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.
All in all, Fight Night Round 4 is an excellent game, that will appeal to the boxing fans amongst us. Not perfect yet, but getting pretty darn close with each version.
With Fight Night Round 4, next-gen consoles are once again graced by a highly polished, well implemented and enjoyable boxing title. With a focus on realism and simulation, Fight Night Round 4 provides a stunning view of boxing.
Ironically, Fight Night Round 4 may be the best argument for banning boxing yet. After all, when a game can get this close to the fluid, organic technicality of the real thing, why does anyone need to get hit in the face?... Solid, satisfying and totally revolutionary. [July 2009, p.81]
Fight Night Round 4 provides exactly what I wanted - with only a few caveats. The training could be better. The load times could be shorter. The “lucky punch” could be adjusted. However, those are relatively minor points in an overall good, solid boxing game.
So there we have it, Fight Night returns with a more refined playing experience then we’ve seen in previous versions! Ensuring it retains its title as king of the ring. A game of note in any boxing or sports fans video game collection, highly recommended.
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.
This is one of the most addictive sports games ever, me and my mate where playing the demo for months before I actually picked the full game up and the legacy mode was amazing and made the game even more addictive beyond the satisfaction of knocking out your opponent. Boxer customisation is also fun with the ability to create stupid looking and absurdly named sluggers. Truth is I got rid of this game because I was skint and still miss it to this day as, when I owned it, the game was played on a regular basis. Overall this is the only boxing game I've ever really got into and I would recommend it to anyone, it looks good, plays fantastic and has a strong collection of fighters to choose from, however, this being an EA release some boxers where held back for DLC......... **** that!!!
I sometimes had a hard time throwing the uppercut when I wanted the **** that's really a small complaint for so good a game. Once I adjusted to the control I found it to be loads of fun...addictive.
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.
This is a boxing game for people that like Street Fighter, this is not a boxing game for fans of the Sweet Science. The problems here are far too numerous to mention, but I'll try:
1) Tedious, extremely difficult minigames. Nobody in the world wants to play these, and if you auto-play them, you only get 50% training effectiveness, severely limiting your progress throughout your career. They're boring, frustrating, and psychotically difficult. I have never actually gotten Champion once on a couple of them.
2) Bad movement and collision detection. A lot was made about this game having real physics but you'll be hard pressed to find them. Even the knockdowns are canned animations, each one appearing based on what position the fighter was when he was hit with the KO punch.
3) Cheating AI. Oh boy, this is a maddening one. The AI cheats on every level starting around Pro but becoming much, much worse as you get to Champion and especially Greatest of All Time (GOAT). The computer can take dozens of KO punches and stay on his feet, get up as many times as you can knock him down, has godlike statistics compared to yours, can easily knock you down with 1 punch (often no "ringing blow" stun punch beforehand), and has limitless stamina, health, and regeneration. With a created boxer with very high stats (I had painfully trained by repeating training via reset over and over) was on a 24-0 rampage with 24 KO's playing on Champion difficulty, I had no problem at all until I fought Tommy Morrison and I then lost to him 38 straight times (reset and retried again). Once I knocked him down 4 times in the 3rd round but he still came back the next round to knock me out. Did I mention my boxer was 6'8 260lbs with a humongous reach? Even sticking the jab and dancing wouldn't work, as the tactic of "boxing" simply doesn't work in Fight Night 4. Slugging is -always- the most effective. I eventually gave up in frustration and decided to retire both my boxer and the game.
4) Unrealistic AI behavior. I put the AI on Champion and GOAT and watched a bunch of classic fights to see how they played out (or would have played out). Dumb. Ridiculous. Toney over Jones in 60 seconds with a KO in the 1st. Ali over Tyson in 90 seconds with a KO in the first. I thought Ali/Tyson was a fluke so I watched it 3 more times, Ali KO'd Tyson in 1st 2nd and 1st again. Riiiiight.
5) Bad menus. It's absurd how many things you have to click through and navigate to do -anything- in FNR4. 6) Mind numbing, repetitive, totally useless commentary. They got the real ringside guys and only got 10 pre-recorded, totally canned lines for each one? And to make it worse, they use the wrong lines at the wrong times. I knocked down Ricky Hatton 3 times in 1 round and he stuns me once and next round they talk about how I got my bell rung. Right.
The graphics are great, there's a lot of famous fighters to choose from, and on the surface the prospects look bright. Still, this is a total failure as a boxing game, it does the sport no justice whatsoever and rewards button mashing, body punch spamming, and stupidity. It **** in single player and it **** online. I regret pre-ordering and purchasing it. If you are totally ignorant to boxing, you might like it, but for a hardcore boxing fan it's all flash and no heart.
Truly an awful boxing game. When you come up against difficult opponents, it becomes a counter-punching spamfest. Almost every decent punch you throw gets blocked and then you get whacked. The game also runs at 200mph making it impossible to judge your own counters. It's an unrealistic, cartoon boxing game.
SummaryFeaturing 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 ...