Fight Night 2004

You can diocese what the big deal is with Fight Night 2004 straight from the opening bell. You don't plane need to be holding the controller actually, it's with equal reason obvious. If boxing games up to now (such as EA's have Knockout Kings series) were all about sweaty shores jabbing each other in the face until individual side runs out of potency then this one is about boxing as it really works: the give-and-take, the strategic brutality, the insinuating movements that mark the difference between victory and defeat. It's single of the first games to examine boxing as a sport, rather than a brawl, and for that it be entitled tos some sort of gold star for extra effort, at the actual least.

The linchpin of this evolution (like with allotments of EA Sports games lately) is the analog-happy sway system, something the company's absurd of calling "Total Punch Control" TPC is perhaps single of the most original ascendency schemes for a game at any time devised -- save for the triggers and a pair optional buttons for special put in motions it requires nothing but sum of two units analog sticks to control your fighter's impels punches, and blocks. The right stick handles all the punching and blocking, and the left individual moves your body around as it dances about the ring and dodges incoming strokes entirely.

Sound a little hard to pick up? That's because it is, funnily enough. In your first scarcely any matches, you'll have trouble connecting with anything more compound than a straight jab -- and meanwhile, your opposite will open up an entire six-pack of whoop-arse upon you. Repeatedly. That's because your instinct (and there isn't a great deal of you can do about this at the start) is to whirl out every punch you've got from the starting bell, like a certain quantity of kind of caged wild animal. It doesn't work like that, however -- real boxer know by what mode to block, duck, and keep their energy before going upon offensive tears.

This is where the veritable genius of Fight Night's a whole shines through. You don't ne a tutorial to learn correct boxing practice in this game -- one time you've mastered the control a whole you've also automatically mastered the basics. It takes a hardly any rounds until you learn the veritable importance of blocking (you can turn aside punches and launch counterattacks if you time it right), on the other hand once you "get" it, you'll become a force to be computeed with. It doesn't end there, though: the ascendencys also make the difference between a shrimpy featherweight like Juan Manual Marquez and a big stay like Muhammad Ali instinctually obvious. You'll race all over the ring as Marquez, taking advantage of your innate spe advantage, while as Ali you'll blockade repeatedly and tire out your enemy for the knockout -- and the crazy thing is, you'll do all of this without really thinking about it, in the way that directly does the control combination of parts to form a whole connect you to the game. Not single is it the best way to play the game: it's also the best way to chest in real life.

This "real life" emphasis also rears itself in Fight Night's visual presentation, which is a seemly achievement on its own. If the mastery system brings fighting closer to your mind, then the graphics bring it closer to your organ of visions -- the arenas are filled with atmosphere, and the boxer rejoin fluidly to all your puncture commands, no matter how silly. The beatdowns you give in this game are amazing, too: faces contort (though you can't really diocese it outside of the replays), bruises swell darker over time, and ill-looking mugs turn into uglier piles of muscle and fat by Round 10. Knockdowns are pleasantry too, since no two are alike -- the game uses a physics a whole to simulate the fall, and while it's not completed (the fighters always drop like a ton of bricks, as oppos to going down upon one knee or jumping right back up) it's real satisfying to watch after systematically working your foe down over several rounds.

...and this one's for my cousin Vance down in Brooklyn!




So with this first Fight Night, EA's established a solid foundation for time to come games... a good thing, because there's a apportionment outside the core that could use improvement. First up the hip-hop theme. Big Tigger has a fine voice, ye (and he's a laugh as an unlockable boxer) on the other hand let's get real -- would a certain number of guy in a football jersey really be introducing Ali and Frazier into the ring at Caesars Palace? It's not that his announcing is particularly stellar here, either -- he repeats himself a allotment and he rarely says anything deeper than "Ooh that was a useful four-punch combo" and the like. And there's also the way that each fighter gets his own hip-hop soundtrack while walking into the ring, something you'd not at any time see with Felix Trinidad and the other Hispanic boxer It's a little weird, is all.

The Create-A-Boxer fashion could also use a bit more deepness although it's surprisingly engaging as it is. You can customize your fighter's appearance to worrying profunditys before throwing him into the virtual ranking ladder, and you can use prize circulating medium to buy a host of unlockables -- everything from novel trunks to gloves to exotic dancers and pyrotechnics for your ring intro. That's about all there is to it, however. Otherwise you're looking at a lengthy string of fights against dozens of computer-generated boxer and, if you're talented enough, the handful of real-life stays at the top of the list. Online play upon the PS2 helps spice this up although -- there aren't many network frills, on the contrary the usual EA online-lobby combination of parts to form a whole works well, and we've collisioned zero lag issues during our ordeal play.