Fight Night Round 3 – PSP – Review

The song
intones that “with a left and a right” your opponent goes “night, night.” Yep,
that about sums it up … sort of. There is a lot more to Fight Night Round 3 on
the PSP, a release from EA Sports.

Up front,
for those who read the preview of this title, you will note many similarities.
The reason? The same disk was authorized by EA for the review of the game, as
well as the preview. The game didn’t change, nor did the way it was played.

Fight Night
Round 3 is very much a reflexive exercise, although with some suspect AI at the
easier difficulty levels, you can just go into a crouch, wait for your foe to
wade in and then throw a few stinging haymakers or uppercuts to the solar
plexus. That not only knocks the stuffing out of their stamina, but provides
some major damage to their health meter. They will back off, and if you wait,
they will walk back in.

Good thing
that in the multiplayer, your human counterparts are not that silly. They also
have a tendency to “find” you with solid blows when you are in that crouched
stance. Players have two bars to pay attention to – the health and energy bar.
Deplete the first and you will drop quickly, and may not recover. Deplete the
latter and you just have to get some spacing from your foe to regenerate it –
although the area that can regenerate will downsize the longer the fight goes
on.

There are
several modes of play, including the Play Now (instant fights), Rival Challenges
(in which you get to repeat history or even change it in classic rivalry fights,
beginning with Ali versus Frazier), and a two-mode tab called Game Modes (broken
down into Career and Hard Hits – the latter is a fight based on knockdowns, not
time). Multiplayer features both Ad hoc and Infrastructure, and there is even a
function that allows you to go into EA Pocket Trax to shuffle the song list or
remove some of the 12 mostly-hip-hop tunes that are featured.

As for the
music, at first it was a minor distraction, but the more the tunes played, the
more they ingrained themselves into the subconscious. Not certain if this was a
good thing or not. Most of the lyrical content has to do with ownership,
presumably in the fight ring, but are reasonably catchy. Which is a good thing,
because you can adopt one as your theme for the pre-fight introductions.

Ok, those
introductions are all CGI and after seeing one for three-four times, you can
just as easily bypass them and get right to the meat and potatoes of this title,
the fights themselves.

You can
create your own fighter, work through the rankings beginning at the amateur
level and move up to vie for a world title and the big paydays. The opponent you
defeat for the amateur title will vow his revenge and follow you into the pros,
jumping weight classes if you do. About the only good thing that comes of the
rival fight is that you get a better split of the purse. When you are fighting
ranked opponents, if you carry the lower ranking, you will get a lesser
percentage of the purse. And, of course, you have to pay the promoters, the
trainer and the cut man from your percentage. Your earnings, though, are used to
upgrade your equipment, or buy signature moves. The equipment can carry buffs to
your attributes, which you can also increase through pre-fight training.

The Create
Champ options are varied and quite good, allowing players to customize the
appearance of their fighter. You can manipulate various aspects of the head, and
pick the weight class and body appearance.

Essentially
the way the career mode works is you are given a selection of potential fights
to pick from, each with a payday and each allows you to scout would-be foes.
Once you sign the contract for the fight, you go to training. There are three
styles of training, which are linked to intensity – normal yields the lowest
results, confident will give better results but there is a chance of injury and
aggressive carries the best chance for top results, but the injury risk goes way
up. You can focus training in three areas, as well – balanced, power and speed.

Once
training is complete you climb into the ring. There are several ways to set up
the controls. The default will have the hot keys controlling punch locations
with the analog stick in charge of the fighter movement. The D-pad will allow
for the special punch (like a wind-up haymaker), taunt, clinch or illegal blow.
The left shoulder trigger is for leaning and body shots and the right controls
blocking.


Meet Bernard – Bernard is a glutton for
punishment, and will likely get his fill this fight.

The default
camera angle is ringside, keeping the fighters in profile.

For a
handheld device the action is very solid and the venues are well done. From the
dingy rings in Lower Flushing to fairgrounds in Idaho, and some of the nicer
arenas as you move up in the rankings, the game does sport a nice backdrop to
the action. Some of the actions and animations can be a little cheesy – in
reference to the fighter standing over a downed opponent, and there is some
repetition in the corner chat between rounds, but these are all easily
overlooked. There are also a few clipping problems, but again, this is no big
deal.

Players may
enjoy the challenges of looking for the openings in their opponent’s defense and
the tapping in a jab to alter the stance, and combining it with hooks to the
body, or vicious uppercuts. Stagger your opponent and he can go down at any
time. He will usually rise before the 10 count if early in the fight, and from a
bar that was bottomed out, he will regain health, but is susceptible to more
devastating barrages. There is a problem here in that your opponent can get up
and start to regenerate health. You can step in and nail him with a few good
shots but rather than start his health bar on a downward spiral, instead it just
momentarily seems to stop it from replenishing.

If you wear
out your own energy and then stun your opponent, you may not have enough gas in
the tank for a finishing barrage.

Also, you
will have the opportunity to take on fights that automatically change your
weight classification, so it is best to read the fine print for each fight.
While you can win the title in one class and then step up, to retain both belts
you have to fight ranked opponents once every 52 weeks. The only problem with
this can be that as you switch weight classes, you lose attribute points. For
example, you may have your power almost maxed, then step up in weight class for
a ranked fight and suddenly lose 17% of your power base – meaning you have to
concentrate all over again on that aspect. And then if you go back down to
defend a title, you lose more attribute points. It can become a bothersome
exercise.

However, in
spite of some of the minor frustrations, Fight Night Round 3 is a solid and
challenging PSP title, sporting great sound and nice graphics.


Review Scoring Details

for Fight Night Round 3

Gameplay:
8.0
The fights can
end quickly and you are left with more load time than game time – not often
though. The controls are simply to use and integrate the mechanics of the game
with the platform nicely. The game is not overly deep, but makes for a nice
portable experience

Graphics:
8.4
Nothing too
flashy here, but really serviceable. The animations are fluid and while you may
see a bit of a delay in going from the head to the body with blows, or
vice-versa, the animations work well in concert with the control input.

Sound:
8.0
The musical score
can be repetitious, but the tunes are solid and appropriate. The announcer
suffers from the same repetitive phraseology but does a good job. The fight
sounds are also redundant with the boxer growling each time he throws a telling
blow.


Difficulty: Medium
There are
different difficulty modes and the challenge ramps up accordingly.

Concept:
8.2
The AI can be
suspect at the lower settings and if you aspire to hold several belts at once
you will be in a rut of losing stats and regaining them to fight each foe.


Multiplayer: 8.0
Finding an online
opponent, at this stage, is tough because of the newness of the release. But
while the AI is decent – at times – fighting a human foe that can adjust to your
attacks is much better.

Overall:
8.2
Some of the
fights, especially early on in your career, are over with in less time than it
takes to load the bout. But that aside, this is a title that is fun and
addictive. Particularly enjoyable is the way you can manage your career up the
ladder – even though your rival does not seem to progress at the same pacing.
While Fight Night Round 3 is not a perfect fight, it does present a nice jab
combo in the entertainment department and is a worthy contender for the
attention of handheld fight fans.