by: John Olin

March 09, 2006

Note that the game is also on Xbox, and this review is for both the Xbox and Xbox 360 versions of the game.

Fight Night has been around for quite awhile now, and in fact has had a few changes of the past few years. Obviously presentation changes and tweaks have been made over the past few years but what is the most interesting about the series is the latest itineration that is not only available for the Xbox but Xbox 360 as well. The game carries the Total Punch Control system from old versions of the game, a Career Mode, ESPN Classic, Two-player mode, Xbox Live play, and more. This game is so extremely easy to get into that not only will boxing and sports fans enjoy it but fighting, and causal gamers alike may want to get a piece of this haymaker throwing pie.

Fight Night has quite a few modes, with a newly introduced ESPN Classics mode thanks to EA securing the ESPN license. This new mode now lets you quickly fight against the computer (or with a friend) and lets you fight famous fights such as Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier. It is fun and sort of interesting to see, but unlike the boxing matches you might see on ESPN2, they lack details, and serve as nothing but something to kill time fast with a friend. The real meat of the game comes in the form of the Career Mode and the multiplayer options. In Career mode, you can choose to create your own fighter or build up a pre-existing legend. When building your own fighter you have many different options, with the change to build your character how you choose with skin color, hair color, weight, height, and many small details with the face. You can make an incredibly lifelike character doing this, and the options are even more apparent on the Xbox 360. I eventually was able to conjurer up a character that bared a striking resemblance to Chuck Norris.

When you do the Career mode you must first sign a contract, with each contract comes rewards such as money, popularity boost or special fights. After signing a contract you must do one of a few various exercises, first choosing a trainer. Strangely enough don’t think there are really a whole lot of differences in the trainers other than the fact that some of them you loose less of your attributes, and gain a bit more by a percent or so with them. These are the trainers that you have to pay for also, compared to the ones that actually cost nothing. An interesting little detail is eventually you can get more trainers, specifically the Burger King “King” can be a trainer. He doesn’t do much other than train you for free, albeit not very good, and is only used for show to see him dancing around in the ring when you come up on the mat. After all of that he is gone. When you train you can punch a bag, do weight training, do hit training, spar, and more. Each one (other than sparring) has the option to auto-train making it a bit quicker, but also you come out with the attributes you get. You can also buy gloves, shorts, mouth pieces, moves, and tattoos in the boxing shop. Many of the items you buy are expensive, but will help with you attributes. Something new to the game this year is you can now buy styles, so if you want to throw down like Holifield, or Ali than as long as you front the cash to equip the style then have at it.

As you progress through Career Mode the bouts begin easy enough—in face I didn’t even begin to struggle the least bit until half way through the game. All it basically takes I is a bit of blocking, weaving, a combo to the stomach, to the face, a few power punches to the face and sides, and you can knock them down and out with four rounds or less. When you are about to knock a player down, or are given the chance, the game slows down a bit and you are taken into a sort of focus mode which sort of hollows sound out around you. When this happens, you are given the opportunity to take the opponent down to the canvas. Many of the opponents don’t have that advanced of AI, allowing you to simply back up, and perform some big blows. As you get further up, or come across Big Hits fights, you will quickly find out that the AI becomes more intelligent, countering you more, throwing bigger blows, and blocking a plenty. At most, in almost all cases you will that the first round is always the hardest because the opponent is at his peak, but as you advance they can come back easily. In this case, you may find yourself getting knocked down a few times. When this happens you have a blurry screen in which you must “focus” by moving the analogs to a cursor in the middle. If you are really out of it, you will find it to difficult to do and simply lose. If you don’t think you can block well enough while you are about to get knocked down then you can try your luck at clenching, affectively stopping the frame of time the boxer can knock you down. When the rounds end, you go into your respective corners and the coach gives you pointers, and lets you know how you are doing. You also get the chance to heal yourself, either manually, or automatically depending on how badly bruised or cut you are.