It's been nearly ten years since the ear-chomping pugilist "Iron" Mike Tyson has appeared in a video game but he's back and looking badder than ever. Of course I'm talking about Fight Night Round 4, the latest game in EA's venerable franchise and the reigning champion of the boxing genre.
Since the game is hitting Future Shop store shelves today I thought there is no better time than now to give everyone here at the Tech Blog a good overview of what you can expect in the game. I'm trying a new format this time so hopefully you like the presentation.
What is it?
The Fight Night series is EA's evolution of the Knockout Kings boxing games that debuted back 1998 on the PSone. The last game in the series, Fight Night Round 3, a game developed by EA Chicago, was released in early 2006 on various platforms including Xbox 360, Xbox, PSP, PS2, and later, the PS3. In late 2007, EA Chicago shut its doors for good due to its lack of profitability and not meeting company standards, and as a result, the Fight Night series shifted over to EA Canada based out of Burnaby, Vancouver. The biggest selling feature of the game, and the one many boxing fans are excited about, is that Fight Night Round 4 is the first boxing game in history that pits legendary former heavyweights Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali against one another.
What have I seen?
I've been following the story of Fight Night Round 4 closely since EA announced the game back on May 7, 2008. Since then, I've been following the announcements of the game, watched most of the trailers, and a little over two weeks ago I downloaded the demo for the Xbox 360. I've probably put in about four hours of gameplay time into the demo (yes, I know that's a heck of a lot Ricky Hatton and Manny Pacquiao fighting).
What's new in the game?
Quite a bit, actually. The game is completely new and built from the ground up with a new gameplay physics engine. What this means for fans of the series is much more dynamic gameplay and a much deeper and more immersive experience. The all-new physics-based animation system allows your boxer to perform a much wider array of punches, blocks and ring movements. You now have the ability to perform glancing punches, knockout blows, missed punches and for the first time ever, rough and tumble inside-fighting. This is much more dynamic than in Fight Night Round 3 which had the inability for fighters to actually get close to each other (there was this noticable "invisible wall" that prevented you from bulling in for some inside-fighting.) What that in effect did was rob fighters like Mike Tyson, who's forte is weaving in and hammering his opponents close to the body, from acting out their natural boxing style.
Even more impressive is how the game handles height and reach differentials. Whereas in Fight Night Round 3, it didn't matter how tall you were, or how long your reach was, your boxer always fought the same. This all changes dramatically in Fight Night Round 4 where height and reach not only matter, but completely dictate your strategies based on the fighter's specific attributes. For example, Ali is much taller than Tyson and has much longer reach. Ali's natural fighting style is to stay far away from his opponent and pepper them with straight jabs and hooks. Conversely, if you're a ball of muscle like Tyson, you want to bull your way in and pound your opponents body and head with inside uppercuts and hooks.
The other interesting gameplay enhancement the physics engine provides is true-to-life glancing blows with realistic results. If you're far away from your opponent and lunge at them with a quick jab your blow can hit flush in the face, or in chin, or even in the temple and can knock out your opponent instantly. If you're opponent blocks, your glove can glance right off your opponent's gloves, leaving you much more open and vulnerable to counter punches.
All of the visuals in the game are driven by this new engine and it's quite satisfying to play and watch. It's the first boxing game I've seen that has realistic muscle flexes when you swing, glove deformation when you land a strike, and very convincing body reverberations as the blow ripples through your opponent's muscle.
What modes does the game have?
The game demo I played contained the following modes:
(note: modes with an asterisk beside them were disabled in the demo I played)
Fight Now - your basic quick play mode where 1 or 2 players players can duke it out to see who's king of the ring
Legacy Mode* - an immersive career mode featuring 8 weight divisions, multiple championship titles, divisional ranking, and pound for pound ratings
Create Boxer* - allows you to create your own custom-made boxer. You can modify features such as weight, height, reach, wardrobe, and eye/hair/skin colour. You can also upload your photograph using EA's online website and import it onto your character.
Online World Championship Mode* - an online mode that lets you create a boxer and move up the rankings, fight for the world title, and extend your reign against other users around the world
The game also features a Boxer Gallery that lets you browse statistics on the 45 licensed boxers in the game and a Fight Night Store which I assume means there will be downloadable content made available for the game.
What do I think of the game?
From what I've played thus far, I'm pretty impressed with the breadth of the game and it's clearly the most ambitious boxing game to date. I've always been more of a fan of arcade boxers, such as Punch Out!!, however that's mainly because I've found previous boxing games to be a little too mechanical. In comparison, Fight Night Round 4 feels more organic and deep. The fresh coat of paint creates virtually realistic visuals (even moreso than Fight Night Round 3) and is almost startling to watch. The new physics engine feels almost like how you imagine fighting in real life to be and seems to approximate boxing quite well. The way height and reach comes into play differentiates boxer styles quite a bit and adds to both the learning curve, and replayability.
What do other critics think of the game?
I always find it use to read at least a few reviews of a game before shelling out my hard earned cash, and the best site out there I find is Metacritic. It aggregates the review scores of reputable gaming websites and gives game titles an overall industry-consenus score percentage. I had a look at the PS3 version and it's currently averaging a 90% average -- which is quite good. I whipped up this nifty chart to summarize the review scores of well known gaming websites:
Any final thoughts?
It's great to see EA Canada's ambition with this game. If you're a boxing fan I can't see you going wrong with this game -- especially if you enjoyed Fight Night Round 3. There is enough *new* in this game to view this game as a completely fresh experience. This isn't like the NHL or Madden series that seems to be stuck in this incremental annual update mode with little substantial upgrades. Fight Night Round 4 plays very different from previous versions and has enough nuances and depth to test the mettle of even the most seasoned boxing fan. Plus, with "Iron" Mike Tyson and "The Greatest" Muhammad Ali both in the game, you at least get to directly control quite possibly the most epic versus match in boxing history.
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Note: Since I talked so much about the new physics engine I thought some of might be interested in checking out a tech demo of it in action. So, here you are:
Physics Engine Trailer (via GameTrailers):
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