Fight Night 2004 – PS2 – Review

Boxing games
have long been a staple of videogame consoles.  From the aptly named “Boxing”
for the Intellivision to EA’s earlier attempts at boxing with Knockout Kings,
there has rarely been a console that didn’t feature at least a couple of
boxing titles.  Throughout the history of videogames, there has been several
boxing games that were fun to play, and in the case of “Punch Out,” went on to
legendary status. 

The problem,
as far as someone like me is concerned, having boxed for seventeen of my first
twenty-two years on this planet, a career that spanned 140 amateur fights, two
Silver Gloves championships and three Golden Gloves championships, is that
none (outside of the little known, but outstanding Victorious Boxers) have
really recreated the sweet science with any degree of accuracy.  Every other
sport that has been recreated in the videogame world  has received numerous
accurate sims, but boxing has been left out in the cold. 

Virtually
every boxing game ever created falls squarely in the “arcade fighter dressed
as a boxing game” category.  Some made no apologies for this, going arcade all
the way like “Punch Out” and “Ready to Rumble," while others like EA’s earlier
foray into boxing used real-world fighters, but resulted in the stiff-playing,
button-masher heaven known as “Knockout Kings.”  Fight Night changes all of
that, creating one of the most innovative and quite possibly the most accurate
sports sims ever created.  Building upon the ideals and execution of
Victorious Boxers, EA has taken videogame boxing to the next level becoming
the undisputed champion of the world.

There are so
many innovative aspects to this game that I could probably write an entire
book detailing each one, but for the sake of time and your patience, I’ll try
to brief.  The first and greatest innovation Fight Night brings to the ring is
the “Total Punch Control.”  This is far and away the most intuitive control
scheme ever devised for a sports sim, simply because it seems like a natural
extension of your body and nature. 

How many
games, sports sim or not, can say anything like that?  You throw punches in
Fight Night not by wildly mashing face buttons, but by negotiating the right
analog stick.  Push up and slightly to the left or right and you throw a
straight punch.  Push straight to the left or right and loop up, you throw a
hook.  Push down, slightly to the left or right and then loop upwards, and you
throw an uppercut.  The system is beautiful in its simplicity.  Where you get
variations on these punches, just like in the real world, depends on the
position and movement of your body.  Just like the real world of boxing this
opens up an almost limitless amount of punches and combos, of differing power
and speed.  Never before has a boxing game captured this so perfectly. 

The physics
engine this game employs is out of this world, constantly adjusting the power
and speed of the punch due to the movement of your body and your opponents
position in relation to your own.  For example, standing “flat-footed” your
right hook may be powerful, but step across your opponent’s body with your
left foot while throwing the same punch and it is lethal.  This game takes
such things into consideration.  Another innovation that EA has employed is
somehow lending “weight” to each punch.  I feel somewhat embarrassed that I
cannot explain how they’ve pulled this off, but there is no doubt they have.
 In most other boxing games, the way punches land and feel, are all the same.
There’s no visual cue letting you know whether your uppercut was anymore
powerful than the jab you just threw.  Not so in Fight Night.  You feel every
single blow whether you delivered or received it. 

Having
participated in virtually every major American sport under the sun, I can tell
you without any doubt, that there is no rush in all of sports that equals
feeling your opponent’s body crumble and fail underneath your fist.  I know, I
know, it sounds barbaric and probably overly “macho,” but it’s the truth.
Fight Night captures that feeling with astounding accuracy.  The boxers’
bodies in this game react realistically to every blow, heads snap back and to
the side, bodies raise off the ground with powerful body blows, it’s all here
and frighteningly realistic.  You’ll get to the point where you actually wince
when your boxer endures an especially brutal blow. 

