Reviewed: March 14, 2006
Reviewed by: Richard Cross
Publisher
Electronic Arts
Developer
EA Chicago
Released: February 26, 2006
Genre: Sports
Players: 1-2
ESRB: Teen
8
8
6
8
8.7
Supported Features
Screenshots (Click for Gallery)
I have been playing console sports games for as long as I can remember. I would have to say that button mashing is what I remember most from many of the past boxing games. I was pleasantly surprised when I found that my thumb wasn’t numb after boxing dozens of rounds in Fight Night Round 3. The designers of Fight Night Round 3 truly put a lot of thought into the control scheme. This is what makes Fight Night Round 3 a winner in my book.
Fight Night, the original, was lacking in quite a few areas and fell well short of being a great game. Fight Night Round 2 cleaned up most of the flaws in the original, but introduced a few new ones with the new Haymaker system. Fight Night Round 3 has taken the best parts of both previous versions and combined them to bring you the best boxing game available for the Xbox system.
I, for one, don’t have a lot of interest in watching televised boxing matches any more. That was very different in years past when boxing greats like Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Marvelous Marvin Hagler ruled the ring. It just seems to me that boxing isn’t as popular as it once was. Maybe it was the Tyson ear biting incident, maybe not. This game brings back fond memories of my dad and I sitting in front of the television watching some of the great boxers duke it out on national television.
Fight Night Round 3 will appeal to young and old gamers alike. The game tends to pull you in and before long you find yourself saying “just one more contract, just one more fight”. If I sit down to play just a few rounds, it usually ends up being numerous matches, contracts, and training sessions. Before long, a couple of hours have passed and I still haven’t started the honey-do list that my wife keeps hollering down to me from upstairs.
I had my doubts about this game before I even received it. I can now honestly say that this is one of my all-time favorite Xbox games and that it is very hard to stop playing once you get started. As I mentioned before, this game really pulls you in and you tend to get immersed into the world of boxing for hours on end.
I first began by playing the “Play Now” matches. This game style is as simple as picking a boxer and an opponent and heading into the ring. Once my two boys saw the sweat and blood flying they decided that they wanted to take on dear-old dad in a match. I gladly accepted the challenge and our two boxers started going to town. Of course I didn’t tell them that I had been playing for a few days now and my boxer had moved up through the ranks thanks to my great skill of moving the right thumbstick at the right time. It sure was fun seeing their boxers hit the mat in the first round. There was just something so gratifying about that, too bad it hasn’t been that easy since. Both of my boys practice together now with only one goal in mind, pound dad’s boxer into submission with no mercy, ever.
I have always enjoyed “Career” mode in all of the EA games, and this game was no different. My boxer, Crusher, began his boxing career the very same way. He is a modest 6’ 1” tall and weighs in at 240 pounds. He looks quite large until you put him up against someone the size of Muhammad Ali. Crusher began boxing when he was 18 years old. He is now 25 years old and has a professional light-heavyweight record of 24-4-0. All 24 wins have come by knockout. The four losses came because of bad judgment on my part. Two of the losses were due to the fact that I was still a newbie to the game. Three out of my four losses go to Roy Jones Junior. He is a very aggressive boxer that just keeps going round after round, kind of like the Energizer Bunny.
The most important thing to remember when you play Fight Night Round 3 is to save your energy. Don’t just go out there and throw punch after punch in the hopes that you will hit your opponent. You have to wait until the time is right and your opponent has left you an opening. That is when you hit them, and hit them multiple times. You are rewarded in this game by throwing combinations. The more you throw, the weaker your opponent becomes.
I like to throw jabs, and lots of them. They don’t serve up a lot of damage, but over time they weaken your opponent and sooner or later give you the opportunity to put your opponent on his back. Counters are also a great way to weaken your opponent. If he throws a punch and misses, take advantage of it and smack him when he isn’t looking. You will be rewarded time after time if you show patience and use a lot of leaning and blocking. If you use this strategy, you could also win the match.
With the “ESPN Classic” mode, you get to pick great match-ups in boxing history and relive them in the comfort of your own home. You can pick from classic matches like Ali vs. Frazier or Leonard vs. Duran to name a few. If you develop a rival during “Career” mode, you can even add your own boxer to “ESPN Classic” mode once you retire.
