The new inclusions are very good, but that doesn't make up for the newly broken aspects and comically bad training games
The inclusion of proper in-fighting is perhaps the most significant change for Fight Night Round 4 from it's predecessor, Fight Night Round 3, and the game is far better by its inclusion. The "invisible wall" that prevented fighters getting up close an personal in FNR3 has gone, we are treated to close-up scrapping that, in its moments, verges upon the sublime.
Why then have I scored this game so low?
To be honest its this one feature, coupled with changes to the campaign (or "Legacy") mode including the recognition that time represents an ever present enemy for boxers and that it will eventually strip them of their ability to fight, that has enabled to persevere so long in spite of some truly insipid elements of gameplay.
Before I launch off into the review proper I should make it clear that this review is not a completely balanced one; a strange admission, but true. I am not marking the game upon its on-line features; I cannot, I have not played them. Without getting on my soap box I see no point in paying Microsoft for multiplayer across the internet - I (rightly) get that for free on the PC.
I've tried to take into account the very entertaining and varied "Fight Now" element; indeed, the fight now in combination with the ability to create a fighter in your own likeness not to mention the fantastic likenesses of you favourite boxers or other celebrities that you can download and use is simply amazing, and accounts for a least one full point out of the 6.5 I have awarded this game. The ability for custom content is one area that I cannot fault.
The fight no is fun, sure; a quick blast of boxing joy between champions and other greats. However, this aspect of the game eventually fades as their is no incentive for prolonged play, so if all you want is to have a quick blast add another half point to this score.
However, if , like me, you want a slightly most persistent experience you will have to turn to the Legacy mode.
Now, in the previous incarnations of the Fight Night games this has been by far the best mode; its had its problems, but it typically provides a sense of progression and achievement.
As such this is the part of the game that is most important to me and will account for most of the games score - I can forgive a lot of roughness or lack of other content if I am wowed by a good career mode.
Its a great shame this is by far the worst part of the entire game.
The set up is good. You start out a young and inexperienced boxer in the amateur's tournament; the first fights in this are a cinch; everybody is on a level playing field and for most part its easy to knock them out in the first few rounds.
When the legacy mode proper kicks in its still good, you will quickly find that it takes a very long time to recover in-between fights and time keeps marching on to the point by which your fighter will be forced to retire. This creates a sense of urgency and a need to balance between time to train and fighting as often as possible.
It sounds awesome so far doest it?
Unfortunately for FNR4 the devil is in the details... and the designers simply haven't been using their magnifying glasses.
The first year or two are just fine, you will be fighting all comers and, depending upon your fighting style and how well that jells with your fighters natural fighting style, there will be a few near misses but its a nice learning curve. You quickly realise that the training sections are simply terrible, which is a disappointment. The training sections are both finicky and punishing; the scores you need to get to get the most out of your training seem unnaturally high and get worse as your fighter gets better stats. The only two I can consistently get champ and occupationally get contender on is, predictably, the sparring section and the double ended bag (punch and moving); the sections that focus upon the skills of, you know, boxing. I can get contender on the maize bag (dodging and punching) and on the heavy bag occasionally but the others are just well beyond my grasp.
This sounds like a minor niggle, you can auto train and get half the points after all. Appearances can be deceiving however, and it becomes apparent as you progress that the opponents you come across have either drasticly different training regimens or are taking distinctly dodgy substances. Again, a minor niggle, except that it gets worse the further you progress; for the most part if you box intelligently you can win a decision and get a few knock-downs, but occasionaly you will hit a true brick wall.
This typically comes in the form of a person of hulk like proportions (in the heavyweight class) with huge reach and fricking concrete hands that move like jet fighter planes and it becomes rapidly apparent that you are going to have a job simply surviving to the end of the fight.
The imbalance between your slow, sluggish fighter that can barely scratch the opponent that moves like a kid on a sugar rush and can land your fighter on the mat in a single hit becomes the epitome of frustration.
Just to see if it was just me being worse than usual I recreated a fight with equal overall attribute scores and the A.I. was seeing stars by then end of round three.
Basicly, the whole legacy mode needs to be reworked and the training needs much much work; its importance in legacy mode has rendered the rest of what was an impressive series into an exercise in frustration.
When the game is balanced its very very good. I have a personal opinion that they should have left the body punching / countering system well enough alone as the new system is disappointing at best as it is unresponsive with body punching (for some reason it flat out refuses to recognise being told to right uppercut the body). The blocking system that prevents you from just holding up you block all the time is a great system, but the ability to initiate a counter seems a bit random in comparison to the slick system in FNR3 (and again relies upon the physical attributes your fighter lacks in comparison to the opponent).
If only these problems had been properly addressed I could whole heartedly recommend this game; as it is the problems, whilst small, are so game breaking/frustrating that I am forced give it a very average score when greatness could be within its grasp. Not a Muhammed Ali of a game, but more of a Ricky Hatton. You really want it to do well, but it keeps falling short of the mark.
:EDIT: Oh and a new bone of contention: the game has another nasty habit of changing the person you are going to fight at the last minute, which means that if you identify a type of fighter that you will struggle against and deliberately choose to avoid them the computer will force you to fight them. In reality if a fight was pulled out like that and you were given a fighter you weren't prepared for you would just cancel the fight. The fact that the game forces you to fight against people you know you will be unable to win against is just petty and gets another .5 deducted.