Fight Night Champion
Review
An inferior sequel
by Ben Lelievre
reviewed on PS3
Failing The Legacy
When I started a career in Legacy Mode, Fight Night Champion showed me its real colours. Andre Bishop is such a phenomenal boxer, it is easy to plough through opponents. With a lower level boxer, the flaws of the newly implemented full spectrum punch control revealed themselves. The concept was to simplify the motions you had to do with the right stick in order to make the game faster and more strategic. It simply doesn‘t work that well. It makes jabbing harder and the jab is the king of all punches. Most of the time, you will hook or throw a right instead, and throwing a combination means you will have to flick the right stick in every direction, which is the equivalent of button mashing.
There is little strategy involved, at least, less than in Fight Night Round 4. AI boxers punch and try to walk over you in a straight line. You will have to master the art of stepping in and out and know when to retreat, otherwise this will be disappointing. One positive addition though was the use of the power modifier. The simple hold of a trigger can make your boxer start throwing power punches, which is pretty sneaky and a lot of fun in a fight. Especially when you have friends over and they wonder why, suddenly, their boxer is wobbled. That very aspect is a well implemented strategic element.
The legacy mode is a disappointing repackaging of Round 4’s mode. You will spend obscene amounts of time in the menu sections, the extremely difficult mini-games are now unskippable (but you have the possibility to master only one), the economy system gets irrelevant after a few hours and the revamped amateur section is just a tweak on what their offered us in 2009.
Beating The Count
Fight Night Champion is far from being perfect, but it is fun to patronize a franchise that tries hard to improve and come up with fresh ideas. At least they tried. Before I finish I have to hail the revamped presentation for its darker, more humble tones. The obnoxious hip-hop tracks are not as oppressing as they were before and there is a little more variety (notably blues and r&b tracks) for us to enjoy. It also looks a lot better than before. The multiplayer aspect, especially the local, is a lot of fun since you can skip the weight class logic and have loads of fun doing mismatches. A friend of mine tried to beat Joe Calzaghe with Tommy Morrison (who outweighs him by fifty lbs), and got KO’ed in the ninth round by a vintage-Calzaghe AI performance. It was glorious. If you have never played Fight Night Round 4, this will look a lot better to you. It is a bold game and I am really happy EA Canada took the risk, but it just doesn’t cut it over its predecessor. It is worth a rent for the Champion Mode, but I would wait until it hits the bargain bin before I bought it.
7.0
fun score
Pros
Champion Mode is a blast, Revamped presentation
Cons
Full Spectrum Control is disguised button mashing
