Kudo Tsunoda, I love you. You probably don't remember me, but you were the best part of having to do PR for 3DO. Now that you've moved on to bigger and better things (like, say, producing Fight Night), I no longer have to hide my admiration for your talents, and now that you're no longer working on Army Men games (even if Air Attack was surprisingly awesome), you can finally be proud of the stuff you're working on too.
Like, say, Fight Night Round 3, the game that started as a PS3 tech demo, bounced onto the Xbox 360 earlier this year, and then landed in its final form on the PS3.
Round 3 is the kind of game that both EA and Sony needed; it's a showcase of the system's power, it's addictive as hell -- even for newcomers like me -- and it's far, far deeper than first glance would reveal. EA still allows for button mashers to do their thing, but the wealth of options for customizing not only the look of your fighter, but how he fights makes for an experience that isn't really available anywhere else.
One of the plusses to not having played the Xbox 360 version (which was, admittedly, a voluntary decision), is that I saved both the whole next-gen punch (hurrrr, punny) and the core gameplay for the PS3 version. I tend to harp on the fact that I don't play sports games with just about every sports review, but here it's an especially important point because of the elation I've already exposed in the last two paragraphs; FNR2 delivers some of the most visceral, and deceptively complex gameplay available -- and for once it works it better on the PS3.
So yes, there's the extent of my next-gen comparisons.
I played both versions, and though the PS3 one is hitting far, far later than the 360 version, it's obvious the time spent learning the hardware went to good use. The lighting is better, the sweat (quickly becoming one of the next-gen trademarks) is better, and the tweaks make it different enough that the PS3 version feels like the superior one. So there, console warriors, you have your system vs.
system fodder.
Round 3 has the advantage of being a simple two-on-two competition. This means you can create your fighter, pick his weight class, go nuts on using analog choices for every part and position of the face, allocate skill points for things like the ability to suck up blows to the face and body, stamina for throwing punches, heart for making comebacks from the mat, strength, speed and agility, plus concentrate on overall build, and -- perhaps most importantly -- sculpting your fighting style.
Since I like to pretend I'm actually the impossibly awesome superstar athlete, I opted for a middleweight speed fighter, switching up the default stance and going for speed punches. As expected, there are the obvious speed/power trade-offs, but there's more to it.
See, at any time, you're more than welcome to change nearly everything about yourself up once you've set the main body type.
As you play through the game, you'll unlock particular boxing styles, and EA's stupidly deep customization options means that late in the game, you can start dropping serious coin to not only give yourself equipment that either bolsters existing strengths or offsets the weaknesses (the whole game, including the training bits I'll get to in a second, revolve around a give or take of working one set of skills while losing a chunk of others), but you can also mimic history's greatest fighting styles for things like signature punches and taunts. Hell, you can even pick your type of illegal blow if you like.
What this allows you to do is start out with the basics or even goof around with things until you really get the basic gist of things.
The controls, which I at first though I would hate due to the fact that I've been a button masher all my life (thanks, Punch-Out!) slowly exposed their deeper bits. Yes, you can use face buttons and a trigger for most of the bigger moves and just flight with the right analog stick for jabs and hooks, but learning how and when to throw haymarkers, or the new Stun Punches or a Flash KO move that shifts things into the new first-person viewpoint -- only you get to beat on the person at the receiving end.
Not only does Flash KO show you exactly how bad a swollen eye is for reacting to hard crosses, but it shows the immediate impact of the jab, and it completely changed how I used the move both offensively and defensively.
All this stuff is good at the start of the game when you can literally just slam the right analog stick and pummel your way to victory, but later in the game, you'll actually have to learn how to defend yourself, and it's here that the game gets exceptionally strategic and far deeper than just skimming things would make clear. Holding L1 lets you pitch you body forward and back and left and right to avoid those surprisingly effective jabs, but they also let you rock body blows on defense (useful for wearing down a really fast fighter and taking the sting out of more powerful opponents if you can sneak the shots in).
Holding R1 lets you block high or low, but if you tweak the right analog stick to the left or right, you can parry attacks; the harder the hit was going to be, the bigger your window to return the hurt.
Though it sounds like a lot to juggle, it really just comes down to using a whopping three inputs if you're a purist. Sure, you can switch stances with the L2 button or pull off a quick haymarker with R2, but the latter doesn't let you control the punch, and using the face buttons is the same thing.
Hell, even intentional illegal hits -- which can quickly end a game -- can be done with a thrust of the SIXAXIS. No, the strategy here is in blocking, dodging, parrying and sapping the strength of the other guys in a long-haul race for the win.
This is the depth of Round 3, and it's only made deeper by the inclusion of new blocking styles that trade damage control for speed of recovery, or going back and tweaking your style once you have things down.
This is especially important online because the game is fairly good at throwing you into matchups (though record seems to play no place in actually pairing fighters up). Predicting how a person fights by eyeing their stats (and after-bout fight stats can even be sent to your e-mail if you'd like) is the key to upper-level play, and again, it just dives one level deeper into a game that 5 minutes in felt fairly shallow.
The online experience, though not especially contributive to gameplay, is helped by the integration of some extremely cool ESPN integration.
Though it's buried under the online modes -- and even then takes a while to find -- you can log in and listen to pre-recorded ESPN Radio or SportsCenter segments or the godawfully downscaled ESPN Motion video clips. The list is refreshed fairly often, but the fact that you can kill the menu music and the whole eight or so longs in the soundtrack for something live is genius. I just wish accessing it were more intuitive and that ESPN Motion wasn't more or less worthless video window-wise.
