Fight Night Round 4 Review

[Shawn Zipay]

Fight Night Round 4

Release Date: June 25, 2009 (North America), June 26, 2009 (Europe)
Reviewed On: PlayStation 3
Also Available On: Xbox 360
Developer: EA Canada
Publisher: EA Sports
ESRB Rating: Teen - Mild Blood, Mild Lyrics, Mild Suggestive Themes, Violence
PEGI Rating: 16+ - Violence
OFLC Rating: MA 15+ - Sporting Violence

Intro:

With so many games coming out in such a short amount of time, it feels strange to sift through the avalanche to find a gem hidden among the many stones. Fight Night Round 4 shines through in a manner unheard of in the gaming world as a sequel that far surpasses its predecessors. Fight Night Round 4 is not your usual Fight Night. Round 4 is something more, something superior...something special.

Outside fighters should open with a jab often.

Graphics:

Serving as a showcase of the graphical superiority in Fight Night Round 4, the opening sequence will give you highlights, clips and demonstrations of the swelling, blood, sweat and tears that will make up mass majority of this game. Moving on from the cinematic will lead you a brass and gold based sepia menu that is easy on the eyes, while at the same time posing as a true homage to the belts every boxer in the world wants to win.

Upon selecting a fight between two fighters in any one of the many modes this game has, you’ll be shown multiple loading screens with quotes, images of boxers and the classic EA Controller Cheat Sheet. However, upon actually arriving in the arena, your eyes will be in for a treat as you will see anywhere from dozens of spectators around a small gym ring, to hundreds if not a thousand different spectators all making as much noise as they can around a gigantic arena ring. Even the boxer entrances have a unique personality all their own, as you’ll be given the choice to customize the robes, towels, special effects and music. You can even customize your own boxer by choosing through literally hundreds of stock physiques, facial structures and equipment. You’ll also be able to import boxers that other people have created through “Boxer Share.” I myself have personally downloaded Barack Obama just to play through with him in Legacy Mode.

Of course the real bulk of the game’s graphical prowess can be found moments after the bell rings and the fight starts. From the very first punch you’ll see unique characteristics such as over-drawn punches, to glancing blows due, to an inaccurate punch. A direct hit even goes so far as to mangle the face of your opponent for a split-second; blasting the sweat from his brow into the air. Knock the opponent down and you’ll be granted the beautiful sight of a slow-motion blow to their face, giving you an impression of just how much carnage you inflicted with your powerful jabs, hooks, uppercuts and haymakers. Unfortunately, one glaring flaw is the distinct lack of a referee in the middle of the ring while you’re fighting. It somewhat kills the sense of true immersion, even if we do happen to see him magically appear to count to 10 after we get knocked down.

More importantly, the User Interface in the game is exceptionally easy to use. Legacy Mode and the Online Mode both offer a well designed and quick to learn interface that will put you in the ring in no time at all. This is certainly an improvement over other offerings, where we’ve had to sift through dozens of screens just to get to the heart of the game.

Move quickly enough, and this might become a common opening for your boxer.

Audio:

The music is anything but inspiring this time around. With the exception of one or two songs throughout the entire list of EA Trax, I found myself far more interested with the ESPN sports radio playing in-between online matches, than the listless and boring rock and rap songs that seem to have nothing to do with boxing. When searching through the entire list for even one good song that would truly make my boxer’s entrance a feat to be treasured, I eventually gave up and chose Mike Tyson’s theme song, for a lack of anything even half-way decent through the list. Not one single song in the EA Trax list opened with a high-energy rhythm or beat. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad if I were given the option to upload my own MP3’s, but sadly this seems to have been excluded.

Thankfully, once past the menus and in the gym or arenas, we’ll be treated to unique voices coming from the crowds, classical grunts and groans of strain from the boxers and an array of wonderful commentary from announcers that seems to change as the boxers in the match change. After about a hundred bouts, I doubt I’ve heard the commentators repeat themselves more than a few times. It’s immersing to the point where you’ll truly feel as if you’re progressing through legacy mode when you hear the announcers being talking about highlights or failures in your career. Unfortunately commentary from your own trainers tends to repeat to the point of becoming annoying.

An uppercut that beautiful will almost always result in a knockout.

Controls:

This is a part of the game that will become very controversial among gamers. Fight Night has always been synonymous with button mashing due in part to the easy to use four buttons that dictated how your character punches. Of course after completely revamping the game, and changing the physics engine entirely, Electronic Arts decided to go with Stick use only. This means that how your boxer punches will depend entirely on directional flicks, or circular motions on your right analog stick. For those of you who have always been willing to give the analog a chance, this is great news as the responsiveness of the Analog in Fight Night Round 4 has been improved to the point of near perfection. When you want a hook, you will get a hook. There’s no more desperately trying to force down on the analog in an attempt to get your boxer to do what you please. For those of you who have preferred to stay with the easy to use buttons, you may find yourself going through a bit of a learning curve.

