This fast-paced boxing game improves upon its predecessor in just about every way, and adds an entertaining story mode to boot.

No matter what frustrations the game may hold for you, there's no denying this is one pretty package of violence. Fight Night Champion is surely one of the best-looking and best-playing games of its kind.

Fight Night fans will be coming back again and again for a while. While frustrating at first, the game is ultimately fun.

Some areas shine brighter than others, but the developer's inspired Champion mode is the star feature that must be experienced.

Minor niggles aside, Champion stands alone as the most polished and playable boxing simulation ever released, with the new adjustments and additions easily prolonging Fight Night's relatively uncontested reign over the genre.

It's far from a revolution – much of the framework will be familiar to Fight Night fans – but as the best-looking and most technically accomplished game the series has yet produced, this evolution exceeds our expectations, without totally blowing us away.

Fight Night: Champion isn't a perfect boxing game. The addition of the referee is distracting at times, especially since it feels like he wasn't implemented well. Veteran players will lament the fact that their old practices make for a twitchier boxer until they learn the proper control scheme, and the training games aren't exactly exciting. Despite this, there's still plenty to love about the game. The Story mode is engaging, if familiar, and the Legacy mode gives the solo player something to work toward. The online mode performs well, the game still impresses graphically, and the fighting engine feels like a better tweak of what was offered in Fight Night Round 4. Boxing fans, both die-hard and casual, will find plenty to enjoy in this game.

The game looks the part, sounds the part, and certainly plays the part. Topped off with a wealth of options that will keep you playing for hours on end, and an addictive online mode, Fight Night is just what the game's subtitle suggest...it's a Champion.

Champion mode is so good, in fact, that the more traditional Legacy mode feels hopelessly archaic and soulless by comparison.

Therein lies the paradox of Fight Night Champion: it both points the way forward for sports gaming with a smart, surprising new approach to the genre, and serves to remind us of the tired conventions that make that new direction necessary in the first place.

If you are a hardcore boxing fan and love grinding for stats and money and slowly rising up huge leaderboards then Fight Night Champion is probably the game for you, although from what I can tell, it doesn't really add anything to what you already had in Fight Night 4 other than the whole money thing. Sure, you can square off against 50+ licensed boxers, but for me, the big attraction was the cool story mode with enough blood and F-bombs to force a Mature rating. But even this gritty and realistic boxing story is only good for a few hours of violent fun, making Fight Night Champion a rental for casual boxers and a wait-for-budget-price upgrade for everyone else.

Fight Night Champion isn't going to reverse people's opinions of the shift in gameplay style that started with Round 4. It may help them warm up to things a little by providing more context and a story-driven backdrop, but it's still going to be a divisive decision.

One of the biggest, and most appreciated, changes is the toning down of the training mini-games. In story mode, you hit the bag every great once in a while but you aren't required to lift weights and run laps in twitch-reaction style as you might expect.

As it stands, Fight Night Champion is the best in the series to date for me, making the sweet science all the sweeter.

Much more evolutionary than revolutionary, but the series remains one of the 360's finest sports sims. [Apr 2011, p.74]

Did we really need Fight Night Champion? The answer is a mighty "Yes". EA got a better control scheme and achieved true techical excellence.

There's just not quite enough meat on Fight Night Champion's bones to recommend it to owners of previous games, however, and Champion mode itself is little more than a brief diversion you can bash through in an afternoon.

As beautiful as it is barbaric, and as technical as the player wants it to be. [Issue#107, p.90]

EA has taken its time to make another Fight Night game, but it has given a new twist to the game, making it one of the best boxing games ever.

With a great new single-player mode, the addictive and engrossing Legacy gameplay, online Xbox Live matches, the usual collection of boxing's best fighters in history and the further enhancement of great gameplay and boxing physics, Fight Night Champion packs a punch of excellence as an undisputed champion of gaming greatness.

Definitely an improvement over its already incredible lineage. The Champion mode is fantastic, and nearly worth the price of admission on its own. Couple that with the rock-solid gameplay and suite of great online modes, and you have a game that's fit for not only huge boxing fans, but anyone that likes to beat up on their friends a bit.

Short of stepping into the ring yourself, Fight Night Champion is the best possible boxing experience you can hope to find.

Champion mode pulls inspiration from the likes of Rocky and Raging Bull to craft a narrative around the sport that people still find engrossing. It's the perfect path for the series to take and we can only hope the next Fight Night builds on this promise, telling more tales from the world of boxing.

Champion is a fantastic boxing game that really delivers the sport in a realistic way for fight fans. Additions like the Champion mode makes this iteration shine even more.

The story mode adds an entire new aspect to EA's boxing masterpiece, at the same time polishing the physics simulation and overall gameplay of the career. If you like the sport, it's again a must buy.

Fight Night champion fights the good fight in upholding the tradition that each part is better than its predecessor. It's realistic, atmospheric, spectacular where necessary and exercises an approach on sports that other sport-games only dream of. It's too bad though that EA decided to give players who pay an extra fee an unfair edge over their online competitors.

Fight Night Champion does so many things right. Online multiplayer has been expanded while the new Champion Mode adds some much needed variation and dynamism. In many ways, it accounts for the shortcomings of its predecessor and provides solutions. If it wasn't for the infuriating changes to an otherwise perfect control system, it would be a hard game to fault.

The best Fight Night game so far. This title is absolutely a must buy because of all the new additions, and the new Champion mode is simply amazing!