Fight Night Round 3 (Xbox 360, 2006)

Fight Night may be the only boxing game in the business, but the lack of competition certainly hasn't made the champ soft. The perfectly precise and intuitive Total Punch Control mechanic, cringe-inducing knockout blows, and in-depth boxer creation mode are all accounted for in the latest installment in this fighting series, Fight Night Round 3. New to the series this time around are the impact punches feature, a reworked career mode, and a customizable boxing style feature. Admittedly, most of the improvements and updates found in Round 3 are merely incremental, but they're still enough to warrant stepping into the ring for another bout.


Fight Night is back with a fistful of leather for your pretty little face.

Unsurprisingly, the best parts of Fight Night Round 3 are the parts that haven't changed. The Total Punch Control mechanic is back, and it works just as well as it has since the first Fight Night made boxing fun again back in 2004, which means that series veterans will be able to jump right in and start throwing combos with ease. If you're new to Fight Night, you might find that the controls take a bit of getting used to, but once you know them, you won't want to go back to plain old button mashing. The way the controls work is you move your boxer with the left analog stick and throw punches with the right stick. You can throw jabs by tapping the stick forward to the right or left, depending on which fist you want to use. Hooks are thrown by moving the stick in a quarter-circle motion toward your opponent in either direction, and uppercuts are closer to a half-circle motion. You can put extra power behind a punch by pulling the stick back even farther and "winding up" for a powerful haymaker.

Featured for the first time in the Fight Night series are impact punches, which are variations on the haymaker. The haymaker is the basic "swing for the fences" power punch, which was introduced in last year's Fight Night Round 2. The flash KO punch is like an exaggerated haymaker, and it instantly drains your opponent's health and primes him for a quick knockdown. The stun punch is another version of the haymaker, and it initiates a sort of reverse first-person minigame where you see yourself through the eyes of your opponent as you pummel him with punches. It's difficult to pull off a stun punch, and even when you do, it's pointless, since the first-person mode is awkward and trivial. In fact, it's difficult to pull off any of the impact punches, because the windup is slow and the punch is easily countered. That's a good thing, though, because it helps keep the action somewhat balanced.

Throwing a lot of punches is a fine strategy and simply flailing about will often win you a match, but occasionally you'll have to defend yourself. You can block and parry punches using the right trigger on the Xbox and Xbox 360, or the R1 button on the PlayStation 2. You can use the right analog stick to determine which part of your body you want to guard. For example, if your opponent shows a left hook to the head, you can throw up your right arm to parry the shot and then return fire with your own left while your opponent is off guard. When you parry or block successfully, you can quickly and easily make the transition from defense to offense and throw a barrage of counterpunches before your opponent knows what's happening. Indeed, successfully parrying and countering is an integral part of any fight.

Electronic Arts presents the third edition of their Fight Night series. This time, it's back with better graphics and more balanced gameplay. There is no doubt that this is one of the best games EA has put out in their market as far as visuals.

Gameplay: 8
The game has more realism to the game as far as facial physics and facial movement. As I recall in Fight Night Round 2, Muhammad Ali was just any other regular boxer. In Round 3 he actually tip toes around the ring and has amazingly powerful jabs. So already seeing that difference shows that EA put some effort into adding some more realism and authenticity to the game. Round 3 provides a career mode. It is very limited to what you can actually do, you can't really choose ring entrances, take on sponsors, or buy some extra cool items (whatever they may be). Rather, you are left listen to your SAME ring entrance in EVERY SINGLE fight, see and listen to the same advertisement in the game, and provided with incredibly expensive gears such as $300,000 pairs of shorts and $300,000 sneakers.

Controls: 9
It's practically the same as the other series. You still have the TPC (Total Punch Control). Six different configurations. A new thing they added was the Flash KO Punch: it's basically a haymaker with more windup on the analog. Another new feature is the Stun Punch: This is done with more wind up and a follow through punch all the way. What the Stun Punch does is it puts the person who has been hit in First Person Perspective and a little mini-game ,as EA likes to call, comes into action.