In addition
to this, blood and sweat sprays and falls realistically, and the knockdowns
have to be seen to be believed.  EA has employed “rag doll” physics with the
knockdowns, which in addition to looking “really cool,” the bodies hit the
canvas with such weight and force that you can almost feel it.  The look of a
limp body falling flat is pretty unique in and of itself, but the way they
fall in relation to the force of the punch, the angle, and whether or not the
body falls into the ropes or a corner is a real sight to behold.  No two
knockdowns will ever look exactly the same.  And don’t even get me started the
way a downed fighter quivers and quakes on the canvas.  All brutal stuff and
not the most politically correct stuff to be celebrating, but EA has really
pulled it off and they deserve kudos for the extreme attention to detail.

Another
innovation that EA has employed is the way in which you attempt to recover
from a knockdown.  Rather than mashing buttons or twirling the sticks to
recover like every other boxing game under the sun, EA has created a very
novel mechanic in determining whether you get off the canvas or not.  Once you
are knocked down, the view switches to a first person view, looking up at the
ref, except there’s not just one ref, there are three, and they’re all
blurry.  As he begins to count you out, you must use each analog stick to make
the three blurry refs turn into one.  One stick controls one image of the ref,
while the other controls another, and you must perfectly overlay them over the
center ref.  Do this before the count of ten and you get up.  Fail and the
fight is over.  And if that weren’t enough, the more you get knocked down, the
slower and the harder it is to get the images to line up.  How cool is that?

But to me,
the most innovative aspect of the whole package is that your must really “box”
to be successful at this game.  Button mashers need not apply.  You’ve
actually got to use a fair amount of strategy and brains to be even minimally
good at this game.  Any opponent, whether one of the legends, or one of
lower-tiered computer-controlled boxers you’ll face in the career mode, will
absolutely carve you up six ways to Sunday if you just mindlessly bull rush
them, slinging punches every which way, just like real life.  You’ve got to
pick your spots and openings, knowing when to lay on the pressure and when to
back off and keep your distance.  Short of slipping on the gloves and climbing
in the ring yourself, boxing just doesn’t get more realistic than this.
 Patience and nerve are key.

The game
offers three standard modes of play: Play Now, Career, and Online.  In the
play now mode, you can set up fights using any of the plethora of current and
former legends included in the game or created fighters to battle other
legends or created fighters, this is where you can set up your “Dream
Fights.”  What’s really cool about this mode is that the real-world boxers box
and behave just as they do/did in real life, fighting with the same style and
tendencies.  This goes a long way towards adding to the feeling that you just
might be recreating the result you would’ve gotten had any of these legends
ever squared off against the others.  The AI of all of the opponents you’ll
face, real or otherwise, is incredible.  You’ll see virtually every tactic
ever devised in boxing executed with extreme accuracy. 

The heart of
the game is the “Career” mode.  In the career mode you’ll create your own
boxer with a very robust “create-a-player” engine.  I have no doubt that if
you cannot create a reasonable facsimile of yourself, you don’t exist.  From
there you choose a weight class, your attire, and eventually items such as
various “intro” effects and members of your entourage.  Once you’ve completed
all of that, you begin your career as a twenty-year-old rookie, ranked 50^th
of 50 fighters.  You are then presented with options such as shopping for new
attire, equipment, entrance music, etc., viewing the rankings of your weight
class, and scheduling a fight.  There is a fair degree of strategy involved in
scheduling fights and plotting your ascent to the top.  You are always
presented with a list of 1-3 possible opponents, some of whom are usually
ranked just ahead of you and some just behind.  You have to be careful to
choose opponents with similar attributes and records, lest you get destroyed
by a fighter you weren’t ready to face or you wallow for too long at the
bottom of the rankings, all the while keeping in mind the game has a mandatory
retirement age of 40. 

So you’ve
got to be careful, with only four fights a year, to constantly move forward,
without doing so, so fast that you don’t overmatch yourself.  After you’ve
chosen your opponent, you are then presented with the option to train.  You
are given the opportunity to train only once before every fight.  The training
is represented by four boxing specific mini-games, in which the game forces
you to cycle through in order, meaning that you’ll have to go through all four
before you get a chance at the first one again.  Each one represents
strengthening certain attributes, so they are vital.  While they are fun and
challenging, they do have a couple of problems.  The biggest is that there
isn’t an option to practice these mini-games inside of the career or out.
 This poses a problem because some of them will require most gamers to do them
four or five times before you become proficient at them, and by then you’re
already twelve to sixteen fights into your career.  This is an almost
unforgivable oversight.  There is an option to “auto-train”, but of course you
aren’t awarded as many points by doing this.  The other problem is that you
only have one shot per fight at the training.  Blow it and those attributes
have no chance of significantly improving until the next time around.

