Fight Night Round 4

Rating: T

Score: 9.0/10

Each Fight Night game becomes a truly revolutionary game in the boxing genre. This new one was much hyped; it was planned to be the most amazing boxing game ever. Does it succeed, or will it be getting the knockout punch this round? This game is available for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

The thing that sets this game apart from generic boxing games is in its “Total Punch Control”. As opposed to the normal button controls to throw punches, you throw punches with the analog stick. This is unorthodox, but works well. To jab, you tilt the analog stick one way; to do straights, you tilt it another way. The same analog stick blocks if you hold block, tilts upward for high block, downward for low block.

The other analog stick moves your fighter or, if you’re holding the weave button, makes you weave forward/backwards/side to side. In short, your thumbs are busy in this game. If you weave out of the way of a punch, then you have a moment to counter-punch for massive damage. There are some problems with it; the A.I. has a way easier time avoiding your punches then you do his. Also, you can perfect dodge and counter-attack, but fail to do massive damage.

One amazing feature this game has is having both Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali, among other fighters. If those professional fighters aren’t good enough to impress you, you have unbelievably high standards (I mean, come on, Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali)! Luckily though, you can use a camera (Xbox LIVE Vision Camera or Playstation Eye) to put your face on a fighter, and give him different stats, abilities, strength, weaknesses, everything. You can also go online and find some awesome and hilarious fighters other people made from scratch up for download . These include (but are not at all limited to): Chuck Norris, Rocky Balboa, Clubber Lang (no Mohawk, though), and even Billy Mays (RIP Billy Mays).

Another amazing feature is how simply spectacular this game looks. When you knock someone out, there is a slow-motion replay of the opponent stopping your fist with his own face, making a loud snap as it gets a bulls-eye on the nose. Sweat, blood, and perhaps even tears bounce off his badly beaten face as his body starts to collapse on to the ground. The audience in the background rise from their seats and start to cheer as a seemingly lifeless body hits the ground with an audible thump. When you experience seeing something like that, you know this is truly, no doubt, the greatest-looking boxing game ever.

Legacy Mode is the career mode in the game, where you build your legacy as a fighter, because it’s not how long a fighter fights, or how good he is, but how great his legacy becomes. You can take any fighter you own (downloaded, made by you, premade, etc...), and build him up in the ranks. You start with pathetic base stats and built them up through training. If you attempt to try these exercises yourself (as opposed to auto-training which will only give you 50% of potential stat growth), you’ll find some training exercises will give you more points in a stat if you already have good stats. For example: the goal of the punching bag training is simple, get a high combo going for maximum effectiveness. You hit the punching bag quicker if you have high hand movement speed, and hitting the punching bag more will net you more points, getting you more points in stats. Therefore, having high hand movement speed will help you get a lot from this exercise if you try it yourself, otherwise auto train.

This game is what every fan is looking for, that is if they enjoy the new Total Punch Control. It plays great, it looks amazing, and the nearly unlimited roster of fighters you can get is amazing. It’s not without its flaws, but it’s a huge step in the right direction.