Challenges: 7
There are three modes of level difficulty including: Easy, Medium, and Hard. Easy: it's just like the demo, you can practically KO your opponent in 1 or 2 rounds. Medium: a decent fight, but you still end up winning all the time. Hard: In my opinion, this is by far one of least difficult "hard difficulties" I have ever experienced. It's too easy to be labeled hard. For those mild gamers, I would stick with Medium but for those who a hardcore gamers, you can stick with Hard. Every so often you'll come across some "hard" fights, but nothing too overly aggressive.

Sound: 8
You feel so good when you hear that boxing glove smash into your opponents face. It's even more satisfying to hear it again and see it again in replay. There are even situations when you choose a roster character in the game and the crowd even starts chanting your name. It's awesome, but nothing we haven't seen. Commentary can get absolutely repetitive but they have some unique comments to each individual player in the game which is a great add-on. The music selection was also pretty nice. It gave the game a kind of casual feeling.

Overall: 8
Fight Night Round 3 is an amazing game. Visually it is amazing (watching people bleed and watching the stream of blood/spit that comes out after each hard it). Even facial reactions look real. This game is a must buy for boxing fans. Although the single player might be repetitive, short, or have no storyline, the Multi-Player Live factor is what will bring you back to the game.

If you're into boxing, definitely take a look at Fight Night Round 3 for the XBox 360. The realism in the boxer models is rather impressive.

We know that the XBox 360 has great graphics, but looking at the characters in many other games, you might think that human beings were made out of plastic. When you see the characters here, they look *real*. Their skin has pores and imperfections.

On to the game. You get to customize your character both physically and skill-wise. You can make a small, quick hispanic, or a large, bulky, strong-punching dark skinned fighter. You can alter the hair style, tattoos, and much more. As you earn money, you can also buy new trainers and customize your skills further.

Your main career path is a mix of training and choosing contracts to fight. In training mode it's a series of standard button-pushing games that in some cases are just reflexes, but in other cases are actual combo practicing that serve you well in the ring. The training increases specific skills, so you can further customize your character by deciding how to train.

In the fight, it is of course you against a given character. There are varying levels of difficulty and we found that they did a good job of providing fun gameplay for different types of players. The beginner levels were good - although sometimes challenging - for a person who had never played this sort of game before. The higher levels of difficulty meant you really had to focus on what you were doing and land the combos to win.

Your character has a variety of fighting styles to choose from, and you can buy more - including taunts. You can even play as historic characters if you want, including staging fantastic fight pair-ups that would have been fascinating to watch in real life, if we had a time machine to get people into the same ring.

The in-fight graphics were pretty slick. If you hit someone in the head, a spurt of blood came out of their mouth. Characters had definite personalities - some were arrogant, some were hesitant as they entered the ring. When a really solid punch was landed, time "slowed down" a bit as adrenaline kicked in. Most people in real danger situations know how this happens.

There were a few down sides here. One, the training mini-games can get a bit repetitive. I would have liked to see more variety. You can skip them if you want, just accepting a "medium" level of skill increase. Also, you choose a "nickname" that the announcers refer to you by during the game. This is a neat idea, but it gets to be a bit much when they use it all the time.

Also, the commercialism in this game is just WAY over the top. There are Burger King displays all over creation. There are promotional items left and right. I realize that sports TV can be like that sometime - but you watch the TV show for free. They are paying their fees with that advertising. With Fight Night, I've already shelled out a lot of money to play the game. I didn't spend all that money to watch a multi-hour long commercial for Burger King. It certainly didn't make me want to go out and eat Burger King food - if anything it made me pretty annoyed with them, and unlikely to visit them in the future.

So in general, I thought the game was great, but that the "environment" you have to play in was really annoying. I would almost pay extra money for some sort of a cheat code / hack to replace all of those ads with blank space. Maybe they'll let me download that from XBox Live in the near future.

Alright, I've been playing games for a while ... but I'm not a hardcore gamer (but I'm good). I have only spent a lot of time with a few of them of them. Starcraft was the first game that I really got into, where I would stay up for nights on end playing multi-player. Most of the time I don't really put time into games ... in this one I really found a game that I enjoyed playing enough to get comfortable and enjoy for a long time.

Round 2 was awesome. I played this on the PS2 for hours on end. I played against friends, I finished careers, it was some of the most fun I've had with a console game in a while. Then I decided to pick up the 360. One of the first games I bought was Fight Night Round 3. From the first time I fired it up, I was hooked.

