Ugh
It is a bit of a tragedy that boxing has had such a hard time. There have been a lot of games made about it, but few have been excellent. The 360 was the home for one of them, Fight Night Round 3. Now, Don King has licensed his name --- I know, King selling his name? Shocker! --- for a new boxing title for the 360. Does it work?
Briefly, no. In a lengthier review, sweet lord no. This is up there with Ring King in the annals of horrible boxing games. A review of the game is more easily expressed by a simple listing of the flaws.
Visually, the game is bad. Again, you've seen FNR3. I'm sure the developers have as well. If your game looks much worse a few years later, you have a bit of an issue. The attempts at facial deformation looks, more accurately, like somebody has implanted bean bags in the avatars' faces. You also have weird coloring issues. Now, this would be understandable in the 8th round...but when the fight STARTS? The animation is also jerky and while the framerate remains consistent, it does remain consistently slow. The game is really tedious.
The controls are also bad. There is a noticeable delay in your input and the outcome on-screen. In fact, several times, your punch won't actually be thrown until after your opponent's combo has ended. Collision detection is embarrassingly bad. Your punch doesn't look like it hits, it never looks like it hurts, and I can say that on several KO punches, I wasn't convinced I actually HIT the guy. You know, in many ways, it was like real pro boxing.
The bouts are also a chore. The enemy AI is not terribly complex, but the fights are just slow grinds. Towards the end, EVERY fight will go about 10 or so rounds. 10 or so rounds of boring boxing is not something that appeals to me and ended up getting me to quit playing the game.
The ONLY thing I liked were the occasional situational fights. You hurt your hand and have to win one-handed in one. Your opponent cheats and gets a substance in your eye that impacts your vision for a few fights. Those are actually pretty cool. I just wish the game that they were being used in was remotely fun to play.
