Day 118: Fight Night Round 4 (Xbox 360)

Going toe-to-toe with today's title from my 526 game backlog - I'm playing one every day while furloughed from work...

Fight Night Round 4 for the Xbox 360
Previous days' entries can be read HERE.

It’s not so much of an issue today, but for years collecting, and even just playing, video games was a pastime that came with a certain amount of stigma attached. 

But even when the chances of a ‘nerd alert’ were at their highest, I’ve always had the same piece of advice for other gaming enthusiasts: Tell everyone you know that you’re into this stuff.

Over the years, friends and colleagues have offloaded onto me thousands of pounds worth of hardware and software that, to them, is worthless. Rather than sending a load of metal and plastic to landfill, people often take pleasure from giving this stuff to a good home. 

This is how I came to have Fight Night Round 4. I would otherwise never have considered owning or playing a ‘serious’ boxing game, but when an old work colleague offered me a stack of 360 games this was among them, and I wasn’t about to say no.

Back on the PS1, I played ISS Pro Evo 2 so often, and for so long, that I was able to play the career mode from scratch, and build that rag tag bunch of stragglers into a team of world class superstars without ever losing a game. With the team I’d created by the end, usually consisting of players like Shevshenko, Badandiga, Veron, and Roberto Carlos, I was scoring over 100 goals a season and conceding a tenth of that.

It was this game mode, the Master League mode, that was the reason Fifa, with it’s licensed teams, stadiums, and soundtrack could never touch ISS as a single player game. And it was also this that cemented my love for career modes in sports games, and why I made a bee-line for Legacy mode when I fired up Fight Night Round 4.

The last boxing game I played was Ready to Rumble Round 2 on the Dreamcast, a game which has literally nothing in common with this. Where R2RR2 is a cartoon slugfest, FNR4 aims for realism, and the main way it goes for this is with a keen focus on the defensive side of pugilism.

In training in particular, blocking, dodging, and parrying are rewarded well, and in the fights counterpunching has proven, for me at least, by far the most effective tactic. Even the points that are allocated to your corner-man to patch you up between rounds are biased towards defense, with perhaps only accuracy being valued more highly.

It would be fanciful to suggest this game is hyper-realistic, but what it does offer is a really enjoyable balance between unleashing a satisfying haymaker, and picking off your opponent with point scoring jabs - while simultaneously forcing them to miss with good head movement and defense.

It’s not an easy task to make these elements all equally satisfying, but this game manages it brilliantly, and with the level of audio visual quality you would expect from a headline EA franchise. The graphics are often brutally detailed, with a lovely slow-mo instant replay to really bring home the impact of your most devastating blows. Unfortunately, the music is mostly a predictable brand of super-comercial hip-hop, but the sound effects make up for it and the commentary, although occasionally repetitive, is very well put together..

All in all Fight Night Round 4 a very polished product that’s a joy to play. I’ve read that the online servers have been turned off, so it’s more relevant than ever that the Legacy mode is such a great package all by itself. One of the things I’m enjoying most about this ‘create a fighter’ mode, is that I’m improving in the game as I get more practice, and at the same time my fighter is improving with the training and fights. It’s a genuinely satisfying journey for us both.

Fight Night Round 4 - A surprisingly thoughtful rendition of the noble art.