The graphics are truly amazing. They proved to me what a next-gen console could do. It felt like I was controlling the actual boxers themselves, like I was watching the match on ESPN. Movement looked so realistic, as well as the skin, muscle tones, facial features. And the cut-scenes of when the boxers get knocked down are ridiculous, everything from the arms flailing to the ripples created from the knockout punch. And listening to this on surround sound made it truly a dumbfounding experience.

The simple ingenuity of the game-play is what I loved about the game. 6 punches, lean & block. The most noticable transition to Round 3 was the speed of play. It slowed down a bit, which after getting used to made the game seem even more realistic. And no more could I win a match by jabbing my opponent 500 times. The combo is the king now. The more I played the better I got. The better I got the more I played. Bringing the game on to Xbox live brought it to a whole other level. Playing against friends was no fun anymore, I was too good. The competition online was so satisfying, I couldn't stop. The strategy involved in the game was not something that I expected. There were certain opponents that you had to lean and wait on. Other opponents were easily taken down by attacking them with haymakers. Some adjusted their styles mid-fight, forcing me to do the same. I was blown away.

A couple months later, I started to lose interest in the game. I still like to play it every here and there, because it still is in my opinion the best game to come out in recent memory. If I could only have one game for the 360, it would be this one.

After two strong showings with Fight Night 1 and Round 2 on the current gen consoles, EA Steps into the next gen ring with a KO!

Graphics: As you already know if you have played a demo or seen screenshots of this game, the graphics the focal point of Fight Night Round 3. Everything has been remodeled and upgraded for the Xbox 360. Skin on the boxers looks real and has all of the right textures. The faces are accurate to the tee as they scrunch up and contort with every blow. The crowd n the game is in full 3D and even the ring girls FINALLY look like real women. EA Sports hyped up the graphics and they lived up to it completely. Perhaps the best graphics in a sports game, ever.

Gameplay: The core gameplay from Fight Nights in the past is meated up with some new mechanics to create a balanced experience. When stepping into the ring you will notice the basics such as the Total Punch Control, haymakers, clinching, and illegal punches are back, but EA added 2 new things to the game. The first is the "Flash KO" punch. By charging a punch the right way, your boxer will throw a "Flash KO" punch that, when landed, will put your opponent in an instant daze, leaving him one big blow away from being knocked out. The new Stun Punch works in a similar way, but when it connects the game switches to a first person view through your opponents eyes, as he watches you wail on him. Both of these mechanics bring new strategy to the game and make fights more unpredictable then ever. Adding these things while leaving the core aspects basically the same help make R3 the best playing fighter since Punch Out.

Presentation: The first thing you will notice is no more health meters or HUD at all! This creates a realistic atmosphere in which you will have to look at your opponents body language to see his status. However, the "Heartbeat" remains when your opponent is about to be KO'd. When that KO punch does happen, the game goes into a slow motion closeup of your hand ripping the opponents face or body, spit/blood flying and all. This makes for great fun and adds to the impact of the bone shattering punches.

Also EA Sports brings in their ESPN rights in this years version, but it could have been done better. While you will see ESPN logos everywhere (along with logos from about 10 different companies), you will not get that ESPN feel. Instead the feel of fights is darker, and cinematic, which is cool at first, but in the long run I wish they would make it more like a TV broadcast. It would also have been nice to add the live ESPN ticker on the bottom like they did with MVP 06: NCAA Baseball.

Sound: The sound of the fights are about as realistic as you can get. The commentary is small, but effective as the punches are called as they happen. The sound of the gloves hitting the body, the fighters grunting as they throw that killer blow, or receive it, the crowd, and the body smacking the canvas all make for a great experience. The music in the game is all rap, which fits boxing like a glove. I know not all enjoy rap music, but thats what custom soundtracks are for. Overall the sound of the game is great, but nothing we haven't heard before.

EA Sports Fight Night Round 3 has officially taken video game boxing to another level graphics wise, and gameplay wise. Even though the presentation could be better, Fight Night R3 on the Xbox 360 is still one of the best boxing games to date and a MUST HAVE for any 360 owner.