Fight Night 2004 review

With a series of successful sports games under its belt, EA really has little need to innovate. It’s shown us that years of the same thing regurgitated and polished often makes just as much, if not more money than something new. So it comes as a surprise that their new boxing game, already loaded with its ‘2004’ in anticipation of future chart success and annual updates, features a fairly unique gameplay feature.

Which happens to be the total punch control system. Basically, the right analogue stick is used to directly control the path of your boxer’s fists. So pulling back and swinging it around to the right throws an uppercut and so forth.

Sucker punch

After a while it’s hard not to think that the new control system is just a gimmick, but with a bit of practice it does affect the pacing of the fights and especially makes two-player fights seem a lot more balanced and less reliant on clever tricks and memorised button combos.

Novices will have a very hard time at first. In fact just about everyone will find it hard going for the first few matches, but the advantage of the new system is that it makes everything direct and easy to understand, if not easy to master. The immediacy of the system makes it easy to tell what you might be doing wrong and for boxing beginners it even makes some of the intricacies of the sport easier to understand. You simply move your boxer’s fists to where they need to go, whether you’re blocking or punching.

Not just a pretty face (anymore)

Graphic quality is impressive, with the customisation options allowing for you to pretty much create any face that you want for your boxer and then watch it get covered in sweat, blood, lacerated, bruised and swollen as your fights go on. Sprays of sweat will fill the air and blood will arc from particularly heavy punches. For those you who don’t like boxing (why are you reading this review?) this game will only serve to reinforce that, as the violence is portrayed with gusto. For those into the atmosphere of the game, little touches like having to focus your double vision with the analogue sticks to avoid a knockout, delight and add to the whole hands-on experience.

The sounds go a long way to adding to a sort of cinematic boxing ambience. When a boxer gets close to being knocked out, all the commentary fades away to a heartbeat, and important knockouts get played back in slow motion, with all of the sound effects exaggerated the weight of each impact come across. The licensed hip-hop soundtrack, however, is simply a matter of personal taste. I liked one or two of the tracks (the Rocky theme adaptation was particularly appropriate) but your mileage may vary. Needless to say, they’re well produced, but P.Diddy’s in there, so don’t expect anything too edgy.

Cauliflower ear

The AI also manages to play a very convincing game for the most part, with the different celebrity boxers showing their own particular styles. It’s just a shame that all of the computer generated boxers are incredibly generic and easy to beat in comparison.

Surprisingly, for a game with such attention to finer details and apparent depth, the commentary gets a little flat and repetitive after awhile, even if it does have (perhaps because of) the EA Sports “attitude”. There are even a few cases of voice samples being a little too obviously joined together. But this is a just an annoyance in what will surely be a growing franchise.

The career options could have a bit more detail as well though, the chance to change weight classes doesn’t seem like it would have been too much of a stretch, but perhaps that’s just expecting too much of the usual EA polish on a title that’s only just starting on its feet.

A solid blow

Not unlike the FIFA series, which began as an awkward example of licensed sports gaming, the groundwork here has been laid for a solid contender to challenge all future boxing franchises. As the song goes, EA is “getting stronger”.