Fight Night Round 3 Impressions

I love this series.  I thought 2004 was great.  I thought Round 2 was even better.  What's my opinion of Round 3?  That's complicated.  I'll attempt to give you a better impression of the game than, "The AI is bad; no the AI is good;  the graphics are jaw-droppingly breath-taking".  Bring your knife and fork as we dive into the meat and potatoes.

These impressions are taken from about ten online bouts with my Fight Night veteran friend Bob from CA, ten career bouts with a light heavy, and ten exhibition bouts with licensed fighters.  These impressions are for the xbox version.

This year's version should have been subtitled "A Puncher's Chance" because that is exactly what you have this year when you are boxing the computer or your human rival.  I'll get to the new punches in a few paragraphs.  I'd like to address the glossy front end stuff first.

When the game begins it is much like Round 2 in menu options, but the graphic presentation has been changed.  There is a gritty colorized looking film appearance.  Not good or bad, just different.  The music is all still hip-hop so I turned it off;  you may choose to turn it up if that is your preference.

All of the same six button configurations still exist so if you are a button puncher as opposed to a stick puncher you can rest easy.  The basic jab, cross, hook, and uppercuts are all still mapped to the buttons, as are the two signature punches.  Last year you could punch with the buttons, but haymakers had to be thrown with the stick so it involved a trigger press if using configs three through six.  This year is the same with all of the special punches requiring stick use with a trigger press.  Again if you use configs one or two all punches are thrown with the stick except for the signature punches.

All of the menu options are pretty much the same and the game modes include an additional ESPN classic mode.  I didn't fight in this mode, but I noticed that I only had one fight available, Ali v Frazier.  I'm guessing the other classics need to be unlocked.

In the ten online bouts I played I saw only a single instance of lag with my friend.  The game paused for one second and then continued.  We never had an instance of slowdown any other time.  There is about a ten second delay from the appearance of the start of the first round to when you can move and box against your opponent.  After that one and only delay it is silky smooth.

Offline the career mode is different than last year, making use of advertisers and licences like Burger King, Under Armour, ESPN.  I'm not enjoying career mode as much as last year and I think it is simply because the career path is too linear.  Last year you could choose an opponent from a list of about seven fighters that were ranked near your ranking.  This year the rankings are gone and instead you choose opponents based upon what you want to accomplish by fighting them, including bonus purses, popularity boosts, and about three other things.  Most of the time you choose between two or three opponents, but occasionally you will see four listed and during some of the special fights like the Under Armor sponsored event you only have one choice.  I did like that I fought some licensed fighters during career mode, but they were weaker versions of themselves which made sense from a gameplay standpoint.  I fought Frasier as an amateur and Holyfield in one of my early professional bouts.

The biggest problem I saw in my ten fights with the career mode is that unlike Round 2 I didn't have the choice to fight fighters that had higher attributes than I did.   All of my opponents were weaker.  Add to that the fact that the AI is different than last year and it amounted to me thinking that career mode in Round 3 doesn't measure up to Round 2.  I will have more about the AI in later paragraphs.  You may have heard about rivals in career mode.  I did notice that they called the fighter that I knocked out for earn the amateur belt my new rival, but I didn't get far enough into career to see where or what happened when I met him again.

This year there are two new additional punches, the flash KO punch and the stun punch.  Both of these are mapped to the right stick like the haymaker.  Let me take some of the hype and mystery out of these punches.  They could have just as easily called them super-haymaker and super-duper-haymaker.  For those of you who aren't familiar or have trouble with the mechanic let me explain.  For the old (and current) haymaker you rotate the stick back and forward to throw it.  So if you wanted to throw a left hook haymaker you would move the stick left to 9 o'clock, rotate it down along the left edge of the seat until it reaches 6 o'clock and then reverse direction and rotate up along the edge of the seat back to 9 o'clock all in one fluid and quick motion.

To throw the same hook with the new flash KO (super-haymaker) move to 9 o'clock, rotate down and around past 6 o'clock to 4 o'clock and then reverse direction and rotate up to 9 o'clock all in one fluid and quick motion.  For the stun punch (super-duper-haymaker) move to 9 o'clock, rotate down to 4 o'clock, and rotate back past 9 o'clock all the way to 12 o'clock. 

