Boxing and beauty are two words you don’t usually hear in the same sentence, but ironically EA’s Fight Night Round 3 takes its place immediately as one of the most visually stunning games to come out on any system. It’s a strange feeling to see a boxing game as the forerunner of a console generation’s might, but it does make sense from a technical standpoint as there are only two main characters on the screen for the hardware to throw its collective heft behind. Here, boxing is indeed beautiful, and while Fight Night Round 3 might be a pretty-boy game it has the game play muscle to squarely defend its title belt.
Unquestionably, the first thing most people will notice when they get a match going in FN3 is the absolutely beautiful lighting. Ranging from gauzy to glitzy depending on the arena, it approaches near-photorealism - illuminated dust particles hang suspended midair in a half-outdoor gym, sweat beads shine, and muscles glow.
"even the most jaded gamer’s jaw will drop a bit"
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Quite frankly, even the most jaded gamer’s jaw will drop a bit when they first get to play in a world with all this detail in real-time. The fighter models themselves are also exquisitely rendered, with well-realized musculatures that ripple and stretch realistically under skin so defined that the pores are visible. The only actual presentation element that doesn’t seem obviously "next-generation" is the animation, which doesn’t look a whole lot better than in previous installments. Still, it’s competent and functional, as the nature of a game with quick strikes and counters demands control and responsiveness over animation realism.
The game revels in its technical proficiency, and takes every available opportunity to flaunt it. Cut-scenes before and during the fight are set at close-up camera angles to maximize the detail of your fighter and his opponent. The slow-motion knockout blow scenes are grotesquely surreal, stretching out the precise moment of decisive pain to show the facial features of the victim sickeningly compress as a rope of bloodied spit trails out. After a while though, you’ll find yourself skipping over a lot of these extraneous scenes like the fight intros and the ring girls, no matter how visually appealing they all are. Yet even if it were stripped of its newfangled dazzle, FN3 still has its solid core: that kernel of near-perfect pugilism.
FN3 preserves the series’ outstanding control scheme, where you only need two triggers and the two analog sticks to perform almost all the moves in the game. That natural feeling of swaying behind a jab with the left trigger held down and then popping back and countering with a hook to the gut never gets old, and it feels even better with the 360’s control pad. As before, punch strength drains if you throw too many shots too close together, which encourages the player to select quality punches at moments of opportunity over wild abandon.
The control balance feels tightened up from last year’s version and most notably EA has tried to balance out the haymaker. Basically, if you whiff a haymaker, you’re in big trouble, as it will be almost a full three to five seconds before you recover. If you come out just tossing haphazard haymakers against any opponent that is at medium skill or higher, you’re in for a world of hurt, but the move still packs such a wallop that it’s hard to not keep going back to it. This year’s version adds the Flash KO and Stun Punch moves, which were intended to be change-of-momentum punches to score quick knockdowns. Given how many people consistently turn to these moves online, it might’ve been more fun if they left these out or restricted them to moments when the boxer’s health was low.
It’s a joy to apply real-world boxing strategy in this game. You can let your opponent tire himself out by focusing on defense in the early rounds and then retaliate on a full tank.
"It’s a joy to apply real-world boxing strategy in this game"
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You can take the wind out of a fast fighter’s sails by focusing on body blows, or you can just go Tyson on them all and try to knock the stuffing out of them right out of the gate. It’s all up to you, and if you have the right fighter for your strategy it has a good chance of working.
The showcase mode for FN3 is the Career Mode, where you create your own fighter and try to take him through the ranks to his weight class’ championship. The Player Creation Mode is a blast, offering especially detailed sculpting options for the facial features. Due to this version’s support for better variance of facial features, the many generated opponents you square off against in your career have a lot more individual personality as well. The cycle of the career mode sticks to signing contracts against opponents, training for the bout, and then actually fighting it. Unfortunately, the training mini-games are pretty much identical to the last installment’s training and it would’ve been nice to have some new variety here.
The rhythm of the mode gets repetitive quickly, as there’s initially little variance to the pummeling you dish out. Thankfully, almost at that exact moment, the game starts to become more difficult. Your opponents start to fight with much more savvy, as you’ll probably learn the hard way while picking yourself off the canvas.
"the visceral thrill of pursuit, dominance, and obliteration remains"
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Here the game becomes much more cerebral, and you’ll need to come up with strategies that work against your opponents’ strengths and weaknesses. No matter how many fights you work through, the visceral thrill of pursuit, dominance, and obliteration remains; the reliable rush of adrenaline you feel as your opponent crumples to the mat in shambles cements the replay value.
Online, the game is lag-free and runs well. As mentioned earlier, online players tend to mostly throw haymakers and special punches. A good player can still counter these one-note strategies, but a novice will find themselves on the mat within the first few opening seconds. Either way, it’s still not a whole lot of fun to participate in. Another drawback to this game is the crass commercialism that permeates it. Taken separately, whimsical corporate mascots may entertain and germane sports apparel brands might add authenticity, but do we really need a giant model of a pickup truck taking up half the background of an indoor boxing arena? Taken as a whole, the sheer mass of product placement tips the scales past the line of acceptability.
While there are certainly many elements repeated from the last version, FN3 on the 360 boasts drastic graphical improvement and fine tunes the already stellar controls and game play. It could be argued that this is the first title to appear on the Xbox 360 that definitively states that next-gen is here, and despite the incremental improvements, there is almost no question that this is also the pinnacle of this sport’s representation in videogame form.
Achievement Difficulty 
