Fight Night Round 4 unofficial member Review

Title: Fight Night Round 4
Format: Xbox 360, The Big Black Dust Collector that plays DVD's
Release: Out Now

Imagine a world of boxing where anything is possible, a world where Hatton could last a second round against Manny Pacquiao, a world where Joe Calzaghe is not seemingly invincible and a world where the greatest of the sport never have to age or retire, Fight Night Round 4 is the gateway to that fantastically preposterous world of sport.

For anybody who is familiar with Fight Night Round 3 the graphical advances are noticeable from the moment the game loads and Tyson tries to smash his way through the back of the screen and in to your lap. All the boxers in the game have a very authentic look and feel about them (with the exception of George Foreman’s hair) and albeit a very slight difference all the fighters handle differently. The starting menu is well designed with Tyson and Ali squaring off to either side of the menu and the game options listed centre screen. Fight Now (top of the menu) is basically you’re run of the mill exhibition mode where you pick your preferred boxer, choose a human punch bag (from up to two weight class’s higher or lower than you) and pick the replicated environment in which you want to batter your opponent senseless.

Create a Boxer mode has undertaken a serious cosmetic redesign from it’s predecessor, obviously it’s still a create mode but once you pick your nickname from the massive list of choices (The Galaxy Warrior and Winky being two of my favourites) and set up how “flashy” you want your entrance to be. Appearance control is slightly above par with the ability to set height, weight and the new option of arm reach (nothing more amusing than boxing with a 6’8” man with arms that barely reach his naval), and once you’ve finished colour co-ordinating your chest hair comes the accessories page. Fight Night 3 players will know what I mean when I say that outfit stats have been removed and for everyone else this section allows you to pimp out your fighter in gloriously distasteful sequin plastered outfits. The last section sets up the kind of fighter you want to have through a well sized choice of stance, guard, style and technique options, topped off by choosing a signature punch, used for securing those cracking knockouts.

The new Legacy mode is a great way of incorporating a “story mode” into this type of game and, considering it is the main offline focus of the game, it is remarkably enjoyable. Starting off with either a fresh faced custom boxer or one of the greats (with the punching power of a six year old), you enter on to the manager style menu where you can view ranking tables, check out stats of possible opponents and more importantly book fights. After booking a fight comes the all new (and drastically improved) training sessions and depending on how far away you have booked the fight will decide how many sessions you’ll get. Once you have (hopefully) sparked out your opposition, you have a very brief recovery period before repeating the process above and although this sounds a bit repetitive (mainly because it is) it doesn’t take anything away from the game as a whole. The two new features that the Legacy mode brings are the rather mundane option to simulate your fights and the seemingly boring but quite innovative ESPN Fight Cast (something I, personally, have never encountered in any game of this genre). The ESPN Fight Cast provides more of a backseat manager/trainer approach to the fights where you are given a blow by blow account of the fight and must control your fighters aggressive and defensive behaviour as well as attacking style and target areas by using a selection of sliders and left/right option bars, but even though this sounds a little awkward (and I’ve probably made this sound a lot more difficult than it is) it is very easy to pick up and very quickly becomes equally as dull.

Regardless of what mode you choose to play the control system is exceptionally user friendly especially if you have experience with Fight Night 3. The left stick controls the feet or, with the lean modifier applied, upper body movement while the right stick brings back the new tweaked version of Total Punch Control (the system that sets the Fight Night series apart from other boxing/fighting games). The main control differences from Fight Night 3 are the ability to easily flow combos from body to head (or visa-versa) without having to lean in to the person trying to separate your jaw from your face and the exclusion of one button haymakers in favour of a haymaker modifier button, allowing you to throw different types of power punches according to the openings you can spot in the other mans defence. Pushing is a brilliant new touch that adds to the realistic atmosphere that swamps this game, instead of being pinned into a corner, trying to punch your way out and usually getting the living snot beaten out of you in the process, pushing your opponent away can give you that all important second to start applying pressure and tactically work out of some of the trickier situations Fight Night 4 offers.

If I were to be as pessimistic as humanly possible I could still only describe the in-fight game play as utterly fantastic, every detail from the surprisingly realistic commentary to the stunning visuals and superb atmospheric quality has been taken in to account in the development of this game. As you take control in the ring the feel of the game turns quite intense, partially due to a great sounding commentary that can keep pace with the flow of play but mainly because of the pure realism that Fight Night 4 has been structured around. Glancing blows and realistic blocking are just a couple of the points that accentuate exactly how much effort has been put into the fighting, for example, if your punch connects to the side or top of the head while your opponent is moving away from it then reality dictates that your punch will not connect fully and will not cause as much damage as a flush landing one. Blocking also takes a big step away from game like fighting by losing the ability to just hold block and move away to safety and replacing it with the need for tactical parrying and counter punching or opportunities to lead your opposition to blocking a certain way and exploiting their lifelike defensive openings. In between rounds both corners can notch up health and stamina or reduce their physical damage by using points accumulated by achieving high accuracy, dodging hits and for stunning or knocking down the opposition. Probably the most satisfying aspect of the new game-play style is the perfect punches that happen every now and then, by landing a clean, sharp and hard punch on one of the few real life weak spots around the head, you can drop the other guy without any warning what-so-ever (and believe me there is no greater feeling than Iron Mike taking three steps towards you and then attacking the canvas with his face).

Online World Championship is one of the online modes (the others being your standard quick, custom and create a match) and is reasonably similar to the Legacy mode. Broken into three weight divisions (Heavy, Middle and Light) the idea is to enter a custom (homemade or downloaded) boxer into a no-region battle to be the best and take control of the world class belt and with various other awards to pick up along the way this does make for an online mode with good staying power in terms of playability. The other big online (novelty) feature is the ESPN Zone where users can keep up to date on the latest goings on in the sport world, everything from Major League Baseball to Golf to Football (I know it’s listed as soccer but being British I’ll refer to it by the correct name), and with updated video clips I’m sure this will keep many sports enthusiasts very happy indeed.

A lot of my judgement of Fight Night 4 is based around my enjoyment of the last instalment of the series, and it really pleases me to say that the latest game surpasses Fight Night 3 tenfold.
Just in case it’s hasn’t been picked up on, I am probably one of the most bias people who could review this game (being a fan of boxing, games, and the Fight Night series) and as much as I would love to give Fight Night Round 4 a 10/10, I won’t, but I will give it a well deserved 9/10 based on its visual, audio and atmospheric components that make this not only the best sports game I have ever set eyes on but because it definitely has the potential to be one of the best games available this year. If you own a console please play this game, I can guarantee you will not be disappointed (not a guarantee) and with the continued support, this series can only take sport-gaming to higher and higher levels of greatness.