Ready to rumble? You bet I am.
With that being said, there are a FEW technical and visual quirks here and there that will make you kind of scratch your head. For example, in between rounds you have the option to heal your fighter's cuts and swollen eyes. The cuts particularly are nothing spectacular to look at, and the blood doesn't really flow from these cuts, but rather just kind of appear in a trickle down their face. The final knock-down punches on occasion will get off sync as well, and you'll see your fist clipping through your opponents head sometimes, but this is a minor occurrence. And the way that the players fall after being knocked down can be awkward as well, especially if they fall into the ropes, as you'll the player kind of get hung up on the ropes and it doesn't look very convincing at all. But as said earlier, these are pretty minor compared to the other glorious visuals you'll be treated to, and you'll find yourself looking past these small quirks.
The sound in this game is also one of the strong points. The hits will sound brutal when the punches are brutal, and weak when the punches are weak. They sound spot on as well, you can hear your glove hit flesh and hear the cracking of the nose after connecting. The music, mainly hip-hop, keeps to the menus and doesn't distract you during the fight. The ambiance created by the crowd in the background heightens and dulls in respondance to the fight, and sounds convincing.
My one complaint with this game is the structure. The career mode, in particular, is without definition. You start off by making your own character and really from there it's just fight after fight. You never really know where you stand in accordance with everyone else, and the lack of a tournament type structure kind of leaves it like there's more to be experienced. In between each fight you have the option to train your boxer. This is done with a choice between three different mini games, and they're okay for the first couple times, but get old pretty quickly, but the game almost forces you to play them as you'll get barely an increase in stats if you have the game automatically do it for you.
The career mode is not without it's highlights, however. The core game, the boxing that is, is great fun, and you'll have no problem playing through it again and again. The boxers you'll face have distinctly different styles, ranging from speed to all out power to somewhere in between, but you'll always be fighting a different fight. The game also works in a rival system and you'll face this rival every now and then and he eventually becomes like an arch enemy. The game does a good job of relaying to you that your rival hates your guts, as he will do things like pick fights with you at the weigh-in and pull off an illegal hit during the fight should you give him the opportunity. Once your boxer gets to a ripe old age of your choosing, you can opt to retire the boxer, and the match-up between your boxer and your boxer's rival will be exported to FN's "Classics" mode, where you can choose any of classic matchups, like Ali vs. Frazier, Hopkins vs. Jones Jr., etc.
The fighting can be done two different ways. This game will WORK by button mashing, though you're not really getting all you can if you use the buttons to throw your left and right hands. The Total Punch Control system that uses the right analog stick is truly innovative and is really what opens up each fight to be fun. The system reads how you move the control stick and punches accordingly. For example, flick the control stick to the right, and your boxer will throw a quick right jab. Likewise, rotate the control stick around in a big round fashion, and your boxer will wind up and throw a massive haymaker. Go somewhere in between the two and it'll end up being like a hard hook. The power / direction of each punch is totally in your control.
In all, FN3 is a great collection to your XBox 360 library. It's addictive gameplay and gorgeous visuals are definately worth the price tag.