Fight Night Round 4 Demo Impressions

Boxing fans rejoice for yet another Fight Night game is nearly upon us. EA was kind enough to drop a demo of the game on both Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network and here’s what we thought of the game.

The Fight Night series has always been well known for their graphical prowess and FNR4 is no different. Simply put, the game looks phenomenal. Boxers have been created with intricate detail; in fact every time your boxer lays a punch you can actually see the muscles on his body tense up, just like it would in real life. Sweat drips down his body and every time he eats a blow, the skin around the hit region ripples in a totally awesome way. Also hit detection has been improved significantly so you no longer have to witness hands actually clipping through faces and heads.

On the flip side, they’ve completely removed button support, which means you can no longer punch using the face buttons on your controller. This caused a minor uproar among people (yours truly included) who actually played through FNR3 using face buttons. Still total punch control has been handled really well so once you get used to it, it feels like second nature.

There’s a tutorial at the start of the demo that allows you to try out all your moves like jabs, hooks, uppercuts and signature blows on a relatively peaceful opponent who doesn’t mind you beating the crap out of him. Unlike the previous game, blocking is of the utmost importance this time round and learning how to counter attack incoming punches can turn the tides in your favor. Once you feel you’re comfortable with the control scheme you have one A.I. match to choose from after which you could play against a human opponent as well. Oh and if you feel you’ve performed exceptionally well during a particular match you can now save your replays and upload them to www.easportsworld.com.

Overall I’d have to say that I did enjoy the demo but I was sad that EA completely axed button mashing from the game. Still I hear that they got a significant amount of feedback regarding that decision so they may (and I repeat may) just about implement it in the final version. We’ll have to wait patiently till the 30th of June to find out, which is when Fight Night Round 4 releases for both the Xbox360 and PS3.