Fight Night Round 4

Fight Night’s Back to take the Title

By now we should all be familiar with what Fight Night Round 4 is all about…..but for those of you living in a cave it is THE only boxing game worth playing. Now that Setanta has gone, this is the most Boxing action you’ll see this side of Christmas.

Awesome graphics, amazing soundtrack and a truly epic ‘Legacy mode’ makes this one of the better sporting games this year. Straight from the off you can play out the title fight of Tyson Vs Ali and end the age old question of which is the better boxer, or you can take your time, build a boxer from scratch and fight up through the ranks to become the World Champion of your weight division.

The most important change on this version of the biggest boxing game franchise (brought to you by EA) is the new fight controls. The first few fights feel alien and no-where near as fluid as Round 3 where swinging in alternate hooks was easy, but as you play more and more the controls slowly start to sink in and what your left with is a much faster, much more precise experience. The jabs are lightening quick with uppercuts and haymakers bringing the thunder and if there’s ever a problem too big, there are still the illegal blows.

Counters have been changed for the better as well, instead of the standard four directions (head high/ low, body high/ low) you now have to time the block, and time it perfectly, it’s only head or body but still I’ve struggled to get the timing spot on. The body movement is still the same, hold down left trigger and wiggle the right stick, but with the addition that from dodging comes opportunities for counters, which deal double damage so make sure they count!!!!

If you get knocked down (try fighting Iron Mike Tyson with a featherweight) you’ll be greeted by a bar, red on the outsides, then yellow, with green in the middle. All you have to do is push the arrow into the green area with the left stick, and then push up on the right stick to stand up. If you think of it like standing up (the realism continues) after getting knocked down you can be ultra unsteady on your legs, push the arrow too far and you’ll topple over to the other side, and as you get more and more bloody and bruised, the harder you’ll find it.

The training comprises of 6 different tasks such as the maize ball, double end bag, and heavy bag and so on. It’s probably best to try these out before you actually have to do them for real in the Legacy mode as some do not appeal to the beginner gamer. I’ve had many ‘training sessions’, and I use that term loosely as it has become a little bit like a dog chasing it’s tail. When in manual training, you have a possible chance to gain up to +6 points on some stats, with the lose of -1 on others. The loss is standard regardless of how well you do, the +6 is optional and the best I’ve managed to get with my fighter is a direct 1 for 1 exchange……. I guess I need to spend more time grinding.

The soundtrack? It’s pretty gangster, lots of big bass, hard hitting songs from a fair few artists, personally, I preferred Round 3’s soundtrack, but I guess we all have to move with the times. Sometimes you’ll have a song that doesn’t really fit in when your boxing, I’ve been battering amateurs before only to notice the sounds of a mariachi in the background, fair enough when fighting in Mexico (when in Rome) but when your fighting in the training gym there’s only room for tough songs. Of course this can all be made redundant by making your own play list on a flash disk.

The Legacy mode has kept me occupied for quite a while now, after winning the amateur tournament (compulsory) with 4-0 (4 KO’s) you progress into the professional ranks. You can choose to add real fighters from your weight division, rank them yourself and fight your way to the top. I let the Xbox automatically choose the order in which I face them, and it seems to have done a very good job as some of the fighters are no longer fighting, the ranking system is done as a pound for pound basis, a title that you too can fight for.

You will have to plan your own fights, and train a week before in probably the only dull part of the game that I’ve found so far. It’s the calendar, you plan a fight, train a week before, and apart from that nothing seems to happen. After I have a few more fights I’d imagine sponsors will want me to pose on my days off, but until then I guess ill look at the calendar and all those blank spaces where fights and training should be taking place.

So, to the scorecards we go, well, it’s definitely not a bad game by any means, I still haven’t found my rhythm, fighter or style but it’s still fun and by my estimations, the better you get, the more rewarding it is to completely dismantle your opponents so I’m going to keep playing. I can’t really knock this game yet, I would love too as sporting games are not a favourite of mine, but I simply cannot, the physics, game play, soundtrack, character creation and everything else that comes with the package there’s going to be many nights spent just playing this.