Fight Night Round 3
Genre: Sports
Platform: XBox
Rating: T (TEEN)
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: EA Chicago
Release Date: 2/21/2006

After the success of the first two installments of the Fight Night series, EA is back for Round 3. With a revamped fighter creation system and the addition of some new, powerful punches, Fight Night Round 3 makes a serious bid to the title of “Best Boxing Game Ever”.

1. Modes

Fight Night Round 3 offers three main modes. There’s the Play Now option, which allows you to just pick a fighter and an opponent and go head to head. Want to make things tougher or easier for yourself? Fight someone in a higher or lower weight class. Play Now allows you to dive in immediately. The second mode is ESPN Classic, which allows you to redo some of the biggest fights in history. Ali-Frazier. LaMotta-Robinson. Jones-Tarver. Leonard-Duran. You have the opportunity to relive and possibly rewrite some of boxing’s most historic moments.

The meat of the game is Career Mode. Here, you’ll create your own boxer and send him through the ranks, first as an up-and-coming amateur, and then through a pro career that can ultimately lead to fighting for the title belt. Career Mode has a lot of plusses but also some minuses. First, the level of customization for your fighter is incredible. You can control everything from the size and shape of his eyebrows to the jut of his jaw and the height of his cheekbones. You can pretty much mold your fighter to look like anyone you want. Training is also a much more integral part of the game. With limited resources to start with, you’ll have to be careful which trainer you choose. Not to mention that when you train, you boost some stats, but the tradeoff is you lose points in other stats. It makes training a much more strategic part of the game.

The drawback to Career Mode is that it ultimately becomes very repetitive. Sign a contract, train, and fight. A lot of times, you have no option in who you can fight. The fights are fun, but after a while it can become a bit tiresome. Overall, it’s a fun time, but be forewarned that you probably won’t be playing for hours at a time.

Score: 7/10

2. Graphics

The graphics with Fight Night Round 3 has its good points and its bad points. First off, the good. And I mean really good. The fighter models in the game are incredible. I can only imagine that they must be jaw-dropping on the 360, because here on the XBox they’re already in the “WOW” territory. Every fighter looks spot-on like their real-life counterpart. After watching them move around for a few rounds, you could almost believe you were watching them on TV. And the fictional fighters look great as well. And the damage the boxers take during fights look great as well. Eyes swell, noses and mouths bleed. Everything inside the ring, from the cornermen and round girls to the referee and a certain “royal” promoter, looks awesome.

It’s too bad the same can’t be said for the graphics outside the ring. As good as everything inside the ropes look, it loses a lot of impact by the horribly pixilated crowds. And we’re not talking just the cardboard cutouts found in other EA Sports offerings. The crowds here are incredibly jagged in appearance, almost looking like something out of an old Activision or Atari game from the 80s. It can quickly dull the experience of the game. Obviously, the most important aspects of the graphics are inside the ring. But EA needs to be hammered a bit for the craptastic presentation outside the ropes.

Score: 8/10

3. Sound

Man, the audio in this game is sick. Turn up the volume and listen as your punches crash off the other fighter’s body. You’ll hear the smack and thud of leather on flesh. Listen closer, especially when you’ve cut your opponent. Hit them in the cut area and you’ll actually hear a squish. As the fight goes on, you’ll hear the boxers gasping for air, especially when they’ve thrown too many punches. You’ll hear the roar of the crowd and your corner frantically yelling instructions and encouragement. And when you throw a knockdown punch, listen during the replay for the sounds of bones shattering. It truly puts you in the ring.

For a company that used to be known for their soundtracks, EA’s latest offerings have been mediocre at best, and this is no different. All you get on the soundtrack are a bunch of insipid offerings from second-tier rappers most people haven’t heard of. There’s zero variety in the music offered, so if you’re not a fan of rap, you’re out of luck. In addition, the announcer for the fights quickly grows repetitive. For a game that’s reached the pinnacle in terms of sound effects, it’s marginal to poor in terms of the rest of the audio experience.

