Trying to accurately portray boxing with a controller must be a pretty difficult thing to achieve. While there has been a small handful of great arcade-boxing games such as Nintendo’s Punch Out!! series, the boxing sims have not seen too much success, and, to be blunt, it’s probably because they simply aren’t any fun. That is until last year, when EA Sports dropped its Knockout Kings franchise in favor of a brand new boxing series with a whole new look and feel that went by the name of Fight Night 2004. It introduced an entirely new control scheme that finally made it possible to have fun with a boxing simulation, and while it certainly had its shortcomings, it was, by and large, the best boxing game to come along in a very long time. One year later, Fight Night: Round 2 is upon us, and EA Sports is hoping to bring you a new boxing game that is good enough to replace last years version of Fight Night.
Fight Night: Round 2, just like its predecessor, is a boxing simulation. In it, you will create a boxer to your liking, choose his starting attributes, and choose to what weight class he will belong. From here, you will train and fight your way up the ranks to finally become the #1 boxer in the world. As you climb up the ladder of success, you will earn money, and you will then use that money to purchase all sorts of crazy stuff such as new shorts, shoes, gloves, tattoos, ring girls, better trainers, and entrance music/effects. Many of these items actually boost certain stats, while others are there merely for cosmetic purposes.
Training is an important aspect of any boxer’s career, and you will do your fair share of it in Fight Night: Round 2. There are three different training exercises that you can do: Heavy Bag, Weight Lifting, and the Combo Dummy; each of these will help to boost certain stats such as agility, power, and heart. You can participate in the training mini-games or you can choose the quick-training option and let the computer do it for you. The only thing to remember here is that letting the computer take over your training will yield less favorable results than you would get if you did them yourself. It’s actually a lot of fun to watch your boxer’s physique drastically improve over the course of your career.
What made Fight Night 2004 stand out was that it introduced a new control scheme that allowed you to play a boxing game like never before, and fortunately, that carries over virtually unchanged. You will almost exclusively use the two analog sticks in conjunction with the shoulder buttons (as opposed to using the face buttons) to throw your punches, and you can literally control each punch with absolute precision by mimicking the movement of your arm with the right analog stick. The jab requires a quick flick of the analog stick, and an uppercut requires you to move down, around and then up. You can also throw a more intense version of each punch by beginning the motion a quarter circle ahead of where you would normally start a punch, then pull it back to the default starting position and do the full motion for the punch to unleash your very own homemade headache (also known as the mighty haymaker.) Body blows are done exactly the same, but you will hold the left trigger button as you do so. As you can imagine, you get quite a satisfying feeling when you string together a sweet combo by picking each and every punch on the fly.
Defense is handled the same way in that you will defend yourself by reading your opponent and reacting with the analog sticks. To block, you will hold the right trigger, and then use the right analog stick to block different parts of your body. To block high, hold the right trigger and press up on the right analog stick. To block low, simply hold the right trigger and press down on the right analog stick. You can also parry while holding the right analog stick in different positions as you hold the right trigger. For example, if you think your opponent is going to throw a left punch to the right side of your face, hold the right trigger, and hold up/right on the analog stick; if he does in fact throw that punch, you will parry it, leaving his defenses down for a short moment. You can also sway at the waste to try to actually dodge punches by hold the left trigger and moving the left analog stick. The great thing about it is that once you master these defensive moves, and you begin to identify your opponents’ tendencies, you can parry or block almost any punch thrown at you provided your reflexes are good enough (I recommend playing a good round of Contra III to get your twitch-gaming skills back up to par.)
The other aspect of Fight Night: Round 2 that rounds out the whole experience is the AI. Your opponents become visibly frustrated in a hurry once you learn to counter their every move, and you can watch a fighter that gave you a run for your money in the first few rounds completely lose his cool and make some really foolish mistakes as you slowly pick apart his game. Haymakers will be clumsily tossed around, and pretty soon your opponent is so winded that he can barely move about the ring, let alone actually hit you. It is here where you reap the benefits of your patience and finish the job the only way you know how: Pound him into the canvas until he stops getting back up. That’s not to say that the AI is stupid, though; your opponents will figure you out in a hurry if you fail to mix things up. The AI also seems to be quite good at detecting your frustration, and will not hesitate to move in and overwhelm you with punches if it catches you fumbling your fingers. You will engage in some pretty intense fights in Fight Night: Round 2, especially if you play on the hardest difficulty, which I highly recommend.
Another addition to this year’s version of Fight Night is the new cut man feature. In between each round, you will take control of the cut man where you try to move a little cursor along a moving graph with the analog stick to reduce swelling and stop bleeding. On the plus side, this shows your guy up close; watching him flinch and wince in pain as you start trying to mend his wounds are pretty funny, and if you don’t keep the swelling and bleeding down, the ref will call the fight. It’s also cool to be able to interact with your boxer that much more, but after a few days of playing, you get bored with it and just want to get onto the next round. I am not saying it shouldn’t be there, but the novelty certainly does wear off in a hurry.
The graphics in Fight Night: Round 2 are not too shabby. Muscles ripple, sweat pours, and blood drips and splashes just as it would in real life. You can tell a boxer is hurting just by looking at the expression on his swollen and bloody face. Each and every hit truly looks painful, and the replays after a knockdown are priceless. As mentioned earlier, you get a great up-close look at both you and your opponents face where damage is very easy to see in between each round: cuts bleed, faces swell, and it all looks very realistic. These things do come at a cost though, as the crowds watching the fights look awful, and the rest of the backgrounds don’t look a whole lot better.
The sound in Fight Night: Round 2, while a significant improvement over last year, still leaves a lot to be desired. What I have a really big problem with is that EA has taken licensed music in a game and screwed it up even worse than I previously thought was possible. While the music is admittedly fitting here, it never mixes things up; you hear the same song on startup almost every time. What’s even worse is that EA had to be its typical self and not bother to throw in the option to use custom soundtracks. It would have actually been really cool to be able to implement your own choice of music for your entrances, but alas, I am stuck with this drivel that comes with the game. On the plus side, Big Tigger and his inane ramblings are a thing of the past, and in his place comes an announcer that sounds like the real deal. Punches do a wonderful job of making each punch sound like it truly hurts as well. Basically, the sound is serviceable with the exception of the awful music.
As far as replay is concerned, Fight Night: Round 2 does what it needs to do, which, admittedly, is not a whole lot. The career mode works as it should: Once you climb to the very top, you are reduced to simply defending your title, which sort of eliminates all purpose for moving on. Once I had my fill of career mode, I began pitting my fighter against all of the boxing legends with the difficulty on Hard. Not long after that, I was putting Ali’s lights out in under three rounds on the hardest difficulty. Granted, I put a lot of hours into the game to get that good, but a harder difficulty would have been greatly appreciated. Once that’s all done, all that’s left is to challenge other human opponents, which is the best way to play this game in my opinion. All in all, it offers about as much replay value as is possible with a game that focuses on boxing, which isn’t a whole lot unless you have a steady supply of friends to play against.
So despite its flaws, I really enjoyed Fight Night: Round 2. EA has addressed some of my complaints from last year, and flat-out ignored others. The replay value is still rather limited, but what more do you expect from a boxing game? The controls are truly perfect for a boxing game; the mental aspects of boxing are well represented, and the character models look very good. All in all, a boxing fan could do no wrong in picking up Fight Night: Round 2. It’s a fantastic boxing game.
