Fight Night Round 3 Review

The excellent news is that Fight Night Round 3 is an impressive boxing game. The bad news is that Fight Night Round 3 is still a boxing game. This is not a critique of boxing- you'd need more space than a journal permits in order to do that. But Fight Night is limited by the rules of its style: At its root it is always about guys punching each other daft. While fighting games like the Dead or Alive series can keep the action fresh by working in crazy gimmicks, Fight Night's realistic simulation of boxers squaring off gets repetitious quickly.

The career mode is straightforward. First you build your boxer. Virtually all aspects of appearance are configurable, and you set the boxer's attributes and fighting style to their preliminary levels. Four times you have created your boxer, you get to select fights from a list of potential opponents who vary in skill and method, as well as in the rewards that are obtained from defeating them. After you accept a fight, you train, meaning you play a mini-game to try to build up your fighter. (The mini-games are merely OK.) You can also buy gear that increases your fighter's attributes-or makes him prettier. Then, you fight your opponent. Win or lose, you select a brand spanking new fighter to take on. Repeat... and then repeat repeatedly.

The simulation of the boxing seems realistic. You control all the movement of your fighter, including the direction of his punches and his defenses. This makes for complex controls, but the learning curve is not terrifically steep. There's multiple difficulty levels, so you ought to never feel frustrated by the action.

The production values are high, the graphics and the fighting arenas that generate a great retro feel. However, the animations and the fighting calls quickly become repetitious, as well. Watching a stream of blood fly out of a falling fighter's mouth was fascinating the first time I saw it-but by the 20th time, I found myself hitting the skip animation button repeatedly to advance to more action. The ring announcers' commentary lets you know the way much destroy your fighter is taking, but then they quickly run out of new things to say.

Even with single player matches against legends like Ali and Frazier, the game is best enjoyed against live competition. Smacking the sense out of an online opponent while taunting all the while is a pleasure all its own. Also, the challenge of human opponents reduces the repetition of the career mode. Ultimately, this game is still mostly for boxing junkies. In the event you cannot keep in mind the last time you watched boxing on TV, you'll probably get your fill of this title from a weekend rental.

Regrettably, the game is overrun with corporate logos. You might think that in the event you spend $60 on a game that you might be free from adverts, but you'd be wrong. Using the grimacing speedy food mascot as a trainer was basically much, and it undermined the retro ambiance of the game.