Score: 8/10

4. Control/Gameplay

The hallmark of Fight Night is the Total Punch Control. You use your right thumbstick to punch. The direction and angle you push your thumbstick determines the punch thrown. Pushing quickly up to the right and left will throw jabs and straights. Starting in the middle and circling up to the left and right will throw hooks and crosses, and starting at the bottom and circling up to the left and right will throw uppercuts. In addition, there are three special punches offered: haymakers; stun punches; and flash KO punches. Pulling the right thumbstick back and up in a circle will throw one of these punches, with the distance you pull back determining which punch you throw. These punches are slow to throw and can be easily countered, but their benefits make them a worthwhile gamble. A haymaker thrown after countering a punch will give you an adrenaline boost that allows you to throw unlimited punches for a few seconds. A stun punch will put you in a first-person minigame where your punches will do more damage and your opponent can only block. A flash KO punch will immediately put your opponent into a state of critical health while giving you a health boost. A major criticism of Fight Night Round 2 was that the haymaker was uber-powerful and broken. By slowing the punch down, EA has made haymakers a powerful but balanced part of the game.

Defense has been upgraded slightly as well. You still use your left trigger to weave your upper body and your right trigger, in conjunction with the right thumbstick, to block and parry. One of the bigger changes to the game is the ability to block and move. In the past, once you went into blocking mode you were pretty much immobile. Now you can shift around some, giving you greater flexibility in your defensive game.

Much of the game is predicated on the Total Punch Control setup. If you find it too hard to master, don’t fret: you can change the controller setup to punch with the buttons. Be forewarned, however, that you can only throw the special punches with the right thumbstick. So “button mashers” (as the game derisively refers to them) will lose the ability to throw haymakers, stun punches, and flash KOs. If, however, you have issues using the thumbstick, then chances are you weren’t able to throw those punches anyway and won’t miss them.

One of the best things about Fight Night Round 3 is the level of customization in regards to your fighter’s boxing style. You now have the ability to choose your boxer’s stance, punching style, and blocking style. With 11 stances, 7 punch styles, and 3 blocking styles, there are 231 different combinations to choose from when creating your fighter. This allows you to play around with different combinations until you find one that suits you and your playing style the best.

Overall, EA has done a fine job of integrating the best parts of the first two versions of the game to develop something that will appeal to players across the board. There are multiple ways for a player to find their comfort level and enjoy their gaming experience.

Score: 9/10

5. Replayability

With Career Modes, different weight classes, and the ESPN Classic matches, there’s a lot of replayability to be had here. There are quite a bit of unlockables here, so there’s an incentive to keep playing.

Score: 7/10

6. Balance

The game offers three levels of difficulty, so a player can ramp up their skill and move on to the next difficulty level when they feel comfortable. For most players, Medium will offer a decent enough challenge. The difficulty level will also vary depending on whether or not you choose to use the Total Punch Control or not. Overall, the game is fairly well-balanced and will offer the player the desired difficulty level they choose.

Score: 7/10

7. Originality

It’s the third in a series, and it’s a boxing game, so there’s not a lot of originality here.

Score: 2/10

8. Addictiveness

As I stated above, the game will have you enthralled for a while, but it’s definitely not the type of game that will have you huddled in front of your TV for hours at a stretch. After a while, the fights tend to blend together. Ultimately, it may be an inherent drawback to the concept of a boxing game in general. There’s only so much you can do, and it all becomes quickly repetitive. Still, you will have a fun time. You just won’t be dragging ass to school or work the next day because you were up all night playing the game.

Score: 6/10

9. Appeal Factor

It’s a boxing game, so it will hold some appeal, though not as much as in boxing’s heyday. Maybe if the game had Mike Tyson in it, but alas, that’s not to be. Still, it’s got EA in the front of its name, which still amounts to something. I mean, EA sells a Rugby game, for Pete’s sake.

Score: 7/10

10. Miscellaneous

With the deep level of customization the game offers, Fight Night Round 3 is the closes you can get to actually seeing yourself in a video game. I halfway expect to see sites pop up like they do for wrestling video games, offering CAW’s. It definitely enhances the playing experience to see yourself laying Roy Jones, Jr. out like Antonio Tarver did. Hopefully other games can take a page from this for future endeavors.

Score: 8/10

Modes: 7/10
Graphics: 8/10
Sound: 8/10
Control/Gameplay: 9/10
Replayability: 7/10
Balance: 7/10
Originality: 2/10
Addictiveness: 6/10
Appeal Factor: 7/10
Miscellaneous: 7/10
Total Score: 68/100

Final Score: 7/10 (GOOD!)