Fight Night Round 3

"A Review from an actual Fighter (And fan)"

Fight Night games are probably the most realistic and authentic fighting games you can ever play. But there are a lot of flaws and downfalls to each Fight Night game that I've played so far. Visually every single Fight Night game looks fantastic and far improved from each prequel, but at the same time the games suffer massively from a lack of talents. There are so many fighters that they should have included over the years its ridiculous. In Fight Night round 3 we have a major slowdown in game play, which makes for a simulator type feel, but its slowed down just a little too much. A lot of the mechanics are unrealistic, like Parrying for example... it does not happen like that in real life, where you parry a shot and it leaves the fighter ridiculously opened for about 6 seconds. That's just not how it works in an actual fight. Not only is it unrealistic but it also slows down the flow of the fight and it makes for a frustrating and un-enjoyable experience.

The beauty of Fight Night isn't only displayed on the boxers themselves. Not only are the fighters looking better than ever, but the arenas and crowds alike, have also been vastly improved. Now, when you land a serious combination, or simply land a left hook or uppercut, you can actually see audience members stand up from their chair, as they would do in real life. If you pay attention closely, you can even see audience members clapping and throwing punches of their own in excitement for what their seeing. However, I still think the crowd's vocal reactions still need a huge improvement... sometimes you can be using a fighter like Oscar de la hoya, against, hell, Muhammad Ali, and you can land all kinds of left hooks and combinations all you want but the crowd will be completely silent. As if their watching some nobodies at a sparring session. crowd cheers and boo's are desperately in need of a revamp.

Also the knockout animations are pretty much the same everytime. Specially if you like ending your fights with lethal body punches, you will see the same bodyshot KD everytime. Another problem with the knockdown mechanics in general, is the terrible imbalance of realism. I'll just put it this way... I'll land massive punches in the game, that I know for a fact if I landed in real life I'd knock the guy out on the spot... Its unrealistic to be landing so many hard, bonecrushing punches and the fighter to just be moving his arms around trying to parry each shot, then for you to finally get him in that "dizzy" state, if you will, you land one simple right cross and he goes down... it's mediocre and very unrewarding. Its like I threw all those brain rupturing combos just so I can knock him down with a simple straight punch? Thats very unacceptable.

Another flaw to Fight Night round 3, and the Fight night franchise as a whole, is the unrealistic presentation of the game. I mean, we got realistic models, realistic punches (well most anyway), realistic boxing, and even a realistic Cut-man... and yet each boxer comes out with a WWE style'd entrance, hell, worse than a WWE style entrance. With girls shaking their asses, unfitting music, and over-exaggerated pyro effects, its like a boxing sim without the boxing. Where is the face-to-face stand-off? where is Micheal Buffer's introduction while the fighters stare-down eachother amongst their trainers and managers? Where is the tale of the tape? We need realism here people! But with that said, my overall impression of the game is Fun. It's very fun and sometimes can be very addictive. Specially when used with multiplayers.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/08/07