Fight Night Round 3 Review
The sweet science gets sweeter on the PlayStation 3.
Posted by Chris Buffa on Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Last spring, Electronic Arts' Xbox 360 game, Fight Night Round 3 delivered a crushing haymaker to Nintendo's Punch-Out!! franchise to become king of the digital boxing arena, in large part because of its near photo-realistic graphics and brutal knockouts. Now the violence has arrived on PlayStation 3, complete with an innovative first person boxing mode and ESPN Integration. The lack of rumble blows, but this game still deserves to be purchased, providing you hunger for blood, sweat and broken bones.
ESPN Integration works the same way as it does in NBA Live 07. As soon as you connect the game to Sony's online network, you receive current sports scores, video, radio updates and news. Downloading the content takes but a few minutes, and you don't have to be hanging out in a lobby to receive this information, as the ESPN Sports Ticker and ESPN Radio Updates can be accessed while playing the game's single player modes. It would have been nice to see developer EA Chicago blend ESPN throughout the entire game, but this mode certainly satisfies, giving players one less reason to switch between Fight Night and SportsCenter.
While getting a heads up on sports news makes the video game experience more immersive, you should purchase Fight Night for the all new and PlayStation 3 exclusive Get in the Ring mode. Instead of viewing the carnage from a third person perspective (though that option is still available), you see the action from the eyes of your selected boxer. While the controls remain the same (EA gives you six schemes to work with), you get to see your hands pop out and clock your opponent in the head. This makes for a more visceral experience, as an opponent will miss, get a surprised (more like stupefied) look on his face, and watch helplessly as you tag his chin with an uppercut, deck him upside his head with a right hook, or rattle his brain with a stiff stun punch. Conversely, missing your intended target has its share of consequences. Fight Night's artificial intelligence capitalizes on bone-headed mistakes, and it wastes no time in turning your boxer's face into hamburger. As you absorb punishment, the edges of the screen grow dark and your fighter's breathing grows heavy. Take too much abuse, and you'll eat canvas.
Get in the Ring mode, while a nice addition, doesn't make this game cool. EA did a wonderful job with the perspective as well as adapting the controls to work with it, but first person boxing shouldn't make Xbox 360 owners jealous. Nor should the updated graphics, minor improvements (more sweat) that can barely be noticed. EA Chicago upped the boxer detail in the PlayStation 3 version, but even side-by-side, noticing the difference between it and the Xbox 360 game proves difficult. PS3 owners can brag, but Xbox 360 fans shouldn't scoff, especially since minor graphical alterations, sports info, and Get in the Ring round out the list of PS3 bonus features.
With that being said, Fight Night Round 3 looks amazing on both consoles. Its list of 28 fighters includes Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, James Toney and Roy Jones Jr. -- almost perfectly mimic their real life counterparts. The developers not only captured their likenesses, but expertly captured emotions. Slamming your fist into someone's face causes him to recoil in pain, while gearing up for a huge right will result in your boxer lowering his eyebrows and clenching his teeth. Complimenting this, sweat beads across their bodies and blood erupts from wounds. These pretty faces get pulverized as a fight wears on.
Like its predecessor, PS3 Fight Night contains a handful of modes. Play Now throws you into a fight, Career lets you select a boxer and battle your way to the championship, and Rivalry lets you select from 11 famous boxing wars such as Ali vs. Frazier, Jones Jr. vs. Hopkins, and Gatti vs. Ward. Interestingly enough, whenever you or your opponent is close to being knocked out while in Rivalry Mode, the game sometimes transitions to a first person perspective, where you must defend against an oncoming attack or decimate your foe. For whatever reason, the boxer on the ropes cannot fight back.
Rivalry Mode works great because it lets you jump into a classic match without having to wade through Play Now Mode's menus. Furthermore, you don't have to deal with the lag that plagues them (it takes some time for each boxer to load) and you get to box in an arena that would otherwise need to be unlocked in another mode, Madison Square Garden being one of the more appealing locales.
Fight Night's developers also deserve praise for the extensive list of options. You can select from three difficulty levels (easy, medium, hard), five cameras (Ringside, Overhead, Swing, Corner, Referee), number of rounds (4-15), length of these rounds (1-3 minutes), toggle illegal blows on/off, determine how often a fighter should be saved by the bell (never, any round, last round) and host of other things. You can even create your own boxer, choosing a first/last name, one of 50 nicknames, one of 63 home towns, stance (orthodox, southpaw), base style, punch style, block style, and several other factoids. Heck, you can even use sliders to adjust the size of his skull.
Online play shines, thanks to smooth play, headset support, easy to navigate lobbies and stat tracking. This is one of the few PlayStation 3 games that delivers an Xbox Live user-friendly experience, and EA deserves kudos. Finding opponents and setting up one-on-one fights takes but a couple minutes.
Enough about modes and options. Fight Night Round 3 shines because of how it plays. EA mapped the punching to the right analog stick, a feature known as Total Punch Control. By maneuvering the stick in various directions, you can throw several different types of rights and lefts. To perform a right hook, for example, all you have to do is tilt the stick to the right, then counterclockwise. To deliver a left hook haymaker, you tilt it to the left, slide it counterclockwise to the six-o-clock position and then slide it clockwise to nine-o-clock position. Total Punch Controls comes with a minor learning curve, since you need to figure out which punches to use at the right moments (miss a haymaker and you'll pay), but this system feels extremely intuitive, especially when combined with block and dodge. Before long, you'll dodge, weave and then put fools into comas.
Speaking of comas, the knockouts look amazing. When a character takes a final blow to the face, the impact results in an impressive ripple effect that reverberates throughout his face. This is followed by blood and spit flying from the victim's mouth. Meanwhile, the announcer goes nuts and the crowd explodes.
While on the subject of audio, the announcer does a fine job calling the match and reporting on a boxer's condition. He repeats his lines, but his snappy delivery makes up for the repetition. In addition, Fight Night's beat thumping soundtrack contains plenty of great music, such tracks as Back Again by Dilated Peoples and The Arrival by Atmosphere. Furthermore, most of the punches sound fantastic, particularly the hard-hitting ones. Blasting someone with rights and lefts makes your speakers boom.
After a KO, the game transitions to a replay of the knockout and shows it from three different angles. This includes any cheap shots you managed to score before his carcass crashes to the floor, evil "after the fact" punches that add to the excitement as well as the trash talking. More so than any sports game before it, Fight Night creates the best opportunity for getting in someone's face. Just because someone's punch drunk doesn't mean you should leave 'em be.
Unfortunately, a few annoying flaws and one notable omission keep it from being perfect. The game takes 21 seconds to load a match, and the lag that pops up while selecting fighters gets annoying, particularly when waiting to see what a boxer looks like. In addition, while the characters look great, they move like robots and some of the punches lack impact. Often times, they look like love taps. Hopefully, the developers will opt for more lifelike animations in the future.
In addition, the single player mode, while option heavy, doesn't have enough meat. Aside from Career Mode, the game lacks replay value, making it a predominantly multiplayer heavy experience.
Lastly, Sony's decision to not include rumble in its SIXAXIS controller cheapens the game. Not being able to feel the punches lessens their impact. This one feature makes the Xbox 360 version the one to play.
These issues notwithstanding, Fight Night Round 3 delivers plenty of thrills online and off. If you've played and grown tired of the Xbox 360 edition, it doesn't offer enough new content to justify a purchase, but if you've never touched this game, you should buy it immediately. Just make sure that it's your friends -- and not you -- spitting blood.
Final Score: 8/10
