To be fair, Fight Night: Round 3 looks phenomenal on the Xbox 360 – it’s easily one of the best looking games on the system at this point in the system’s life (if you ignore that the system and game just launched last week in Australia, you’d realise that this is actually part of the second wave of 360 games). The overall look and level of detail is exactly what you’d expect of the new generation; fighters sweat and bleed, there’s that awesome facial distortion effect in knockouts, motion blurring in the fights, depth of field around the ring, a fully 3D modelled crowd (with more than 5 polygons between them for once) and well detailed, faithfully reconstructed representations of Madison Square Garden and the Staples Centre.
Pugilism made pretty
The problem is that the rest of the game can’t match its visuals. The animation is terribly robotic – it really does seem as though EA failed to do any tweaking to give the game’s movement a more natural flow. It’s this sort of robotic animation that has failed other high end graphical applications over the years (The Spirits Within, anyone?) – it can really nullify the progression in modelling and shading techniques. Fight Night: Round 3’s gameplay didn’t receive any sort of enhancement in the transition either – it’s almost exactly the same game we reviewed a few weeks ago. The only difference comes from the fact that the gameplay speed has been halved – it gives the game a more filmic presentation overall, but changes the pace of matches, meaning that veterans of any previous Fight Night game will have to further adjust their strategy to accommodate the slower, more parry-friendly 360 version. It’s a problem that seems to have occurred across the board on the console’s launch line-up – there’s just no extra layer of gameplay enhancement that we’ve come to expect from new hardware over the years, and it might be some time before any big changes occur.
Although the lack of meaningful gameplay upgrades is disappointing, the match of upgraded visuals and classic Fight Night gameplay is successful, and the game is a key title in the 360’s launch line-up. As mentioned previously, the game is essentially a carbon copy of the current generation version of the game, but with altered speed, which results in the 360 version being about half the speed of the original. This doesn’t negatively impact gameplay as such, but it will affect the way the game needs to be approached. This version of Fight Night does try to give off a more simulated experience than previous versions; with the elimination of the HUD (as default, anyway), players have to rely on the speed at which their fighter is moving and how many punches he’s given or taken to make decisions on how to fight.
Pray that the wind doesn't change
The change in pace does amplify one of Fight Night: Round 3’s main weaknesses – the parry. In the 360 version of the game, a parry of a strong punch can turn a match completely on its head – parry your opponent’s blow, hit the new “stun punch” (appropriately referred to as “game breaker punch” here – Ed), and it’s an instant knockdown. It’s this problem that makes career mode a piece of cake, and has nearly destroyed Fight Night: Round 3’s following on Xbox Live in other countries; multiplayer matches become a race to see who can execute the game breaker first. We’ve managed to defeat tougher opponents such as Oscar De La Hoya in all of 10 punches on the default difficulty using this technique – it’s that lethal.
The other big problem with Fight Night: Round 3 on the Xbox 360 is that the game’s damage display aspects are totally inconsistent. In an exhibition match, using regular fighters such as Bernard Hopkins and Evander Holyfield, players will be able to see the Xbox 360 churn out luscious damage details – fighters will swell up like watermelons during the fight. Fight using a created fighter, and you get none of this. Play career mode using any fighter, and you’ll see absolutely none of this enhanced swelling damage – it’s downright bizarre and highly disappointing that EA have had to do this, considering that the career mode is hardly any different from the game’s exhibition mode.
"No Mum, I don't have the mumps...honest!"
Of course, our other gripes from the current generation version of the game remain. The career mode outright sucks compared to the one in last year’s game; the 360 version’s achievements are all tied to the career mode, so you have to do it if you want the thousand points. One of the problems here is that EA’s beloved rubber-band AI puts in an appearance in some of the special events – lose one of these special events, and you have to repeat the entire career from scratch, which is particularly disheartening if you lose the Everlast challenge – fighting another 40 bouts just to get a shot at those last hundred points can be soul crushing, if you don’t throw the game out in disgust. The ESPN integration is here again, but it should be noted that the ESPN ticker has been removed from the 360 version, a bit odd considering the deeper integration of Xbox Live in the console’s operations.
Fight Night: Round 3 on the Xbox 360 is a fundamentally good, yet rather disappointing experience. Players looking for the real next generation boxing title are just going to have to wait until next year; while Fight Night: Round 3 looks great, it moves like a set of rusty gears, and has far too many balance issues to be an enjoyable experience online. We fully expect EA to go back to the drawing board and bring us a game that lives up to the quality offered by Fight Night: Round 2, and goes beyond it, offering the sort of gaming experience players would expect to see on new hardware.
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