It’s not as precise as Thrill of the Fight (nor is the workout as intense) and tracking occasionally went wonky but I still had a very nice time. For one, I like the Creed/Rocky movies a lot, and this does a minimal + low budget but still fun enough recreation of the Creed trilogy across two hourlong campaigns.

The fights are pretty easy (the last thing I did was beat Rocky on Legendary difficulty in Freeplay, and I’m crap at Thrill of the Fight), but the presentation is good and you don’t overextend your arms so much and, as a result, you feel like a badass with a moderate workout and a lower chance of overuse injuries.

To be honest, as a game it’s kind of basic (there’s about 3 hours of content here if you stretch it) but what I’ve learned is that I will play the crap out of any decently competent boxing game in VR. Add the Rocky characters and that’s money.

My rec is, if you like boxing in VR and Rocky, get this on a sale and come in with tempered expectations. My guess is you’ll be pleasantly surprised. I may use this for a while over TOTF because it doesn’t kill my shoulders so much.

This game has potential, you got the license, the music, and it works in VR! But the content is just not there. Creed has fun VR boxing, it’s a full workout, I don’t think I’ve ever been as sweaty playing a game. Opponents stand right in front of you loading up punches as you block or duck and weave. You throw punches, the harder you throw the more power there is. Mixing up your punches is key as opponents will block and counter, it’s a blast and very tiring. There are a few gamey things like if you dodge a power punch you go into slow motion and if you hit the enemy enough you get in a mini punching game to knock them out. Getting knocked out yourself results in a swinging of your arms mini game as you try to get your disembodied soul back to your body lol.

Before each fight you train in gyms from the movies and Rocky is your coach. There is a montage mini game where you have to complete quick activities in a minute, depending how many you get you receive a stamina boost for the next fight. These are all fun mini games that are taken from the movie like punching frozen meat and the classic Rocky music plays, presentation is good.

But here I was, getting through my career, I had a title shot that went the distance (in an awesome montage style fight) but you lose in decision by design. Then you fight some other guy and the game ends. No title, no rematch, no storyline whatsoever. Nothing. The game literally just stops after like 8 fights. It takes like 40 minutes to get through it all, it’s pathetically short. You can play custom fights where a bunch of classic Rocky fighters are there, you can be Rocky and fight Apollo or Drago, so basically just make your own story I guess. It’s such a barebones game which is a damn shame because the boxing is awesome and one hell of a work out.

Overall 5.5

Alongside shooting games, boxing seems to be a favoured activity for virtual reality adaptation. A few titles have tried their hand at it with varying degrees of ambition and success, but Creed offers a more realistic and relatively polished experience. The relationship with the films is rather distant, as you only play as Adonis Creed, son of the protagonist of the cinematic iteration: in general, the narration is non-existent and even disturbs the pace of the game, especially during the fight against the bouncer, which comes out of nowhere and leads to nothing – the thing is really disturbing, as you still hear the commentator and the countdown. From the rest, the title manages to implement its gameplay, but with some problems. Indeed, the game sometimes has trouble recognising very fast successive jabs, as if there was buffering, which would prevent the position of the controllers from being traced efficiently. As a corollary, this same problem occurs during the parrying of the swarm of hits, where some of them hit, even though the player is guarding properly. On high difficulty, the problem of the lack of feedback appears: if you hit your opponent well, there is the strange impression of hitting against a wall, as it does not bend or tire. This makes the fights particularly gruelling and somewhat unfair, as the title doesn't really allow for long sequences of hits, due to its stamina system. Creed is far from being a bad experience, but the title would have benefited from a more polished finish, both in its graphical assets, its tracking technique and its narration: it remains however a good entertainment for one or two hours, as well as a good way to move a bit.