Fight Night Round 3 was one of the games that really defined the start of the HD generation, delivering graphics on a level never seen before. Unfortunately, the game’s characters moved like lumbering dinosaurs, and the gameplay quickly devolved into a bevy of haymakers and parries. With EA Chicago gone, EA Canada has stepped in to develop the Fight Night series. For Fight Night Round 4, they’ve started from scratch, with a whole new engine delivering even better visuals than before and a more realistic gameplay experience. While there are still a few kinks to work out, Fight Night Round 4 is easily the best realistic boxing game to date.

What separates Fight Night Round 4 from its three predecessors is the new game engine, which is heavily focused on utilising realistic physics in delivering its brand of boxing. Factors which were never taken into consideration in the previous three games like height, reach and boxing style are now have a major effect on the outcome of your fights. The new system allows for many new things that have been missing from the series to date; a substantial difference between fighting on the inside and outside, counters, glancing blows and breaking through blocks. Many of the undesirable aspects of the first three games like haymakers and parries have been toned down or eliminated entirely. The new game engine also facilitates more realistic graphics, with fighters having greater levels of detail (right down to individual muscle movement) and liquid smooth animation at 60 frames per second.


Fight Night’s trademark Total Fight Control system is still key to the experience; button based control which was previously available as an alternative is not featured (at least in the retail release, a patch to add it back in is coming soon), but it’s still really easy to grasp. There have been a few notable changes to the system, with many of the motions simplified to make it a lot faster to execute punches – rapid fire jabs and straights are par for the course. Haymakers still feature in the game, but no longer require players to wind up for them using the stick – one simply holds in the right button when throwing a hook or uppercut to modify it into a haymaker. Haymakers are still pretty easy to spot, but players simply can’t beat them away with a parry anymore. Rather, you need to dodge or execute a perfect block, that is where you bring your hands up just as the punch is about to connect. A well timed dodge or perfect block gives you the opportunity to land a counter punch, which will be more damaging to your opponent.

Players have many different things that they need to keep an eye on with different gauges for health, stamina and blocking stability. One doesn’t necessarily go down only when the health meter is drained; with the physics based fighting, high impact blows can knock your opponent into a stunned state at any time, and flash knockdowns are a much more frequent occurrence. You really need to think about what you’re hoping to achieve with each punch, while being aware of the possible repercussions. Blows to the body are an effective way of reducing stamina, which in turn reduces the effectiveness of each blow. The more damage you take, the closer you get to ending the fight; getting up off the mat is a much simpler task now, but the goal is to never go down. Points awarded during the rounds can be assigned to recovering health and stamina or fixing damage to keep the fight going on. It’s much quicker than the old corner mini-games, allowing for much more effective corner management in multiplayer games.


The way fights play out in Fight Night Round 4 is heavily dependent on your specific fighter’s skill set. Playing as Mike Tyson or Joe Frasier, you’re going to be looking to get onto the inside and stick to your opponent like glue, throwing hard body blows before going upstairs. Out fighters like Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Robinson will wear their opponents down with frequent jabs while moving around the ring non-stop. Some fighters mix it up between the two, and then you have guys like Roy Jones Jr. who are completely unorthodox in their approach. The pace of your fights is rapid, and the action is surprisingly smooth – the jittery, robotic movement of Fight Night Round 3 is little more than a memory.

After you’ve got a couple of bouts under your belt, some of Fight Night Round 4’s shine rubs off, and you begin to see some of the game’s issues. There are no major problems with the game, just a lot of little things that could be resolved with some tweaking. The most pressing issue is that boxer stamina simply doesn’t drain in a realistic fashion – boxers can throw more than 500 punches in a round and still prance around the ring like they just got out of bed. This is a major issue in the game’s online multiplayer system, where all stats are levelled out and technique is meant to become the major deciding factor; most players online can just punch non-stop without consequence. Most online bouts just become slugging contests; two guys standing in the middle of the ring with their feet planted, swinging until one of them drops. There’s a few other awkward quirks in there, like the bizarre magnetic pull towards the in-fighting state when players get close to each other – hopefully that will become a little more dynamic in future.

Over forty licensed fighters appear in the game, with legends like Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, George Foreman and Lennox Lewis, along with current stars like Manny Pacquiao, Anthony Mundine, Ricky Hatton and Tommy “I was in Rocky V” Morrison. There are a few notable omissions; the legendary Rocky Marciano, Fight Night Round 3 coverboy Oscar De La Hoya, and the current heavyweight champions the Klitschko brothers, but EA promises more boxers through DLC at a later date.


Players can relive the career of one of the licensed fighters or create their own in the legacy mode – a fairly typical career mode with the usual calendar to schedule fights followed by a couple of lame training games before each bout. It’s an improvement over the career mode in the third game, but they need to make it a little more interesting and realistic. For example, if your guy wins a fight in the first round, you really shouldn’t need to take six weeks to recover. There are a few nice little nods to the real world of boxing missing from other games, like multiple titles from each weight class with the ability to unite, along with pound for pound ratings. The AI can be pretty challenging, but the difficulty sliders are considerably lacking when compared to other EA Sports offerings. The game is really at its best when playing friends locally or in unranked play.

Fight Night Round 4 is a revelation as far as realistic video game boxing goes, introducing many of the elements that have been missing from games based on the sport. It’s a much more realistic digital interpretation; thanks largely to the new physics based gameplay system and more lifelike visuals and animation. There are some issues to work out in terms of gameplay balance particularly with regards to stamina and ranked online play, but they’re not significant enough to affect the overall experience. Fight Night Round 4 is so far ahead of its predecessors and the competition that boxing fans would have to be crazy to skip it, but it’s also accessible enough for anyone to enjoy.