With the extra burden of interactivity on their backs, video-game developers are faced with two very different ways of entertaining their audience. You can either take something interesting from real-life and attempt to replicate it in pixels or you can depart from reality; either offering scenarios of great originality or subverting real-life for the purpose of fun.
In the history of gaming there have been many examples of games which could be categorized in one of the latter methods of making video-games and many extremes of those two such as Psychonauts and Saints Row 2 but “fun” is subjective. Games aiming for realism have a harder time achieving their goal, limited by technology, possible control methods, absolute dedication and expertise in what is being replicated. Many games have gone down the route of simulation and only a few have come close to achieving their goal (the Total War series is a great example), but I have never played any video-game that has managed to actually match its real life counterpart. Never, that is, until I first popped EA’s Fight Night Round 4 into my 360.
As soon as you boot it up and get to the menu screen it’s hard to ignore the perfection that oozes out of every crevice – from the meaty soundtrack full of brutally appropriate songs, to the presence of the cover athletes; reminding us of the fact that brick shithouse Mike-Fucking-Tyson joins the likes of Mohammad Ali and Joe Calzaghe in Fight Night’s roster of legends. This would be the first time Iron Mike has appeared in a video-game since 1987s ‘Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!!’ for the NES, marking Fight Night Round 4 as a landmark moment in sports gaming.
If big-name boxers aren’t your cup of tea then you can create your own boxer, choosing what they look like and how they fight. Unlike previous games in the series, the character customization options in Fight Night Round 4 are extremely limited, forcing you to choose your boxers face and body from a number of pre-made templates rather than allowing you to build your contender from scratch. This is a puzzling choice considering that Round 4s predecessors all featured much more complex custom character creators. It’s hard to imagine why they would remove a solid feature from the series. Despite this exclusion, the game offers compatibility with EA Sports’ Photo Game Face – a standardized tool that lets you stick your own face on your athlete in all new EA Sports games.
After creating Daniel “The Beast” Mitchell, I’ve got to say that Photo Game Face works extremely well, and is very easy to use – either with an Xbox Live Vision/PS Eye camera or with your own digital camera through EASportsWorld.com. Rather than being forced to determine your boxers strengths and weaknesses through dividing “points” between strengths, they are instead determined by your boxer’s height, weight class, weight as well as a number of other variables which affect the way your boxer fights more directly.
“Styles make fights” as the back of the box advertises couldn’t be more true. In previous Fight Night games, you were either a fast boxer, a slow boxer or something in between. This limited the gameplay and replay value of the game greatly, which resulted in all of the boxers feeling like the same person with different stats. In Fight Night Round 4, every boxer feels different. Playing as Mohammad Ali? You’re going to want to use your speed and reach to your advantage – keeping your opponent at bay with flurry of jabs. Playing as Mike Tyson? You’re going to want to get in close and start wearing down your opponent with heavy hooks and uppercuts before your energy is spent.
Contenders take damage a lot better than in previous entries, as the game expects you to make your opponent miss (either through dodging or parrying) before you strike. When going in for those finishing blows a good counter-puncher with enough power could knock their opponent down with the first punch of the night. If this happens, it is one of the most rewarding moments I’ve had in a game.
For the more casual fan, picking the style that best matches the way you play allows you build your way up from the basics to mastership. For hardcore boxing fans, there are over 40 boxers in the game, each fighting much in the same way they would in real life; some more difficult than others. It takes a lot to master a handful of boxers but you learn a lot more about not only how you should fight but how the other boxer is going to fight by trying as many out as possible.
In the ring, you’ve got to pay careful attention to the actions and patterns your opponent makes and be prepared to change up your strategy as you’ll soon notice that your opponent is paying careful attention to you. The A.I. seen in Round 4 is unsurpassed in sports simulation. It’s not hard to believe that the other guy in the ring is actually Lennox Lewis or what have you, as they react to what you’re doing similarly to how they would in real life.
A savage beating would leave your opponent covering his face and backing away in fear. However, if your stamina is running low and your punches have slowed to a crawl, expect the other boxer to move in and start throwing head-shots. Fight Night Round 4 has almost everything covered in the gameplay area, which alongside fantastic visuals provide an experience which I honestly cannot fault for what it’s aiming for – importantly improving on the slow pace of the previous game and once again allowing for multiple punches to the opponent, post-K.O.
Everyone can appreciate the satisfaction and brutality of a K.O. This is epitomized in the latest game due to the outstanding visuals. Fight Night Round 4 is arguably the best looking game of this generation, scrapping the washed-out art style of Round 3 for a glitzy solid, if uninspiring colour scheme of black and gold on the menus, with an obvious influence from the atmosphere of big championship bouts. In-game you can see every bead of sweat running down your boxers chest, the movement of your boxer’s shoulder muscles as he cocks back a hook, and the closest detail in the damage dealt. To put it simply, this game looks stunning – a believable depiction of its real life counterpart.
If you are planning on playing alone, then Legacy mode is crafted for you. You start off at the bottom of the ladder, as a young fighter taking part in a tournament. Depending upon either victory or defeat, you become a professional boxer. If you’ve played the career mode of a sports game before, Round 4′s Legacy mode will look very familiar.
Faced with a calendar, you are given the option to pick and choose an opponent and a date to schedule to fight. The date determines how many training sessions you will get before the match (you choose one of numerous mini-games, each linked to particular stats in which your level of success determines how much you improve in said fields) and how much popularity you may lose in the time in-between. Popularity and victory in fights improve your rank. You start off as a “Prospect” and work your way up, gradually meeting certain requirements for each rung in the ladder, until you become the “Greatest of all time” (or a “Bum” depending on how your boxers career goes). The higher you go up the ladder, the better training equipment will be available to you, giving a real sense of accomplishment as you go through the career alongside a load of unlockables.
While the career is well paced and offers a lot of substance outside the gameplay, it lacks a sense of personality, as all your opponents are a list of statistics and a face. It doesn’t feel as if every fight is the same, but it certainly feels as if everything in-between is. Outside of Legacy mode, there is Fight Now mode which allows you to choose from any of the real-life boxers featured or from one of your own created ones and fight against any other. Of course, a sports game wouldn’t be a sports game without multiplayer, and Fight Night Round 4 is no different. You can either play with a friend locally or online, and despite the fantastic A.I., nothing beats trash-talking somebody in real life as you pummel their virtual self into oblivion.
EA Sports’ Fight Night Round 4 is a masterpiece of video-gaming, offering a simulation so close to the real thing that you’d be forgiven for choosing to watch a match on the game over a costly pay-per-view event. It really is that good. Re-built from the ground up, Round 4 improves on many criticisms of its predecessor (slow fighting, all fighters play similarly) yet makes some mistakes its predecessors had gotten right (inclusion of face button controls, preferable ‘total punch control’s, deeper character builder). The only problem I have now is questioning whether they can top it with the next game.
Popularity: unranked [?]
