Fight Night Round 4 is the first game in over 21 years to feature Mike Tyson, and let me answer your first question right now: No, you can’t bite someone’s ear off.  EA goes to great lengths to capture the devastating power of the late 80’s-early 90’s Tyson rather than the hot mess that was ear-biting, post-prison Tyson.  The roster of over 40 boxers is also the first in 17 years to feature “Big” George Foreman, again, not the smiley grill salesman but the cinderblock-fisted monster who almost ended Joe Frazier’s career in the 70’s. I recently got my hands on the newest entry in EA’s successful franchise to see exactly how the skull busting will be going down. 

The last Fight Night game, much like Oscar De La Hoya, while technically solid, garnered most of its attention from how good it looked as one of the first Xbox 360 titles.  Fight Night Round 4 looks like it’s shaping up to be more like Floyd Mayweather Jr.: just as pretty and with better boxing.  From the glimmer of Ali’s satin robe to Ricky Hatton’s creepy arched eyebrows, all the fighters look, act, and, most importantly, box like their real life counterparts. 

The new AI, dubbed R.E.A.L. (Record, Evaluate, Adapt, Learn), dictates that each fighter will fight as they do in real life but will also attempt new tactics if their strategy is failing.  That means if you’re fighting Muhammad Ali, he may come out cocky, ready to back you up, throwing lead crosses, but if you start beating on him, he may try to go on the defensive, let you tire yourself out and then turn up the heat in the later rounds to take the fight from you.

Playing to your fighter’s strengths will give you the advantage in the ring, such as pumping Ali’s piston-like jab and using Tyson, whose jab looks weak in comparison, to duck and weave into close range to throw absolutely demonic hooks and uppercuts.

But it’s Legacy mode that has everyone excited, Fight Night Round 4’s revamped career mode, where you’re not out just to become a champion but to cement your legacy as the greatest of all time.  You’ll start out as a lowly club fighter and by managing your Legacy Meter, you’ll work your way up the ranks, earning titles such as contender, champion and if you’re good enough, you’ll surpass Ali as the Greatest of All Time.

Your Legacy Meter is made up of two things, your Popularity and your Pound for Pound rating.  Your Popularity is based on how exciting your boxer is to watch:  Does he knock people out, does he have 12 round wars?  Your popularity can go up even if you lose, as long as you’re exciting.  Your Pound for Pound rating is entirely different.  It measures your technical proficiency.  Do you waste punches?  How’s your accuracy?  Can you counter effectively?  That 12 round slugfest you lost probably did wonders for your Popularity, but it won’t be helping your Pound for Pound rating, and you need both to become the greatest.

You’ll also be fighting against father time.  Many boxers are way past their prime once they hit their late 30’s and the game will reflect that.  As your fighter ages, doing the training exercises that once improved your stats will only sustain them, and eventually will only manage their decline.  The good thing about Legacy mode is that what you must do to become the Greatest of All Time will be fairly clear. For example, at the end of your career you’ll be able to see that if you beat two more top contenders, you will be known as the greatest, but it won’t be easy because those fighters are deadly and if you lose to them you could be knocked out into retirement and obscurity.

20 years after losing the title, George Foreman returned at age 45 to become heavyweight champion.

The deep create a boxer feature is back and now has Xbox Live Vision support if you want to add your own mugshot to your boxer’s body.  Aging won’t show on your boxers face, but if you take a bunch of beatings, you could have some lasting visible effects.  And, thankfully, you won’t be getting strange bonuses from the equipment you use, like getting +10 to punching strength from Everlast boxing gloves.  Were they lined with lead or hiding brass knuckles?  This time the only way to improve your stats is to train.

The new physics engine makes the game more organic and unpredictable. No punch ever seems to land the same way.  Even during the tutorial, when the boxers aren’t moving around the ring, my jab would land on my opponents face differently every time I threw it.  Fighting on the inside produced realistic, natural moments, such as Manny Pacquiao resting his glove on Ricky Hatton’s arm for a second and the boxers arms getting briefly entangled when they threw a punch at the same time.  The important thing to remember is none of this is scripted.  It’s not that the fighters arms will always become entangled when you throw punches at the same time, it’s something that just happened to occur in that one moment because of the game’s physics, and may not happen again for the entire fight.

Knockdowns are also more organic and unpredictable.  Flash, one punch knockouts are based on the strength of the puncher, the angle the punch lands and the physics of how it hits.  Blocking can be punched though and the scripted punch swatting and parry system that existed in the past two Fight Nights, which allowed you to bat punches out of the air and capitalize on the stunned fighter, has been almost completely scrapped.  Parrying punches still exists but will be based on more realistic timing and blocking is as simple as high or low.

The biggest improvements over the last Fight Night will probably be the streamlining of the controls.  The team found that the motion for haymakers made them too hard to throw, especially the right hook and uppercut haymakers.   The Right bumper now functions as the haymaker modifier.  Just hold down the right bumper and throw a hook or an upper cut and you’ll be winding up like Joe Frazier himself.

From my time with the game, the “KO Moment,” the groggy slowness right before a knockdown that was throughout the last Fight Night game, seems to have been removed along with the game mechanic of clinching to prevent a knockdown and gain yourself some magic health.  Clinching and pushing are still a big part of the game, but serve more realistic purposes, such as when the developer used Tyson to push me into the corner in order to pummel me.  If your fighter takes too many big shots in a row his health bar will flash, indicating that he is dazed and each new punch he takes does sizable damage.  I can see KO artists being able to capitalize on these moments for some first round knock outs that are unnaturally rare in other Fight Night games.

The cut man game in between rounds is gone, replaced with a RPG-like points spending system.  Based on how well you boxed in the previous round, you’ll earn points to spend to improve things like your health or stamina for the next round.  When I asked if this would produce an even bigger hole for losing boxers to get out of, I was told that points are distributed for a variety of reasons, one of which is accuracy.  Boxers that are flurrying, going for the knockout, rarely have good accuracy, limiting them from earning points in that area, therefore enabling losing boxer to gain some leverage to turn the fight around.

Fight Night looks good, and especially good when the people playing the game know how to play.  However, new players at the demo managed to make the game look some what like a frenzied catfight, which worries me a bit, but I’ll put myself to rest by remembering that those newbies were having a great time and overall EA has built a deep, realistic game with a fair learning curve in which those novice, frantic players will probably be put on the ground by veteran players faster than Ali put down Liston.

Tags: boxing, boxing_games, EA, EA-Sports, Fight Night, fight night round 4, UFC

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• Fight Night Round 4 Cover Unveiled
• Fight Night 4 Gets Hopkins, Liston, Holyfield DLC Plus Holiday Price Cut
• Fight Night Round 4 Demo Now on Xbox Live
• Fight Night Round 4 Gameplay Trailer
• Street Fighter IV Playable at GDC 08
• New Game Releases: 6/21 – 6/27

2 Comments » wakash on May 14, 2009 5:30 am nice the game looks good! Sweetnuts on May 14, 2009 5:32 pm Real? Look at those abs in the first picture! They aren't real, they're plastic! RSS feed for comments on this post. Comment Now Note: Commenting on Ripten does not currently require registration, however to be eligible for contests on the site, you must be a registered user. Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website Commenting Rules: No hate speech allowed. If you must argue, please debate intelligently. Comments containing selected keywords or outbound links will be put into moderation to help prevent spam. Ripten reserves the right to delete comments and ban anyone who doesn't follow the rules. Thanks. Notify me of followup comments Tired of the Goomba? Upload your own custom comment avatar.