Good with friends and on yer own.
User Rating: 9.2 | Fight Night Round 2 GC
I first saw stuff for this game one night when searching for upcoming games with a friend. This game took my interest. Now let’s flash towards now. To start off with, this is one of the best looking Sports games that I’ve ever played. The boxers themselves are detailed very well. It’s boosted by the realistic looking damage that they receive as when they are getting punched up. It really shows. Their face becomes swollen, cuts appear and blood begins to trickle down their face. When you watch the replays of them being knocked out, you will instantly notice that their faces are being shifted by the force of the punch also their own sweat and most of the time blood is flying from their face as well. It makes the knock down replays look very special indeed. The only big problem I have seen is the clipping, which isn’t often but it is noticeable at times in replays and in the amateur boxing as some hair cuts don’t like the boxing helmets that they wear. Arenas vary from stadiums to basements. All have a good feel to them that they seem made for boxing. Although fighting in 65 Lower Flushing in a standard fight just looks odd when the boxer’s entry includes a light show. Controlling the boxer was something I had to get to grips with, as I could make my boxer walk around all well and good, but swinging punches, leaning and blocking were a challenge to me. So when my friend came round to play me at it. I took a beating because he had played the Fight Night game a bit and knew what he was doing. But after an hour or two I was able to lean and punch, still took a beating. Now I’m able to throw 3 punch and 4 punch combos more comfortably. But I still need to pull better combos off against the more skilled opponents. But even though I’m playing the Gamecube version of the game, using the C thumb stick is fine for me. As it has the octagon shaped edge it allows me to jam the stick into one of the edges, push it forward for a standard punch or you can pull the C-stick back to make a nifty hay-maker. Haymakers are one of the new features of the game. They are looked at as a both a good thing and a bad thing to me. The good is that you can show that your boxer is powerful, as if you are lucky you can knock down your opponent with a haymaker and they may still have a lot of their health before they hit the canvas. It is also good how they are easily noticeable when they are going to be thrown so if you are fast enough, you can block them and leave your opponent looking stupid before you punch them hard in the face. The bad thing is that I seem to accidentally throw them a lot, even when I just want to swing a hook or small uppercut. After a round against your opponent there is the section of tending to your boxer’s injuries with the cut-man. It basically involves you reducing swelling and healing up cuts. Moving to the four parts of the boxer’s face to clean them up is a bit of a challenge and may make you want to shout nasty words and the cut-man. But after a bit, you’ll be recovering your boxer’s face from looking like mush like you are a seasoned cut-man. The career mode is probably going to be the most played mode if you have no friends round to play. You can either make your own boxer (I’ll talk about that later) or rebuild a career. But for me it’s more like ruin a career as when I get close to the top of the professional leagues, I get beat up pretty bad. So practice is in order. The career mode itself starts off in amateur boxing. This is fairly easy and shows you the ropes of playing the game, as it includes sparring practise for different areas of controlling the boxer and teaches you some good skills that will come in handy when needed. Later it will be just simple training, which isn’t great. But you got to do it get your boxer some better stats. Another thing in the career mode is buying gear for your boxer. This includes trunks, shoes, mouth-guards and the other things a boxer will always need when stepping into the ring. But when you turn professional, there are a few things which I question how they benefit the boxer when they are boxing. An example is the entourage. How do they give your boxer a stamina bonus? It is also good that as your boxer also gets to a certain age; they begin to not be as much as a spring-chicken as they used to be. So when they feel too old for you to succeed at winning a title. You can allow them to retire. This is basically, being able to start a new career with your profile. But with that you can still purchase gear that you have unlocked in your previous career, which is good if you want your boxer to accomplish more before he becomes a grandpa and loses his edge. Character creation to me feels like it’s to make the biggest freak you can think of. This has plenty of options, but is very easy to use and you can make a character within minutes, despite the amount of things you can set for the character. But the problem I see with it is that when creating a character outside of career mode, they are able to have great stats across the board. So I’ve steered clear of the feature in career mode. Sound and music in this game is mainly hip-hop, grunts, and commentary. The hip-hop is pretty good I think as it’s mainly the type of hip-hop about being a gangsta and wanting to fight people. Plus it’s hip-hop I actually like. As I mentioned grunts, these are an essential part to the replays of knock-downs. As when they take the punch that sends them to the floor, you can hear them try and say something like “Noooo...” That always makes me laugh. Commentary on the other hand isn’t great as it’s quite repetitive. An example would be when you are punching some one’s eye to make it bleed more and the commentator will just repeat himself about that eye bleeding. As the Gamecube version doesn’t have the option of online multiplayer (which isn’t a problem to me as I like my multiplayer games on pc). We lucky Gamecube players get Super Punch Out, a hilarious and challenging arcade boxing game. This is a very fun game and something I can play better than my friends straight away because of my previous experience with Super Punch Out. Overall this is a very solid game. The problems with the games are minor and don’t punish the game. I recommend this to boxing fans and casual gamers that like to play fighting games. I think the career mode provides plenty of hours of play with the career mode, single and multiplayer fights and Super Punch Out.
