Fight Night Round 4 (PS3, Xbox 360) Review

Posted by Joe Roche on 07.03.2009

EA Canada takes the reigns of the Fight Night franchise, do they score a knockout? Or does Fight Night Round 4 fail to live up to expectations?



Title: Fight Night Round 4
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: EA Canada
Type: Boxing, Sports
Players: 2
Rated: T (Teen)
Also Available on: Xbox 360

Fight Night Round 3 was released on February 20, 2006 and was one of the very first games that I remember being floored by in HD on the Xbox 360 Everyone I knew who had an Xbox 360 had FNR3 and most people had a high opinion of the title. However, the nice slow motion sweat and blood visuals covered up some buggy game play, the most obvious problem being the invisible wall between fighters that derailed fighting inside. The sweet science had a nice game on its hands but when the reigns of Fight Night Round 4 were handed over to EA Canada they knew that the formula they inherited wasn’t perfect. I’m pleased to say that they did not rest on their laurels, and Fight Night Round 4 is not just a retread of the previous installment, it is the best boxing simulation that I’ve ever had my hands on.

Gameplay

The game play has received a major overhaul from Fight Night Round 3 and is an improvement in almost every regard. The first thing that you’ll notice when the game starts (because it throws you right into a tutorial) is that the face button mashers from last year are in trouble. Gone are the days of corresponding face buttons to punches, and now every punch it mapped out by the total punch control of the right stick. At first this took a bit of getting used to, but after I’d say four or five matches the punching was relatively fluid and did give you a little better feel of the sweet science then just mashing on the X button for seven rounds. My one complaint about the new controls is that they are a bit touchy, which becomes a problem in Legacy mode when you’re training and having punches called out. Since straight to the left is a punch, and up to the left and down to the left are also corresponding punches (and vice versa for the right) there are times when you will swear you’re throwing a left hook but your fighter will throw a left uppercut. It’s not a huge problem but it did happen to me enough times to cause me to swear under my breath.



Another game play change that you’ll notice once you’ve started a match is the parry system. In Fight Night Round 3 when you parried a punch your opponent would freeze and open themselves up to some vicious haymakers. Now when a punch is parried it will lower the guard of your opponent, but they can still defend themselves, which is a nice change because lets face it in the boxing when a fighter misses a punch he doesn’t just stand with his gloves down, frozen in space, for ten seconds waiting to get punched.

The biggest game play overhaul though comes with the concept of fighting inside. In FNR3 there was an invisible wall between fighters, but I am happy to report that the collision detection is vastly improved. Not only will you fight inside, but bodies will fit together, punches will glance off fighters as they move to the point where landing a flush punch can be rare. Fighting inside is a huge upgrade, especially with the inclusion of Mike Tyson to the game – who would have been completely useless in FNR3 because he would have been forced to fight from the outside. With the new collision detection between boxers you will stick and move from different angles, punches glancing off body parts, until you can work your head around to position your opponent for a perfect uppercut.

In FNR3 if you could knock your opponent down 3 times the fight was over, essentially you knew that if he went down thrice, he was not getting up. That’s gone in FNR4, replaced with flash knockdowns (knockdowns that come without warning), and the ability to be knocked down once and be out of the fight. There are benefits to body punching now, wear down your opponent, then knock him down and he won’t get up, even if it’s the first knockdown. It’s a more realistic view of the sweet science and I loved knocking down an opponent in the first round and seeing him flop around on the mat until the ref counted 10 and raised my arm in victory.



The final major game play improvement is in the all new Legacy Mode, which has been revamped from the ugly to look at, and not very involved FNR3 career mode. This year you take the reigns of your fighter (either created or re-live someone else’s career) from the ground up. You will be in charge of scheduling training for a fight (further out the fight = more training time), scheduling the fights down the location/date/and show/PPV, and making sure your fighter moves up the ranks. I have had a great time moving my fighter up the ranks (after importing my own face into the game using the EA Sports gameface feature). One of the interesting things is that you have certain goals to move from Bum all the way up the boxing ladder to Greatest of All Time (G.O.A.T) which gives you some incentive to keep plugging away. You will also be given a slate of potential opponents (not just one or two fights) to choose from when you go to schedule a fight. This is fun because if you’re a mid 70’s fighter with less then 20 fights under your belt you might have a chance to fight Kermit Cintron (rated 90), or Austin Li (68). To keep up your victories it might be better to fight Li, but to improve your Pound 4 Pound ranking, and popularity it might be better to take a chance with a higher rated, higher ranked Cintron. There is a lot to weigh in Legacy mode, making it far deeper then anything you’ve seen before in a Fight Night game, and as deep (if not more freeing) then anything you’ve seen in a boxing game before. One awesome note about the Legacy mode, I imported some created fighters from online, one of which was Antonio Margarito who I was scheduled to fight, we matched up pretty well and Smokin’ Joe Roche had caught Margarito with a flash knockout in the 3rd round a few months earlier, but the day of the fight I got a message “Antonio Margarito had to back out of the fight, #9 Paulie Malignaggi has stepped in for him.” That’s right folks – you will even see injuries and replacement last minute fighters in this game. Of course Paulie destroyed me in 8 rounds, but it’s all about realism and this made sense in the grand scheme of things.

