Fight Night Round 4 Image
Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 77 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 75 Ratings

  • Summary: Featuring a re-written gameplay engine, EA Sports Fight Night Round 4 adds a variety of fighting styles and boxer differentiation to authentically emulate the greatest fighters of all time. Pressure your opponent with the brawling inside style of young Mike Tyson, bobbing and weaving to set up powerful hooks and uppercuts. Capitalize on Muhammad Ali's reach, hand speed and fleetness of foot to bewilder your opponent with lightning fast jabs and straights from the outside. For the first time, EA Sports Fight Night Round 4 gives you the opportunity to pit these legendary heavyweights against one another and name a true champ. No fight will be the same with an all-new physics-based animation system that recreates the full spectrum of true-to-life punch impacts, giving boxers a devastating arsenal of punches, blocks and ring movement. The new physics system allows for missed punches, glancing punches, knockout blows and for the first time ever, rough and tumble inside fighting. Fatigue, adrenaline, footwork and timing all come into play as you hammer away at your opponents. [Electronic Arts] Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 76 out of 77
  2. Negative: 0 out of 77
  1. Fight Night Round 4 can honestly claim to be what Mike Tyson once quoted many years ago, "...I'm the best ever, my style's impetuous, my defense is impregnable, I wanna eat his children..." Well, okay, maybe not the last part, but damn if this isn't a great boxing game! If you are a fan, you are doing yourself a disservice not picking up a copy.
  2. 95
    While Fight Night Round 4 is easily the best boxing game of 2009 and also markedly better than its superb series predecessor, the game's perfectly balanced blend of challenge and excitement, relentless action, intuitive controls, jaw-loosening graphics, and fulfilling career mean it's the best example of "the sweet science" to ever grace home consoles.
  3. Fight Night Round 4 is an aggressive, fast and brutal experience that manages to achieve a videogame as brilliant as the third chapter in the series.
  4. Try FNR4 if you’re looking for a good boxing game or want to experience the glory of current generation pugilism all over again. It’s worth it. Just don’t venture online with wide eyes and innocence. You’ll be rocked.

See all 77 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 26
  2. Negative: 7 out of 26
  1. helix-
    10
    Improving on fight night four in many ways without losing any key points. They've monumentally improved on counter punching, and using it to control the flow of the fight while improving graphics, framerate, and online content. Expand
  2. DonM
    8
    This is an excellent addition to the franchise, with added features like being able to use your own portait for your boxer's face, as well as vastly improved graphics and physics. The career mode is also much improved from FNR3. HOWEVER, and I don't think I'm alone here, the total punch control is actually less responsive than FNR3, as I found my boxer throwing three or four low punches long after I had been tapping the stick in the upper quadrants. The disconnect between the stick movements and how and when punches are thrown also makes it seem like some knockouts/knockdowns were accidental, even if they weren't. Overall, I personally liked the TPC in FNR3 more than FNR4, but every other aspect of the game is so far superior that it's a no-brainer. Oh, and the soundtrack is way better, too. Expand
  3. chrisb
    7
    Not the best but there is nothing out there like this, major complaint is the sluggish controls, cant do most of the combos in the training because the controls dont respond to the input, throw a jab and u might get a hook. same issue im the harder fights, i find myself throwing punches when i want to block. sadly they have not fixed any of this so far. Expand
  4. What the heck happened?! After the on-line joy that was fight night 3 I was so psyched for this game, talk about a let down. The fact that the whole punch control stick flick setup was forced on us gamers before the patch was just absurd. I enjoyed the career mode but most of us play FN for the on-line challenge which is just gone now. They had a great control scheme in 3 but had to go and mess with it and it really shows this time around on-line. Not only is the game clunky to play but the interface is awkward as well. The blocking has been completely ruined with it's instant timing or no dice counter method. How this game took such a giant leap backwards is beyond me, a text book example of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." If you are looking for good on-line boxing FN3 is till the only game in town. Expand

See all 26 User Reviews