The PlayStation Network is already a broadband-oriented system, why not actually take advantage of it with -- I dunno -- broadband-quality (and size) clips. It's not like they're that long to begin with.
If the single-player game can be faulted anywhere, it's where the multiplayer picks up for the most part, and that's simply in how mindlessly repetitive it all is.
Playing online is actually rather cool in that you gain experience as you fight and level up (which is how the game auto-matchmakes you, though you can challenge higher-ranked players for more experience). For RPG nuts, it's hopelessly addictive, but in the offline game, there game never really feels like it steps up on the default difficulty. That's not to say it can't be incredibly frustrating, but for the most part that's because it feels like the game reads you as you're pressing buttons, though that could easily have been my inexperience.
Either way, it still felt like a pretty horizontal progression to all but the last couple sponsored fights.
That is how the single-player game works, by the way: sponsorships. Brands all up in your ass the whole way through.
It's not a huge deal most of the time; Everlast and Under Armor and even EA Sports are cool, but Dodge and Burger King need to step the F out my pugilistic fantasies. Again, though, it's not so much the title (which sets you up against legends and gets you some of their gear and a sponsor package for playing dress-up with some skill-boosting threads later on), it's just that the single-player game is more or less the whole thing the whole way through. Yes, sure, you can hire trainers that will help quell any degradation in strength if you decide to speed train and so on, but still.
At least, if nothing else, the training games are fun -- if quite limited in scope. You have a weight lifting bit where you hold up on alternating analog sticks without going over, a Simon Says-style memorization game where you lay into a torso in pre-set patterns, and just wailing into the upper and lower portions of a punching bag. There's always the option to train automatically, but it won't yield nearly the same results as doing it all yourself and you'll suffer the same sapping of the other skills.
The idea is that you work particular skills before a fight but after signing a contract and using the game's scouting report to see what kind of stats they have. You can pay some trainers to reduce or eliminate the offset, but it's still not a perfect trade-off.
The beauty of the game is that all types of boxers -- even virtual ones -- are given their dues; the guys that love to bulk up and improve their ability to suck up hits to the face and body can rock it as pure power brawlers or even inside fighters, while more strategic players can pour stat boosts into improving speed and just milking parries and tons of jabs.
Later on, though, it's rare that you'll run into clear-cut examples of a particular boxer, leading to swarmers or boxers that favor the outside for the most part but don't mind charging in as fatigue sets in. Online, it's even more interesting, and thanks to the depth of options in parries and blocks and styles, you never really know how someone is going to play other than looking at their career stats and seeing who they pick as a boxer.
Much has been made of the game's visuals, and it's easy to see why: this is easily EA's purest next-gen effort on the PlayStation 3 from a graphics standpoint.
The texture detail is fantastic, whether from the satin sheen of crumpled shorts to the sweat that rolls down the bodies of the boxers to the now-infamous slo-mo replays of mat-flattening hits that cause ripples in the cheeks from the impact of the big hit. These are, unequivocally, some of the most impressive graphics displays ever seen in a game, and little effects like flitting bits of dust in the air or the blown-out light searing its way into the warehouse level are testaments to the visual prowess of the PS3.
It's not all perfect, though; the roping effect of saliva and blood that spurts from a particularly long hit still doesn't look quite right, and more distractingly, from the moment gravity (and ragdoll physics) catch a falling boxer, things go to crap.
Too often, big hits are delivered up against the ropes, and seeing bodies that formerly moved with grace and realism tweak out as they bounce off the ropes and they spaz out on the ground sort of ruins the hell yeah! moment of delivering a huge hit. Worse, there are times when a gloved fist will pass completely through a face or neck and shoulders during a replay.
Granted, this is a first-gen PS3 game, but it's yet again another one of those things that pulls you out of the game.
Another is just that you'll hear the same handful of tracks over and over and oooover again. If you take the time to sign onto the online network, you can pull down the latest ESPN pre-recorded bits (and they are impressively lengthy), but that doesn't dispel the fact that you'll likely end up killing the soundtrack halfway through your career.
Likewise for the commentary, which is absolutely painfully stunted in the way of variety. It's possible to play three different fights and hear multiple regurgitated sound bytes in completely different situations.
Now granted, no amount of pre-recording will match the kind of play-by-play that you would catch in a real boxing match, but all it takes is spamming a bunch of quick R2 insta-haymakers to your opponent's gut for 30 seconds to exhaust about 75% of the comments for things.
Luckily, the effects that count are fantastic. Punches land with the kind of smacks and thwips and crunches that you pray for a in a game, and the advantage of Dolby Digital actually comes in handy when the creak of the ropes is up behind you (particularly in the first-person Get in the Ring Mode).
Round 3 is easily one of the PlayStation 3's strongest titles.
Never mind the fact that it was one of the 360's strongest titles when it originally came out, there's enough here to warrant at the very least a rental, and, if you don't have a 360, a definitely purchase. I can't hammer home enough the point that though this is very much a sports sim, it's still both accessible and deep enough that neither the casual nor hardcore crowds will be dissuaded. It's easily one of the PS3's strongest titles, and one of those games that you'll be able to bust out for months to come to show off the PS3 -- at least until Round 4 hits.
Now stop reading and go check it out.
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