Next gen boxing has landed on the Xbox 360. Is it the best boxing game ever? In many ways, yes!
Fight Night Round 3 has landed on the Xbox 360. After playing for hours on end, this has got to be one of the best boxing games ever. It’s so much more immersive than any boxing game I’ve ever played. It combines near photo realistic graphics with a stellar fighting engine to create one great game. If you’re a fan of boxing games, pick this one up. The odds are you won’t be disappointed.
Let me get this one thing out of the way right now. This is one of the best looking games ever made. Each boxer looks near photo real. At a glance, you’d be hard pressed to tell this apart from a real boxing match. The visuals aren’t just there to make the game itself look good. No, these visuals also play a big part in the way the game is played. EA has decided to do away with the HUD for the Xbox 360 game (however, it’s still there if you want it) and use the 360’s next-gen power to make the game even better in its absence. Without the HUD there to tell you how injured your opponent is, you have to rely on your opponent’s body language to give you that information. If your opponent is moving sluggishly around the ring, dropping their hands, they’re worn out and it’ll only take a few more clean punches to drop them. If their face is bruised and bloody, you can inflict more damage by landing clean punches to that area. It’s amazing how much more immersive this game is when you eliminate the HUD. If you allow yourself to be sucked in, which won’t be that hard, you’ll really feel like you’re in the ring with your opponent.
The single player game does a great job training you for the game’s main event, the multiplayer. The career mode is a bit on the shallow side. It starts off incredibly easy, even on the hard difficulty and takes a while to ramp up. Once it does, some opponents are a little too difficult. One of the main features, the Rival system, is not nearly as well developed as it was hyped to be. The only difference between a Rival fight and a normal one is that the announcer will say things like “these guys just don’t like each other”. Before a few of the fights, you’ll see a cutscene of the two of you at the weigh in and you’ll get to see your character being sucker punched and then you’re on the defensive end of your rival’s punches from a first person perspective, just like if you were hit with a Stun punch (more on that in a sec).
But, if there’s one thing wrong with the single player experience, it’s the computer A.I. The A.I. is incredibly weak and often predictable. For example, sometimes they’ll cock a punch back well before they deliver it, giving you ample time to set up a defense lowering parry. Once, during one match, I didn’t even look at the screen for an entire round and I knocked them down. Not good. Another round, trying to test the A.I., I put the controller down for an entire round and the A.I. failed to score a knockdown. Most of the time, they just moved around me, blocking punches I wasn’t even throwing and barely throwing any punches of their own.
The game does seem a little lacking in terms of real world boxers. I would’ve liked to see more classic and present day fighters on the roster. The robust character creation system remedies that quite well. In the right hands, people can create amazingly realistic looking versions of real boxers, or anyone else.
One of the main criticisms of its predecessor Round 2 is the ridiculously unbalanced haymaker system. In that game, you could throw nothing but haymakers throughout the length of the fight with little recourse. Round 3 has balanced the haymaker system, making it much more of a challenge to effectively land one. If you try to throw nothing but haymakers during the fight this time around, the game is going to make you pay for it. Haymakers are easily dodged or parried and take longer to unleash. This gives your opponent time to counter your punch and put a serious hurt on you.
New to the series is the impact punch. These punches are designed to change the course of the fight quickly and drastically. There are two impact punches, the Stun punch and the Flash KO punch. The Stun punch can be very effective if it connects. When it does, it instantly shifts the view of the fight to a first person perspective of the person who was hit. During this period, the player who landed the punch has to land a few punches to put their opponent on the canvas. The defending player has to block or parry the incoming punches to stay on their feet. The Flash KO punch is the most devastating punch in the entire game. If it connects, it instantly drops your opponent’s health bar to zero and puts them in the “KO moment” and only a few more punches will put them on the mat. This punch is particularly dangerous because it drops your health bar even if it’s thrown as the first punch in the fight.
Of course, these punches have their failings, just like all haymakers. These punches take even longer than regular haymakers to unleash, the Flash KO being the longest, and give your opponent plenty of time to lean out of the way or set up a parry. Missing can allow your opponent to really mess you up. The best way to ensure that you connect is to parry your opponents punch. Doing this will sometimes give you the time you need to unleash these punches.
Now onto probably the best part of the game, the multiplayer. This is what will keep you coming back. The multiplayer is handled incredibly well and is exponentially more challenging and entertaining than playing against the A.I. Whether you’re playing against someone in the same room or over the internet, the matches are always exciting and unpredictable. Playing a multiplayer match is far more fulfilling and engaging experience. There’s no way to effectively predict what’s coming next, like in a real boxing match. Online matches were incredibly smooth and lag free, something that’s very important to this game, where the slightest delay can give you or your opponent the time needed to counter with a well timed parry or dodge. The online lobby makes it very easy to hop in and out of a match. EA did a very good job in crafting the entire online experience. I never had a problem setting up or finding a match to my liking.
To wrap things up, Fight Night Round 3 is easily the best game in the series, hands down. It rebalances the incredibly unbalanced haymaker system from the last game and actually adds a lot more strategy to the game. The graphics are simply a sight to behold, and the removal of the HUD creates a level of immersion not found in other games, including the other versions on previous generation consoles. The A.I. could’ve used some work and the career mode lacks real depth but other than that, it’s very hard to fault this game. The multiplayer will definitely hook you long after you’ve put away the gloves in the career mode. This is quite possibly the best boxing game ever made.