Fight Night Champion
Rating: M
Score: 9.5/10
What can you say about Boxing? Well, there are certainly a lot of things that can be said. If you're a fan of competition and violence, it's a great sport. Otherwise, it probably seems silly to you that two grown men would enter a ring just to punch each other. Either way, it's popular, and the video game industry loves to capitalize on two things: popularity and violence. The Fight Night series has produced the most popular boxing games, looking amazing and also playing smoothly. Can Fight Night Champion hold true to the title or is it the falling star? This game is available on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.
So let's get something out the way first. This game looks amazing. If I wasn't holding a controller, I would scarcely know if I was playing a game or watching HD TSN (well, until I remember I don't have HD TSN). The actual game scenes don't look as amazing as the TV cutscenes, but both are mindblowingly superb. Along with Crysis 2 (which you can expect a review for next week!), this is not one of but THE greatest looking game ever.
You're Andre Bishop, middleweight champion who has fallen hard after a harsh event changes your life and sends you to jail. You are released and try to get back on your feet. It's introduced right off, being the first part of the game players dip their toe into. It draws the player in well to the story mode over anything else. It's certainly a step up from its predecessor.
Also a step up is the addition of both face-button (A,B,X,Y and Cross,Square,Circle,Triangle) and control stick controlling punches. A complaint, if I remember correctly, was the removal of face-button controls in Fight Night Round 4, only using the "Total Punch Control" (control stick) system. Now, we have both. No complaints from anyone now.
So after a quick look at the tutorial and in-game manual, you're good to start throwing punches. The system is smooth, but a small delay exists between throwing a punch and it actually getting thrown. It doesn't affect how fluid the punches are connecting, or how beautiful it all is though. The gameplay is also way faster paced than actual boxing, so it entertains well.
You have all the boxers you'd want. Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, and that's probably all I need to name. Really, you should be pretty content if you have two biggies like them, right? You do have a huge list of famous and not-so-famous boxers, so fans will be pleased.
If you're not, then I guess I need to introduce Boxer Creator mode. It's much of the same from Fight Night Round 4, so fans will feel at home.
When it comes to video games, graphics really mean nothing, it's all about fluidity and gameplay. When you master both, polishing is the greatest thing you can do, putting the cherry on a sundae. Well, for the price of one sundae, Fight Night Champion gives you a sundae and a cake, the cake being a metaphor for the graphics: so gorgeous, and almost single-handedly making you forget about the sundae. They complement each other so well, it makes for the perfect game for fans and an amazing game for non-fans.