Let's get ready to rumble!

Fight Night Round 4 (FNR4) gives the feeling of being a much more tuned title than its predecessor Fight night round 3, built on by graphical improvements as well as sweet little gameplay additions like mini-games which, although frustrating from a gaming perspective, bring home the realism that FNR4 provides. The game is very immersive and tends to suck players in, without standing in line with many similar titles as just another boring, repetitive boxing game; Fight Night Round 4 is in fact very exciting and fast – gaming online against other people is also very exhilarating as the gameplay speed picks up.

Graphics and Presentation

Admittedly Fight Night Round 4 shows stunning graphical detail, despite its crude conveyance! For examples of this, see the brutal fashion in which sweat gleams off of character models or flicks off a character face as you deliver a knock-out blow. Character models, whilst on the subject, are well framed.

All to many times in previous titles have we seen unrealistic body builds that look rather bricky, whereas Fight Night Round 4 shows off over 40 different characters with different builds and looks; fighters are also pretty much instantly recognisable if you're up to scratch with your boxing knowledge. The roster of fighters is pretty impressive and fight arenas are similarly well done. The lighting doesn't detract from action in the ring, but lets you see details of the crowd that again add a sense of realism.

On the subject of graphics and presentation, the tool allowing players to create their own fighters is well done, and many gamers have responded by creating characters such as Barack Obama or Chuck Norris that are available to download online.

Sound

The sound and commentary are extremely good overall, with crowds cheering or booing their favourite fighters as the action unfolds and your fighting team shouting instructions from the sidelines as you play. Whether you pay any attention to them or not is up to you, of course. A problem with EA games in the past admittedly is the commentary which is made to feel blocky, or inaccurate to what's actually occurring in the game, however in this case it doesn't seem like they repeat their metaphors and little anecdotes too much that it becomes mind-numbing. Also impressive is the fact that they call the fight quite accurately as you see it on screen, so it can become quite entertaining to listen to detail about different fighters and their real lives can be brought up.

Other audio, such as the sound made by punches landing or of a heaving twenty stone bloke thudding down against the canvass are very satisfying to say the least, as they give the game a bit of character and brutality that a boxing title needs.

Gameplay

The main game mode is Legacy mode where your main job is to fight your way up the ranks from 50th to 1st in a chosen weight class. Your character will be at the start of his career and as part of this single player mode you must train your character up whilst scheduling all of your fights; however, this is where things become somewhat unnecessarily complicated and a bit long-winded.

The schedule mode means that you usually have to train for a set number of sessions between fights, which at the optimum level would take around 5+ months, but you must remember that your character will be ageing so this situation isn't ideal. In training sessions meanwhile, there are up to six mini-games that will help you train up your character's ranking attributes which can be quite fun and challenging but after about the twentieth time on each one, it can become repetitive and it's hard to see the point behind trying to ace them when you can skip them and receive half of the point gains in your ranking attributes rather than trying for the full set.

By half, this means adding one or two points each time rather than three or four – although this doesn't sound too bad at face value, bare in mind that you have over 10 different ranking attributes to try and improve so it does take away a bit from the experience.

Aside from that, I must discuss the fighting which is quite superb to say the least. Even entering the ring on-screen will suck you into the game and the fighting is very fluid; one problem with sports games is the freedom of real life sometimes doesn't translate easily into video game form, however EA have shown some true intuition and the AI is very intelligent. AI will learn to take advantage of gaps in punches, and characters will often flow and start to play better once they gain momentum after hitting a few big punches or dodging the blows of their opponent.

Another nice feature here is that the more you hit punches or dodge strikes, the more little experience points you get; once each round ends and the players retreat to their corners for a small break, these experience points can be used to add value to the attributes of your player in-game (for example in adding to your fatigue/energy levels). This is a neat add-on, allowing the better players to be rewarded for their efforts especially in online play, and it often means that the better player gains more points; it doesn't have to be the person that throws the most punches that gets rewarded, rather the person who lands the most punches and defends themselves better.

One of the noted problems of the single player mode is that you can often hit and strike more punches without gaining as much fatigue as your AI opponents, but this shouldn't bother you as online both players are thus equals. Lag by my experience has been minimal and fighting is still fluid so it makes for a good all-round experience. 

The aforementioned fluidity of the fighting also enhances the immersion for players in the game, as you really do start to appreciate what it's like to be a boxer having to plan your every move quickly by dodging strikes or trying to get in a cheap shot. Fighting itself is also very variable, for example flicking your analogue stick one way might have a different effect than flicking it the other way whilst striking a punch, so much so that you could miss the other player entirely or stun your opponent. Overall the actual fighting and ring action is a very pleasurable experience, but the best part is that it's fun for casual gamers and competitive gamers alike who really want to master every aspect of their fights.

Closing Comments

Fight Night Round 4 on the PS3 gives a great fighting and ring experience, especially with online capabilities for playing and sharing content such as character models. Innovative features such as the corner-break system where players are rewarded for fighting better than their opponents and the increased fluidity of the fighting combine to make the title the most realistic boxing game to date. Fight Night Round 4's graphics and audio quality make up for the few shortfalls of the game (namely having to waste time scheduling your own fights and completing frustrating training mini-games in the ranking attribute system to name a couple) which don't detract from the overall experience and it is thus a very recommendable to buy Fight Night Round 4 for PS3 owners with an interest in the genre.

Richard Lawlor