Your fighter profile will also keep track of your habits and fight methods. What this means is that your opponents will adapt to your specific style. This is great from a realism prospective, but difficult from an – I just want to win fights perspective. If your fighter relies heavily on the jab and keeping opponents at a distance, you’re going to want to learn how to throw uppercuts because your opponents are going to start finding their way inside and cutting down the power of your jab. It’s a great addition that makes every fight different, and causes you to learn many different styles of boxing to keep your fighter off the mat.

I don’t want it to sound like the game play is flawless because it’s not. I already mentioned the touchy nature of the total punch control, but there is also my problem with the fighting inside mechanic. Instead of an invisible wall keeping the fighters apart, there are times when it feels like there are magnets on both fighters which draw them together for no reason. My fighter has a longer reach so it benefits him to stay on the outside, but there are times when I’ll be away from a fighter and suddenly just slide up to be chest to chest with him. It might not seem like a huge problem but it is enough of an issue that you notice it, and I can’t explain it, so it has to go in the thumbs down section of the review.

The only other complaint that I have is this --- health meters. It was one of the complaints with the demo, it’s one of the complaints that I’ve heard recently and it’s a complaint that I had to mention. Why does Fight Night need health meters? I’ve watched hundreds of hours of boxing in my day and there has never been a fight where the boxers had health meters over their head. Now the only reason this problem doesn’t get a bigger section is because the health meter can be turned off in the settings (game play HUD). Eeven though I don’t care for the health meters I would actually suggest them for newer players because otherwise you will punch yourself out very quickly. Once you get the hang of the flow of the game feel free to turn off the HUD for an increased challenge.



Graphics

When Fight Night Round 3 was released people were blown away by the graphics and the look, but Fight Night Round 4 improves on every graphical area imaginable. The officially licensed fighters look amazing, from Mike Tyson’s black trunks, to the shimmer blue with logo of Ricky Hatton’s, the smallest details are here, and it all adds to the beauty of the game.

The slow motion replay of knockdowns is back again from FNR3, looking crisper and more defined then the last go around, but also providing you numerous camera angles by pressing the B button to change the view. I liked this quite a bit and found myself switching the camera angle for knockdowns multiple times just to see the detail in each angle. Cuts look brutal, swelling looks painful, and I even took part in a fight that was stopped due to a nasty cut and swelling which shut my opponent’s eye. It was realistic, it was visually beautiful and there is really nothing much else to say about the graphics for Round 4.



Sound

Teddy Atlas and Joe Tessitore are your announcers for Fight Night Round 4 and if there is anything to complain about it’s Atlas and Tessitore. I’m not sure how long it’ll take you to turn them down and put something else on in the background, for me it was 22 fights, but trust me it will happen. If you love hearing the same three jokes/lines from Teddy Atlas you’re going to love FNR4, but for the rest of you I have to say that the announcers are just tedious. Admittedly this is a problem that plagues all sports titles. Sports are by their very nature difficult to predict, which makes announcers scripting their lines impossible. There are things that are interesting the first couple times you hear them, but after Teddy Atlas told me my opponents legs were like “linguine, and not al dente” for the hundredth time I started having Italian food nightmares.

Luckily the game is not a narrative, it doesn’t depend on the announcers, and as such you can turn them down and listen to a podcast while playing the game. Outside of the announcers the sound is fine. There is a good soundtrack if you like hip hop music. The sound of punches landing is still a bit strange with the rippling body sound back from FNR3, but it’s difficult to recreate the sound of a body breaking in half so I give the team at EA Canada the benefit of the doubt.

