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Fight Night 2004 EA Sports MAKER  Fighting games haven't really changed since they first appeared in arcades: hit buttons in different combinations and cause damage to the other player. 'Fight Night 2004' seeks to address this by introducing a concept called "total punch control". This new concept is certainly inventive as well as being a lot of fun; but the rest of the game is a bit of a letdown. The Total Punch Control innovation takes the buttons out of the equation and uses the second joystick to control your punches. Using the right joystick readies your boxer for a punch. Pushing forward and left or right jabs. Moving the joystick left or right, then pushing forward swings the boxers arm out for a hook. Moving the joystick toward back left or right, then pushing forward performs uppercuts. Squeezing the right trigger and moving the right joystick allows for blocks. Using the left trigger, you can also weave and bob out of the way of incoming punches. Holding the left trigger and punching with the right joystick performs a body punch. Finally, the black button performs the signature move, and white performs the illegal headbutt or groin jab. Whilst at first it feels a little awkward it's meant to simulate the actions of real boxers and after a while you find the action becomes quite natural; you can work up quite a rhythm punching and blocking. When all of these manoeuvres are used it amounts to quite an impressive, flowing battle, and for those totally uncoordinated there's the option to use the face buttons for punching. The game is further enhanced by its realistic health system. Throw too many punches, and the power of the punches and stamina decrease. Getting hit in the head does more damage than being hit in the body, and a kidney punch does more damage than a blow to the arm, making it less of a button masher and more of a realistic representation of boxing. More realism comes in the form of cuts and bruises, flying blood, and rag doll physics (which kick in with the knockout punch). More often than not you can keep hitting your opponent as they slide to the floor, and it's especially brutal if you've got them in the corner or on the ropes. There is a wealth of real life fighters from today and yesterday (including Roy Jones Jr., Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali), but if your favourite boxer isn't featured, the create-a-boxer feature is more than good enough to get you the fighter you're after. However, the game is let down by a poor career mode, average graphics and a terrible soundtrack. Single player Career mode is almost a joke. You earn money and unlock certain things, but they're all irrelevant: clothing, gloves and protective devices are mostly the same thing in different colours and the signature moves and taunts are used rarely (or not at all, if the face buttons are configured to punch). Most of the other unlockables are for the entrance animation, such as your entourage (well, chicks in bikinis), music and effects. After you've seen it for the first few times, you want to skip it and get into the fight. Also, there are only six arenas to unlock and you're forced to retire at the age of 40. The graphics of the boxers and the arenas are quite good but these don't really tax the Xbox at all. The real time blood, cuts and bruises look great, but we've seen it before in 'Tao Feng.' The crowd, although rendered in 3D, has the same looped animations and they look to suffer from a bad frame rate, although the action in the ring itself remains steady. Another let down is the fighter models. Although they all look different, due to the robust fighter creation system, they're all essentially the same model with the same moves. Watch Ali or Frazier fight in real life and you can see they're totally different sorts of fighters who move and hold their weight differently. In the game, the only differences between fighters are the stance and the fact that some fighters move faster. Sound-wise the fighters are again quite well done, and the sound of the harder hits will make you wince. However the commentary gets repetitive quickly (but fades out as you or your opponent get closer to being knocked out, replaced by a thumping heartbeat that amps up the tension dramatically) but the "street" mentality of the game, reflected in the "ghetto" style music, really sucks. P-Diddy, Nelly, and a heap of wannabes do awful "rap," making me think the custom soundtrack feature should be a mandatory feature in all future EA games. What's even worse is there are only about 10 tracks, so you'll hear them again and again and again...  |
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