As with many of the other EA games, you also have the option to create your own boxer for “Play Now” mode or “Hard Hits” mode. “Hard Hits” mode is just that, you must knock your opponent down more than he knocks you down. The one with the most knockdowns wins. You can design your own boxer in the “Create Champ” mode. You can select from all sorts of physical attributes for your boxer. Do you want a small, fast boxer or a large monstrous behemoth that can put down his opponent with just a few punches? The choice is up to you.
The cut-man feature has also returned this year. For those of you that haven’t played Fight Night before, last year’s version brought us the popular cut-man option so that we can patch up our boxer’s face between rounds. The cut-man feature allows us to do two basic things while we are in our corner. The first is to allow us to swab and seal a cut to stop it from bleeding, and the second is to reduce the swelling that happens when our face is on the opposite end of numerous blunt-force traumas.
The other nice feature that has been added this year is the ability to lean and parry an opponent’s blows. Defense plays a very large part in this game. Later in the game when you face more powerful adversaries, you will have to learn to lean, block, parry, and counter to win the match. The longest match I’ve had to this point has been 8 rounds. My boxer looked like he had been hit by a truck. His face was swollen to the point of being unrecognizable and his body was battered and bruised. Of course, he looked much better than the guy I was facing. My opponent ended up on the canvas during the eighth round and he didn’t get back up. This match was a success for me due to Crusher’s ability to avoid most, correction, some, of my opponent’s blows by using the lean, block, parry, and counter moves in the game.
The Xbox graphics for Fight Night Round 3 are excellent, even for an aging platform. Obviously, the graphics aren’t as crisp as the Xbox 360, but for hardware that is over five years old, it simply looks great. There are numerous graphical features that make it stand out over other games, especially in the ring.
The ring is where the action is. This, ultimately, is where your boxer will become a legend or just a one-hit wonder, no pun intended. The blows are brutal from the very beginning of the match. If you throw a Haymaker (a more powerful and carefully timed punch), you have the joy of seeing the other boxer’s head snap back, the sweat fly off his brow, and blood erupt from his eyes, lips, or nose. The graphic detail is so good, that it actually leaves you feeling tired at the end of a match.
The boxers themselves even look authentic. Ali, Frazier, and Leonard, all look like themselves. As I mentioned before, the graphics in this game are excellent and the attention to detail is astounding.
I am a bit disappointed with the sound in Fight Night Round 3. I guess I simply don’t understand the need for EA to make Rap music the norm in almost every game they create these days. Rap music definitely has its fit in some games, but it just doesn’t seem to flow in this game. It is more of the same and because of that I found myself turning the music off completely.
The announcing is well done, albeit a bit repetitive over multiple matches. You often don’t know which boxer the announcer is speaking about when he says “and he looks tired now, he could go down at any time”. This does get confusing over the course of a match. The best way to determine the status of your boxer is to keep an eye on the HUD (heads-up display). The HUD will show your boxer’s current energy level and stamina.
I can easily recommend this game to all of the boxing enthusiasts out there. Those of you that like contact sports like hockey, football, and the like, may also want to give this game a try. If you tend to be a bit squeamish at the sight of blood, sweat, and brutal beatings, you may want to rent the game first just to be sure you can handle the violence and bloodshed.
The career mode is strong as no two matches are ever the same. The replay value for this game is high and the multiplayer mode just adds to the overall value. Multiplayer is achieved by using the Xbox Live network. I was able to play multiple matches online with hardly any noticeable lag. The one downside that I noticed was the low number of users playing Fight Night Round 3 on Xbox Live. There just wasn’t much of a selection when it came to finding an opponent online. This should only improve over time as more and more people purchase the game.
Of course, as with any game, there are a few shortcomings to this game. The profile manager is one of the features that needs an overhaul; the other is the equipment store. The only way to see the active profile is to go to the settings menu and select “Profile settings”. It would have been nice to have the active profile displayed on the main screen. They should have incorporated a profile manager like the one found in Burnout Revenge. This would have made profile management a much easier process.
The equipment store is a great feature when you are looking for upgrades to your boxer’s accessories. The other issue is that it is very difficult to determine which upgrades are equipped and which have been purchased at the company store. A quick overview screen to see your current equipment would have been a nice addition to this game.
To sum it all up, I would say that this game is one of the finest sports titles on the Xbox platform. EA has obviously taken the time to listen to feedback from the players of the past two games and used it to add new, polished content to this latest addition in the Fight Night Series. You owe it to yourself to pick up this great title if you are even remotely interested in boxing, kickboxing, ultimate fighting, or any other contact sport.