For fans of the sport only.
Fans of more instantly-gratifying fighting games might want to look elsewhere right off the bat, because Fight Night is not this. As a boxing simulation, Fight Night Round 4 is about pacing yourself, picking when to make your offense while maintaining a solid defense. If you go in swinging like a maniac, you’ll only leave yourself open to counter attacks from smarter opponents. The boxer you choose will dictate the kind of strategy you’ll need to employ. A tall fighter with a longer reach will be a better outside fighter, standing back and using jabs and straights to wear down their opponent. Shorter fighters with a shorter reach will need to get in close and inside their opponents space, but are more explosive with their hooks and uppercuts if they can get under their defense.
The controls for Fight Night Round 4 are very tight, and make it easy to switch from a defensive stance to an offensive barrage and vice-versa. All punches are controlled on the right analog stick, which at first can be a little difficult to execute specific attacks (you’ll be doing a lot of uppercuts while trying to execute hooks because of the similar movements required to pull them off), but with practice you’ll buckle this down quickly enough. A quick pull on the right trigger and you’ll put your gloves up to defend from retaliatory blows, while the left trigger will allow you move your upper body to dodge. This ease of control certainly makes it easy to learn the necessary moves to win fights, and let you keep your focus on what your boxer’s hands are doing in the fight, rather than worrying about what your hands are doing on the controller.
The roster features an impressive 48 licensed boxers, including amongst others Muhammed Ali, Mike Tyson, Sugar Ray Leonard, Anthony Mundine and Manny Pacquiao. There’s little to no representation in the lower-weight divisions, for anyone following that, with the majority of the roster found in Middleweight and above.
In terms of gameplay mode variety, Fight Night Round 4 is extremely sparse. There’s “Fight Now”, which is your basic quick play option to pick two boxers and jump in the ring with minimum fuss, or “Legacy Mode”, the game’s career mode. In Legacy Mode, you select a boxer and start with reduced stats as a rookie just starting their career. You start at the bottom and work your way to the top, scheduling fights with similarly ranked fighters in order to improve your own rank. You can take part in training mini-games between fights to improve your fighter’s stats, and this adds a nice little distraction, albeit short-lived. Unfortunately there’s just not that much more to it than this. You schedule fights and try to win belts until you eventually retire, but that’s all there is to it, which is a bit disappointing really.
The character creation tools is one of the best features of this game. The appearance customisation tools are everything you’ll come to expect from contemporary EA Sports titles, letting you adjust and fine tune everything from your jowls to your calves. If you have access to an Xbox Live Vision (PlayStation Eye if you have the PS3 version) or a digital camera and an internet connection, you can try out the Photo Gameface feature. Fans of the Tiger Woods PGA Tour series may be familiar with this feature, which lets you take a photo of yourself, place a few markers on it (to show where your eyes, nose, mouth and other features are) and the game will attempt to generate a face for your custom boxer. This feature can be hit-and-miss, and if your photos are poorly lit this can lead to some extremely strange skin-tones. But if you do manage to get a good photo the results can be eerily accurate to life, in a sort of Uncanny Valley kind of way.
Graphically, Fight Night Round 4 is top notch. The boxer models are extremely high quality, and the lighting and sweat effects are very pleasing to the eye. The animations are fluid and realistic looking, but at the same time don’t make the controls feel too ‘floaty’ as is commonly a problem with heavy use of motion capturing in animations. Arenas all look great, whether it be the grungy local gym where you’re starting your journey to the top, the glitzy MGM Grand in Las Vegas, or the historic Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.
Fight Night Round 4 not only looks great, but also sounds great. All the sounds of gloves connecting with skin are solid and satisfying, letting you know audibly when you’ve connected with a really solid hit. Crowd ambience is excellent and if you have a good surround sound setup, will really add to the atmosphere of the fights. The soundtrack is good, depending on your personal taste for hip-hop, and the track list is quite large considering the only place you’ll hear music is in the menus and during ring entrances. Perhaps the weakest aspect of the sound design, as is the case with most sports titles, is the commentary which quickly gets repetitive and annoying.
If you’re a fan of boxing then Fight Night Round 4 is definitely worth a look. If you have the patience to play a strategic, slower-paced fighting game, then it’s also worth a look. And in the end that’s what it comes down to, because the majority of fights in this game are long and grueling encounters. If you have friends who you can play this with, all the better, because the CPU opponents tend to be rather boring and predictable to play against. Whatever your situation, this one is probably worth a rental before shelling out your hard earned dollars for your own copy.
