I can barely breathe. Each breath out is like fire ripping through my chest, each one in like a knife plunging through my lungs. It’s only the eighth round, but I already know it’s not my fitness level holding me back - it was that last uppercut. I threw a left I thought would rock this chump’s world but he ducked it and countered with an uppercut which probably broke a rib. Or four.

My head snaps back to the front after a huge hook in the face, and my vision blurs. I know I’m going out, but I’ve seen the floor enough to know I can do some damage before I go down. I drop my guard and let loose everything I have left. If I can keep him on the back foot until the 10 second buzzer I know I can take a rest. He’s not expecting an attack, and I catch him with a killer hook combo. I get a second wind - as painful as that is – and I launch my signature punch; a massive right hook that’ll break a man’s forearm if he blocks it wrong.

My heart stops as I see him wind up for his own fight stopper – he’s going to wreck my broken ribs again. It’s far too late to stop throwing the hook so I run with it – I’m quicker than he is so he’ll probably never see his punch land. I see his eyes widen as he realises the same. My glove reaches his jaw and passes through like he’s a ghost. I didn’t miss, but I didn’t hit either. The world goes black as my ribs collapse in, my last thoughts cursing the glitch once again.

When you’re creating a boxing game there’s only one thing you have to get right. You can screw up the loading times, make the default controls something completely unfriendly and choose terrible music for your game, but as long as beating another man to a bloody mess works you’ve created a great game.

I know this because I own Fight Night Round 3 on the PlayStation 3. The load times are embarrassing, the default controls unfriendly to beginners and the soundtrack is six tracks big, but when you hit somebody you really hit somebody.

DKPP is the polar opposite to FNR3. The soundtrack is huge and diverse, the load times are great and the control system is phenomenal. And the collision detection in the game is a hit and miss affair which will have lesser men screaming at their TVs.

The iffy collision detection works both ways. There are times when you’ll watch the glove sail through to no effect and others when you’ll watch a replay of your opponent taking a dive to an air swing. It’s such a monumental mistake to make – you notice it the first time you step into the ring – that it’s difficult to see how the game made release.

The game has so much potential as well. The story mode is told like a sports documentary where a mixture of actors and real life boxing personalities pretending your character is a real person. It uses video footage for most of these events, and it's probably the best story I've seen in a sports game. Every time you win a huge fight you're treated to a new segment of a story telling of your rise to glory.

Still, even the story mode isn’t fleshed out properly. Outside the documentary style footage the game has you upgrade your fighter by training in between fights. Occasionally you’ll have an option to do special training or a promotional spot to earn you more money, but the consequences for doing this are lame. You choose to “go shopping with your girlfriend” and all you see is a short cut-scene of your character walking out of the gym and newspaper headline. After the immersive documentary style videos it seems tacked on.

And then there's the way Venom Games decided to break the monotony of fighting all the time – your opponents cheat. I'm not talking about the collision detection here either – the AI is affected by the same hit/miss issues as you. There are times however when your career mode opponent will blind you, break your hand or turn the judges and referee against you. It works at breaking the monotony, but only by adding an extra layer of frustration to an already infuriating game.

The rest of the game conspires against the monotony breaking too. The commentary is boring after four fights and the corner talk after only two. When you KO a guy for a 10 count out he'll get to his feet before falling unconscious to the ground one of three different ways each single time.

The game is so easy in the beginning that you will see the same knockdown animation five or six times in your first 10 – 15 fights. Then, at about the midway mark the career mode difficulty ramps up to a point where every punch counts, and every fight is a true test of endurance. It’s an interesting way to ramp up the intensity of the game as you lead up to a truly monumental fight, and if you could rely on the game to hit every time it would be worthwhile.

Don King Presents Prizefighter seems like a game that could have used a bit more time at the gym. The unfinished, unpolished story mode, the average graphics and worst of all the frustrating, annoying gameplay make me think the Quality Assurance team on the game must be either punch drunk or non-existent. With a little more effort it coulda been a contender, coulda been something instead of a bum, which is what it is, lets face it.