The result of the flash KO (super) is you instantly drain the opponents health bar and send him into the KO moment.  It usually only takes one punch to finish him after that depending on what you throw.  The result of the stun (super-duper) is you instantly stun your opponent and go into a first person mini game where your opponent is basically defenseless and you can pummel him and send him to the canvas.  In all of my bouts I only saw a stun punch land twice.  I landed one against Bob and he immediately started screaming that he couldn't do anything.  I calmly explained to him that that was the idea and dropped him with a haymaker.   The other instance was when I landed one against the AI and I only landed jabs and crosses and the AI eventually came out of the stun.  I can't remember if the AI was able to defend itself or not so further investigation is needed. 

There are some worries out there that these punches are gimmicky, but my impressions is that they are not.  The gameplay is still well balanced and EA accomplished this by slowing down the haymaker animation and making both of the new punches even slow to throw.  The result is that you can effectively box and defend against them.  The only punches I feel are a little out of balance are the signature punches and only a few select ones.  I feel that some fighters have too fast of a signature punch or a punch that is too hard to tell if it is going high or low.   These facts coupled with a signature punch's damage ability makes it very hard to defend and absorb with some fighters.  Finally, I'll let everyone know that the first person mini game from the stun cannot be turned off, but it happens so rarely (SO RARELY) that it doesn't effect my opinion of the game.  The new punches are really easy to see coming, are really slow, and very simple to defend.  If you get caught by one it is usually because you were attempting to throw one yourself and your opponent ducked it effectively.

I need to go to an appointment now so I'll leave you with these and finish up in a couple of hours.

Further exploration of the flash KO and stun mechanic revealed something interesting to me.  The developers claim that you can change to momentum and outcome of a fight with a single punch.  This is only part true.  Early on, before I explored the AI, I saw some things that were truly delightful to behold and I'll share them now.

My first amateur bout was a four rounder.  I boxed neatly and disciplined in the first two rounds, winning them easily 10-9.  Then I decided to open up a bit and try the new punches.  The haymakers were slower and my opponent effectively blocked them.  At some point though, I avoided a big punch by my opponent and popped him with a flash KO uppercut.  He immediately drained and I entered the KO moment.  I dropped him with a combo and he took an eight count and got up.  The round ended.  Feeling the satisfaction of that moment I came out in the final round head hunting.  I swung wildly, just looking for that big punch and close to the end my opponent blocked with a counter that caused me to lose my balance just like in round 2.  However, he let lose with a flash KO of his own and I went straight down like a sack of potatoes.  I managed to get up at the count of four, but spent the rest of the round boxing conservatively and taking the decision.  I learned my lesson.

I went on to see moments like this several times, both online and offline, sometimes on the giving end, sometimes on the receiving end, and occassionally losing fights.

Another appointment...more to come.

You may be saying, "Just defend and counter those wild power punches".  Sure, I can block them.  I can even counter them.  The problem I have is that the AI on hard difficulty throws a stun punch just slightly slower than my jabs and faster than any other punch I can throw.  This is horribly unfair and amounts to nothing more than a gross speed cheat.  On top of that there is no strategy to the AI's fighting on hard.  It's just swing hard, hard, harder, hardest.  Repeat ad nauseam.  Thankfully medium is a good balance at the moment unless my fighter is grossly superior to my opponent, and so far that is only occurring in the early part of the career mode.

To sum up the AI, it is improved from Round 2, and I didn't realize just how much until I put Round 2 back in my xbox and fought a few bouts.  The Round 2 fighters, which I felt were good, looked robotic and predictable compared to their Round 3 counterparts.  The only superiority I found in the round 2 fighters is that they did a better job of punching where you game them openings.  The Round 3 group tends to punch randomly at times.  I ran this experiment.  I didn't throw a punch in Round 2 and just stood there covering my face.  My AI opponent threw nothing but body punches the entire round and he landed one hundred percent of them.  The same experiment in Round 3 produced a mixed bag of the AI throwing high and low and only landing forty-eight percent of its punches.  While on the surface this appears to be a serious problem, in actual gameplay the AI holds up very well and it is perhaps this unpredictability to its punches that make it a formidable opponent.

I did forget something.  Stamina is portrayed better in Round 3 than Round 2.  Health has been tweaked as well.

And after a fight online you don't get disconnected from chat with your opponent.  You can chat for awhile after the fight in Round 3.

The idea was to convince you to upgrade and trust me you'll be glad when you do.  I have no problem with waiting as I only want to play with it online.  If it was as good as round 2 offline I would jump on it right now.  Maybe we'll get lucky with a price drop in a month or two or a sale?  Whenever we do get it I hope Kevin will be ready to grab it as well.  I'm thinking at the full $40 it's worth it, at $30 it's very tempting and $20 it becomes a steal.  Round 2 remained full price for a real long time though.

Whenever it happens my plan is to finish the career league with Round 2 first so I won't be returning anything .