I know I'm in the minority, but I hate Fight Night 3!!  Unlike its predecessor, it now takes a full second after you input a power punch for your character to actually throw it.  I don't care how many ripples flow across a boxer's face when you knock him down; if my fighter throws haymakers like a tranquilized grizzly bear then the game isn't worth a damn.  The old saying goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."  Well, if it's already fixed, don't break it.  The punch speed was fine in Round 2 but it's much too slow and clumsy now.

The analog control of the "Fight Night" franchise is an interesting approach to the gameplay but it does have problems.  Combos of heavy punches are more difficult to throw than with buttons and many times my fighter will throw the wrong type of punch, typically a hook instead of an uppercut or vice versa, even though I tilted my right analog stick in the proper course.  If I really had "total punch control," that would NEVER happen, but it happens to me all the time.  I really hope Midway doesn't adopt a "total buttkick control" system for Mortal Kombat that govers all punches and kicks, because I'm absolutely certain I would lose many fights because I accidentally elbowed myself in the groin.  Baraka wins...VASECTOMY!

Speaking of Mortal Kombat, there is a term used by the developers called "Kreate-a-Fatality," which supposedly describes a custom fatality mode for Mortal Kombat: Armageddon.  It's actually just a series of pre-programmed punches, limb-amputations, kicks, decapitations and other nasty maneuvers that you can do in a flexible sequence.  In other words, it's a more open-ended Brutality akin to those seen in Mortal Kombat Trilogy.  Though it is fun to experiment with, if it really lived up to its name there would be a list of options, such as which body part to target and with what move (special or otherwise), and what would happen to the body part as a result (would it catch fire, freeze, explode, fall off, or just bleed?).  When I first heard of Kreate-A-Fatality I thought you'd be able to program fatalities for custom characters.  With my first character, who looks exactly like me except he's (a tad) more buff, I'd pull up my shirt, exposing my fishbelly-white torso and roast my hapless victim with the blinding sunbeam reflecting from my Caucasian flesh.  I have another character who's a standard MK ninja except that he's brown and lives in the sewer.  His name is Vermin and he is the chosen champion of the Turdish peoples of Sewerrealm.  If he really had his own fatalities, nobody in the MK universe would ever want to fight him.  EVER.

One more thing; I've never fully understood the term "Role-playing game" to decribe a turn-based fantasy adventure.  Are not all games "role-playing?"  I'm not the Master Chief, Tommy Vercetti or Liu Kang; I'm just playing their roles (and doing a damn good job at it, I might add, except I still get my cyborg buttocks handed to me by those sword-wielding elites on Halo's Legendary difficulty).

The point of this whole rant is, don't be fooled by what game companies call the features of their own titles, because although they can be accurate, most of the time they're just marketing ploys used to sell discs.  Not that that's a bad or immoral thing; I wouldn't expect Sony or Microsoft to call something That One Feature We Couldn't Quite Perfect Because of Time and Budget Constraints, so it is up to the discretion of the consumer.  In this day and age you just have to be willing to sniff up a certain amount of bullcrap if you want to keep your senses keen.