Unlike Round 3, Fight Night Round 4 doesn’t feel like we’re playing with boxers on rails. You can move around the ring without jamming on your analog, punches don’t deflect, and you’ll even see a punch sneak through a person’s block once in a while. Motion around the ring is also important due to differences in boxing style, and the inclusion of arm length as a factor in fights. Short or inside fighters will find it important to bob, duck and weave their way up to tall or outside fighters to take away the advantage of their reach or their powerful jabs and hooks. Tall or outside fighters will find it important to use speedy footwork to circle around the ring in an attempt to keep a distance between them and the stocky inside fighters to prevent them from getting a powerful advantage. This is because the longer your reach the less damage you’ll do on the inside. As for those with a shorter reach, they’ll do far more damage on the inside.

There is a couple of glitches that managed to sneak through to the retail version, often related to the “Import a Boxer” feature. Once in a while you’ll find that your character has become totally unresponsive to movement. Thankfully this is extremely rare and it can be fixed merely by restarting your game.

Tyson is a devastating force to be reckoned with.

Gameplay:

You can expect the traditional modes of the Fight Night series to appear in Fight Night Round 4. First and foremost Legacy Mode makes a return with a completely overhauled system that offers a whole new series of tasks and requirements to move up the rankings and titles. You’ll begin as a lowly bum fighting his way through an amateur league all the way through the division in an attempt to make it as the Greatest of all Time, a title only given to the best and brightest in boxing. Thankfully the artificial intelligence of opposing boxers in Fight Night Round 4 has been improved significantly no longer allowing us to blow through the ranks without breaking a sweat. As the boxers get tougher, you can expect more rounds, and you may even see the fight go to a judge’s decision once in a while. Training remains for the most part, a side-show that is both distracting to the bulk of the game. It can also be a frustrating aspect to an otherwise perfectly simple and fun game-play for those of us who prefer to power-game our statistics. This is mostly because the training portion of the game is insanely more difficult than the actual fights we face.

Fight Now mode also makes a return, posing as an exhibition setting that allows us to jump directly into the ring with any of our favorite boxers. Online mode also makes a showing with much more of a resounding bang than it did with its previous conception. No longer do we have to suffer through an onslaught of exploits from malice-minded users who seek to cheat their way to the top, nor can people abuse the start button in an attempt to throw off your opponent. Finally people can’t simply ‘leave’ the match to avoid taking a loss. More importantly, there is even a statistic telling you exactly how many matches a person has left, forever marring their records by exposing them as the cheesy gamers they are.

Moving on to the important aspects of Fight Night Round 4’s gameplay, I can begin by telling you about the marvels of the physics engine again. Punches depend almost entirely on positioning and timing. If your opponent is bobbing and weaving his way around while you throw a right hook, there’s a good chance you could miss him completely, slowing you down significantly while you attempt to recover from the evasion. This slow down period serves as the perfect opportunity for your opponent to counter-punch you, which can be particularly devastating should they land a clean and powerful blow. Fast footwork, weaving and head movement is also particularly important merely for the sake of throwing off your opponents blows, allowing you to close the distance to do some damage as an infighter, or lowering the amount of damage those blows that do make it through cause. Stamina also plays a major part in this game. Throwing too many punches or taking too many punches to the body will lower it drastically, making you slower and easier to damage, so it’s important to keep your stamina as high as possible.

Finally, the corner mini-game that forced us to fix the wounds of our boxers ourselves has been taken out. Instead they replaced it with a point system that focuses on how well we did in the actual round. This is actually an extremely important aspect of the game now. Against an equal or superior opponent, you’ll find yourself at a disadvantage if you go in with your arms swinging, because you’ll lose out on an important corner-point bonus for accuracy. The worse you do in the round, the less points you get to spend on recovering your health, stamina or reducing your cuts/swelling. This makes it so you actually have to strategize. Make your opponent’s accuracy suffer so he gets less points, or try to knock him down in a round to get a gigantic point bonus. If you aren’t careful and you happen to gimp your point totals, you may find your opponent’s health and stamina bars much higher than yours in the later rounds, which can make it all but impossible to win.

No punch will ever land in the same place twice.

Summary:

Fight Night Round 4 should come with a warning label just to tell us how addicting this game can be. For those of you willing to take some time to go through the learning curve of using the analog stick to throw punches, you may find yourself in the most immersing and impressive boxing games ever. As I once said in a previous article, “The sheer volume and depth added to this series by Electronic Arts Sports is astounding. In only a few short years they’ve managed to take Fight Night from a homely arcade button-mash fest, to the closest thing to an actual Boxing Simulator that you will ever see in this decade.”

Graphics: 10/10
Audio: 9/10
Controls: 9/10
Gameplay: 10/10

Total Gaming Network Rating: 9.5/10

~Dairuka Sutain