Fun Factor

This is a difficult one to quantify because I feel like there are two ways to go with FNR4. On the one hand boxing fans (of which I am) are going to love this game to the core. This is the first game that I’ve played that felt like it was a true boxing game. The controls are fluid, the movements are sincere, and the action is relentless but paced. On the other hand people are not fans of the sweet science may bore with the game early. I played over the weekend with some friends and noticed that most of them just wanted to stand there and throw punches wildly hoping to wear me down. Unfortunately this actually worked a couple of times (usually when I was fighting as a lower weight class) and that took some of the fun out of the game.



The best way to describe this game is that it should do for boxing, what NHL 09 did for hockey in my world, namely make people who otherwise might not be fans, into fans. The game is fun, and between you and me while UFC Undisputed 2009 has some positive notes, this game is much easier to pick up and play then the UFC game and that alone makes it a better option as a party game on a Saturday night. The deeper you delve into FNR4 the more you love about it, but on the surface it’s just a beautifully crafted boxing game that is the most fun combat sports game that I’ve played in years.

Lasting Appeal

Aside from the Legacy mode, which allows you to build your created fighter from the ground into the Greatest of all Time, there are some other modes to add value to Fight Night Round 4. I should stress here though that Legacy will take you a VERY long time to “complete” if there is such a thing. Your objectives include not only winning one belt in your division, but holding multiple belts in your division (each division has three), then moving up weight classes and holding titles in those divisions. It’s a lengthy process as Smokin’ Joe Roche has a career record of 19-4-0 and the highest I’ve been ranked is 9th as a Middleweight.

There is also online, which is a treat because this game really should be played with a human opponent. Online has two different modes, the first is your standard “Fight Now” mode which is pretty self explanatory, you pick a fighter, get matched up with an opponent and you fight. It’s not rocket science.

The second mode is the real draw though and it’s called the “World Championship” mode. Essentially what you do is import one of your created boxers into the online world and vie for a World Championship. You are matched up with similar weight classes and you fight until you’ve reached the pinnacle of the sport. This should offer many hours of replay ability to the game after you’ve tired of chasing the World Championship in Legacy mode. I’ve tinkered with this mode a bit and went 1-2 for my troubles in fights where I had good leads early, and simple wore out as the fight progressed. This is a problem that affects most of my life. However, the online World Championship mode is fantastic and should add plenty of time onto the shelf life of FNR4.



The online modes aren’t perfect thought as a similar problem to the one that plagued Fight Night Round 3 online has come back to haunt us this time around, namely – the haymaker-a-thon. There will be times when you will fight people who will exclusively throw haymakers. For more experienced fighters this will be a chance to parry and destroy people, for less experienced players this will be a chance to get your head knocked off in the most aggravating way possible. I have fought guys who rarely use the haymaker, and I’ve fought guys who only use the haymaker – one guy I had fun with, one guy got me visibly upset to the point where the TFC Princess had to be thinking about filing divorce papers. These particular people don’t take enough away from the game to ruin it, but it’s out there – so be forewarned. The only other major problem that I have with the online modes is that the World Championship mode only allows for three weight classes (lightweight, middleweight, and heavyweight) which means you’ll want to create a new fighter for online if you’re going for the welterweight crown in Legacy because you will be severely outsized online.

The final thing that I’ll mention about the online modes available is the ability to share your created boxers. When you factor this in with the ability to upload your face to the EA Sports website and create a scanned likeness of yourself (or anyone else) to the game, I can vouch for the fact that your favorite fighter might not be in the game, but he can be downloaded right now from the internet. I love when EA lets you download other created content because it once again adds value to their games, and this is not exception. I will say that whoever created the Antonio Margarito boxer needs to work on his ratings, yikes he sucked.



The 411

As a boxing fan Fight Night Round 4 delivers in all the areas that I was looking for it to improve on. It exceeds Fight Night Round 3 graphically by so much that it’s amazing to think how beautiful everyone thought Round 3 was in 2006. The fluid total punch control takes some getting used to, but turns the game into a more clear simulation of the sweet science instead of just a button masher, and the various modes add depth and value to the game making it not just a must have for boxing fans, but a must have for sports fans.

Graphics	9.5	Character renditions are spot on, and everything is just clean and crisp.
Gameplay	9.0	Every style plays differently, this is not just a button masher, and there are plenty of modes to love.
Sound	7.0	The announcers do their best but there is only so much they can do here.
Lasting Appeal	10.0	Legacy mode will take you a long time, and the online World Championship mode gives you unlimited replay ability
Fun Factor	8.5	Boxing fans will play this until their thumbs wear out, sports fans might tire quicker but there is a lot to love here
Overall	9.0   [  Amazing ]

Screenshots
All 20 Fight Night Round 4 Screenshots