Great game, but lacks the depth to be a truly amazing game.
The fighting system is amazing, and the graphics are some of the best i have seen on any game, ever. However the beautiful picture of beating another man's brains out is awesome, you lose intrest after so many hours.
Like the Madden, or NBA Live games this game is just flat out fun. great mechanics make it easy for anyone to pick the game up and swing punches, and by doing that, you will win fights. On easy.
No matter what game I'm playing, i like to stay on the offensive. Football, basketball, soccer, first person shooters, whatever, i like to be the one throwing, firing, or shooting all the time. However with Round 4, once I made it to the Harder difficulties, i found it easy to start defending a little. The fighting system was developed well, so its also easy to block, dodge, or counter punches. With a mixture of tons of punches to chose from and several defensive techniques, Fight Night Round 4 has a unique game-play system that (for lack of a better word) "adapts" to your skill level.
If you are a beginner, if you play on easy, than the game is easy, and you can win fights with little difficulty. And when you get up to Greatest Of All Time difficulty, the game is nearly impossible if you don't have a complete skill set.
Online game-play leaves a little to be desired compared to the single player modes. There were surprisingly few people online at any given time, even when the game was still brand new. Due to things beyond my personal control, I didn't have much of an opportunity to play online for very long, so my brief experience (8-2 online record) may have been a coincidence. So I wont hold that against the game.
Legacy Mode is deep, and takes many hours to beat if you want to retire as the greatest of all time. I did, and it took me about 7 hours. You will have to have about 40 wins to become the greatest of all time. I went (49-3) but i simulated a few fights cause i had beat the person i was fighting once before. lol.
The biggest problem i had with this game is that after i had beat the legacy mode, i decided i wanted to get all of the Offline game-play trophies (which i did). But after i played Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali on GOAT difficulty about a million times each, and finally beat them, i was completely bored with the game.
Overall this is a very fun game, that will provide you with probably ten to twenty hours of game-play. Now that the price has dropped, I would highly suggest anyone that likes sports games, at least rents this. I give it a 9 out of 10.