Played on:
PS3
It's been almost a year since Fight Night Round 3 was released to critical acclaim on the Xbox 360, so it's curious to me that EA would wait this long and then deliver the same game again. But here it is: it's got all the hard-hitting punches and great boxing action of the 360 version. While this port is still excellent, what little the PS3 version adds isn't quite enough to make up for what we lose in the rush EA had to go through to deliver this for the PS3's launch.
EA Sports' Fight Night Round 3 brings in dozens of real world-class boxers from around the world, from all weight classes, and from present and past eras to duke it out in the ring. If you're not happy with playing as a past or current boxing champ, you can start a career and make your own boxer, creating and sculpting his face as well as his height, weight, and muscle tone. As your fledgling boxer crawls up through the amateur ranks and finally into the pros, you will lose the headgear and have to start working, in-between rounds, on the swelling and cuts that your boxer develops during the fight. If you put too many points into speed or stamina instead of your Cuts rating, then you'll find that you'll be working very hard between rounds.
All of this is brought together with an excellent control scheme that translates well onto the PS3. You move with the left stick, and if you hold the L1 button, the left stick will lean you around - forwards for body punches, backwards to avoid incoming face punches, and to the side to trip up your opponent's strategy. The right stick controls all of your punching, as you "swing" it around in various ways for jabs, straights, hooks, uppercuts, and haymaker punches. Hold the R1 button and move the right stick, and you'll protect yourself in one of four "quadrants" - face or body, left side or right side.
I always found that the Total Punch Control system, unique to Fight Night, was difficult to work with. From a game design standpoint, I don't see why the only way to stop the game from being a button-masher is to stop people from pressing buttons to punch. There are plenty of ways to make those who use strategy and rhythm win in a fight without having to come up with wonky stick-only controls. At least EA still allows other configurations, including the ability to put the basic punches on the face buttons (my favorite is Config 3). This makes it easier to get a rhythm going for short punch combos, but it doesn't allow the game to devolve into the ridiculous drunken-party-game antics that many past boxing games turned into.
Combining defense with offense is crucial in Fight Night Round 3. Unlike in real boxing, you can't simultaneously defend yourself with one glove while punching with another, so you'll need to punch carefully. If you keep trading your jabs for your opponent's hooks and uppercuts, you'll find yourself on the mat pretty early on.
Most of my gameplay frustrations associated with the Xbox 360 original are still here on the PS3; the training mini-games are terrible and don't actually teach you how to box, while the massively powerful haymakers and KO punches are still a bit too crucial to winning for my tastes. Finally, the product placement is just too in-your-face here. Between the Dodge Calibur, Everlast sports equipment, and Burger King, the game's just loaded with promotion. But that would be fine with me, except that they also got the announcer, Joe Tessitore, to actually throw in quips at the start of some fights about the companies. Putting the logos on the ring, in banners, and even having them "sponsor" some fights is tolerable, but having to hear the announcer shill this stuff on top of everything else is just one step too far for me.
Speaking of the announcer, it's still my opinion that good boxing commentary needs to come from two people, not just one - and while Tessitore does a decent job, some of his catchphrases ("And the ones you don't see always hurt the most!", "It's like he knows what his opponent's gonna throw before he throws it!") start to really grate after a few hours. For the next Fight Night, I hope they give him an even larger vocabulary along with someone else to commentate with.