Beyond these
oversights, the career mode is outstanding.  The legends generally occupy the
top ten spots of the rankings, and the fighters get progressively tougher as
you move up.  Once again the AI of the computer-controlled fighters is
outstanding.  They’ll use every tactic under the sun, including such advanced
tactics as attempting to bait you into mistakes and so on.

The final
mode of play is the online mode, exclusive to the PS2.  This mode is about
what one would expect.  It supports voice chat and all of the features the
rest of the EA library supports on the PS2.  The times that I played online,
the game performed flawlessly without any lag whatsoever, which is impressive
considering the striking graphics the game supports.  I could see the online
aspect of this game being something really special if this game garners the
fan support it deserves, with online championships and so forth.  That to me,
would be really cool, “Virtual Boxing Championships.”

In closing,
this is the most accurate and rewarding recreation of boxing ever.  EA has
poured a lot of time and expertise into this game and it shows.  If you love
the sport of boxing, then you absolutely cannot go wrong here.  If you’ve ever
wanted to know what it was like to actually box, but didn’t want to risk
bodily injury, then this game will show you everything you’ve ever wanted to
know.  Really, the only drawback to any game that takes simulation this
seriously and recreates it so accurately is that it does narrow down the
audience considerably.  Arcade fighters, impatient gamers, and people who had
no previous interest in boxing should probably take a pass.  It is a very
involved game that will require a fair amount of interest and/or admiration
for you to get your full money’s worth out of it, but if you commit to the
game, it pays huge dividends.

Reviewer’s Scoring Details

Gameplay: 9
The boxing itself
is outstanding.  Virtually every style and tactic can be faithfully recreated
with ease.  The control layout is one of the most intuitive and natural
schemes devised for any game.  The only drawbacks are the issues with the
mini-games and the need for a basic understanding of boxing for you to be able
to “jump” right in.

Graphics: 9
The graphics of
this game are, bar none, the best to ever grace a boxing game.  The legends
are modeled in astounding and realistic detail, as are the various fight
venues.  The “generic” boxers you face on the way up the career ladder are
also lovingly rendered, making each look unique and alive.  The animations are
superb, as are the ways that sweat and blood spray.

Sound: 8.5
The sound effects
themselves are great.  The sound of well-aimed shots landing, the sliding of
the boots across the canvas, the crowd, as well as the grunts and groans of
the boxers are all accurate.  The problem lies in EA’s choice of Big Tigger
from BET to be the ring announcer and commentator.  While mildly amusing at
first he quickly begins to grate.

Difficulty:  Medium
This one is kind
of hard to rate.  For newbies to the sport, the learning curve is pretty steep
even on easy.  However, once you get the hang of controlling your boxer and
you realize that you’re not going to destroy too many boxers in early parts of
the first round, the difficulty rounds out rather nicely.

Concept: 10
Accurately
modeling and recreating boxing to a degree never before witnessed in
videogames deserves massive props.  It probably would have been easier and
even recommended by some to go the “arcade” route with the game simply because
of boxing’s nature, but EA chose to create a sim that rivals the best of the
best sports sims.  The “Total Punch Control” is one of the most innovative
control schemes ever.

Multiplayer: 8

Two players off or online.
The fights are very visceral and exciting, especially if you’re up against an
experienced opponent.
The game does a really good job in head to head bouts of recreating the peeks
and valleys, and the drama inherent to a real fight.

Overall: 9
Simply put, this
is one of the most accurate and lovingly devised sims ever created.  Boxers
and boxing fans alike will absolutely be heaven with this game.  Gamers
without an interest or love for the sport and its nuances may want to steer
clear, but there is no denying the accomplishments achieved by this incredible
game.