighting game expectations so this brings me back to my roots.
I have to rank the art and sound for this game as straight-up lit! Score = 4/5
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STORY
There’s not really story to this game.
You do get some cool animations in Death mode where your opponent runs out from what looks like a dungeon, kind of like in WWE Wrestling. That’s kind of like telling a story, and it looks pretty cool.
But otherwise, no real story and only shown some ‘kind-of’ story through animations.
The animations are enough for me to say it’s okay and the story doesn’t just suck. Score = 2/5
VALUE
This game is free with in-app purchases for coins.
Coins allow you to buy upgrades to make your character stronger, faster, have more health.
You can use your coins to purchase attire that also add points to your character to make you stronger or faster.
You can also use your coins to buy level-ups for pets. Pet’s help your power gauge and also helps your strength and speed.
After playing the training mode, you will get prompted to purchase the game, but you can skip this.
With the highest purchase at $50 for about 6 million coins gives you almost enough to purchase all attire items. That’s a little overkill and really expensive in my opinion.
But, you can’t purchase everything right off the bat, you need to level up before you can start buying up all items, so you can probably get away with less money starting off.
When you level up, you’re not leveling up your character or characters, you’re leveling up your campaign.
I would recommend starting off with $20, which gets you about 2.5 million coins. You’ll be earning coins while you level up anyway.
Although, you can spend millions of coins on just character upgrades alone. So, really you can probably spend hundreds of dollars to purchase millions and millions of coins to buy everything in this game, if you choose to buy everything and progress in the game faster.
Otherwise, playing for free could take hundreds of hours to buy everything in the game. I find that this game can easily get you hooked so playing for free wouldn’t be a bad option.
When you buy attire items to upgrade for your character, you only need to buy it once and then you can equip all of your unlocked characters with the same attire upgrades, so you don’t have to re-buy the same item.
Also, you can probably refrain from buying so many items because when you play to level up, you earn or win a lot of items during game play, this could save you coins if you first spend it on upgrading your character.
If I had to guess, I think I earned about 50,000 coins per hour, probably more when you work towards knocking-out the ‘Achievements’.
Pro tip, play survival mode and every time you gain 10,000 coins pause and navigate to upgrades and upgrade your character’s Power, then go back and resume your spot in survival mode – this will help you get faster at beating your opponent to earn coins faster and faster.
The more perfects you can get per win, the more coins you win.
I’m going to rate the value for this game as just good.
TOTAL GAME SCORE
| GAME PLAY | 4/5 | Lit |
| ART & SOUND | 4/5 | Lit |
| STORY | 2/5 | Okay |
| VALUE | 3/5 | Good |
| TOTAL GAME SCORE | 13/20 | Good Game |
Thank you for reading “Brandon’s Game Reviews”.
