Fight Night Round 4 (Xbox 360)
Sticks will indeed hurt you -- analog sticks, that is -- in EA Sports' latest.
6/30/2009 4:35 PM | 6 Comments | Page 2 of 3
What's Hot: Looks terrific; Revamped controls; Somewhat slower load times; Greater emphasis on counter-punching
What's Not: Slow pace (far too slow for the average gamer); Like all EA Sports games, there are some counterintuitive menus; Frustratingly difficult (even on the medium skill setting); Obscure training mini-games; Feels too random at times
Scott Jones
Status: Coffee makes me feel 4-percent sexier.
Height and reach are also bigger factors in
Round 4 than they have been previously. Fighting against a guy with longer arms and quicker feet? If you want a chance to win the fight, you'll have to get on the inside, work the body to slow him down.
In
Round 4, you earn points during the round, depending on how well you're performing. Example: You're awarded five points for stunning an opponent, 12 points for landing more than 60 percent of your punches, etc. Between rounds, you can either spend those points replenishing your stamina, health or damage; or you can table them, saving them for the next round.
"Son, you're dropping your left hand. And you're in dire need of a decent haircut."
The cold-compress/cut-cleaning mini-game from
Round 3 has been replaced. This makes me sad. I miss having to decide if I should reduce swelling or patch up a cut. There was more immediacy in the previous game's mini-game. There was also a greater sense of consequence, of having to make a crucial decision.
Case in point: If I couldn't see out of my left eye -- because I'd neglected to heal it properly -- I'd not only have trouble throwing punches with my left hand; I'd also have trouble stopping my opponent's punches to my left side. Vice versa, if I peppered the left side of my opponent's face, I knew that by the later rounds his left eye would more than likely be closed up, and I'd be able to go to his left side to either start or finish combos.
It sounds gruesome, but it was exciting, and more credible. The corner is an important place during fights. There's an intimacy there between men that you don't often see. A man talking to his fighter, and the way he touches his face, almost always looks like a father talking to his son, advising him, telling him what to do to overcome adversity.
Nice boobs, man.
The new points-based healing system has none of that. It feels more removed and impersonal; it's one of those classic EA Sports moments where they've changed something, made it different only for the sake of being different.
Teddy Atlas and Joe Tessitore do a terrific job of calling the fights. But like a senile old man, Tessitore pronounces almost every fight a "classic." And Atlas keeps going back to the same metaphors again and again. If I hear the "At the end of the dark hallway is a room; you don't want to go into that room" story one more time, I'm going to start turning over furniture.
Less excusable is that after four iterations, the game's menus are still painfully counterintuitive. Do I Create A Boxer? Fight Now? Or, do I go directly to Legacy Mode? (Answer: Legacy Mode. Create A Boxer is a dead end, which I came to realize only after wasting 20 minutes fussing with stats for "Kid Jones." The fighter you build in Create A Boxer can't be used in Legacy Mode.) More clarity would be nice next time.
