So, you couldn’t get an Xbox 360. You’re kinda bummed out that you didn’t get a chance to play that next-gen experience quite yet, especially after seeing that 360 demo being played at a store or at your friend’s house, but you’re fiending for EA boxing action. Don’t worry. Don’t panic. The current-gen versions of Fight Night Round 3 might not be as pretty as the 360 game, but there’s still plenty for fans of the sweet science to enjoy.

The best way to describe Round 3 is that it feels like a hybrid of the best parts of the previous game. The first title was an amazing debut, hobbled only by poor presentation and the inability to clinch or move while blocking. Round 2 fixed both of those problems, while inadvertently creating a few of its own, mainly in the Haymaker system, which ruined the online experience to the point where producer Kudo Tsunoda couldn’t even get online without getting haymaker’ed to death by players who were obviously bigger fans of fighting games than boxing. In that sense, Round 3 feels significantly more like a boxing game than its predecessors.

Visually, the game is certainly not next-gen, but it’s still a great-looking game. The character polygons are more detailed than before on each boxer, and, oddly, it seemed as though Round 2 epitomized how good boxers could look on Xbox and PS2. Round 3 captures details even more strongly in the faces of its boxers. B-Hop looks even more like himself than he did when he was the cover star of the last game. For Oscar De La Hoya’s Fight Night debut, he gets a detailed rendition that’s far more accurate than any depictions of him in Knockout Kings.


The crowds are still fairly flat and two-dimensional and aren’t as lively as next-gen, but that’s the difference that separates less than six month old technology from nearly five year old technology. Nevertheless, the arenas look rather detailed for what they are and look quite good for an PS2 game. Also, the renditions of the ring girls look excellent compared to past games, as their movements and animations are light years away from Fight Night 2004’s ring girls, who were the same character with different outfits and skin tones. All around, Fight Night Round 3 looks a lot better than the other two games in regards to what EA Chicago could visually squeeze out of aging hardware.

Other small and impressive touches include the ESPN Classic mode, in which legendary bouts are re-enacted; visually, the Robinson/LaMotta rivalry looks phenomenal, even in black and white, a nod to both classic boxing and Scorsese.

Acoustically speaking, it’s a satisfactory experience, regardless of whether you’re playing it on Xbox 360, Xbox, or PS2. The sound of a man’s face being shattered by a flying fist has seldom sounded as good as it does in Round 3. Hard hits will work out any good subwoofer on a home theater system. The music selection is a little sweet and sour, however. There are banging hip-hop tracks by artists like Atmosphere and Obie Trice, but they’ve removed some of the Latino flavor from Round 2’s soundtrack, which is unfortunate as it’s doubtful that most of the Mexican boxers would come out to the ring to underground hip-hop tunes instead of a more traditional sound.

Gameplay is where Round 3 truly shines. Don’t let the pretty face of the game lull you into thinking that it’s all glitz; it’s far from it. One of the best things about Round 3 is the way that EA Chicago has fine-tuned the controls. The Haymaker punch, a well-intended feature added to Round 2 which created wildly imbalanced matches that felt less like real boxing and more like a modified fighting game, has been reigned in by slower animation. Power punching, which has always been slightly telegraphed, is even moreso now to keep things even-handed.


New to the power-punching arsenal are the Flash KO and the Stun Punch. The Stun Punch takes gameplay into first-person mode and puts the recipient into first person perspective. It’s a definite challenge to survive, but with proper countering and parrying, a victim can turn things around and prey on an opponent. The Flash KO is the sort of one-punch knockdown that was rarer to see in the last game. Even harder to pull off and slower moving than a Haymaker, the Flash KO gives a battered player a last ditch effort to turn around the momentum of a fight. And it’s pretty damn useful as an "In Case of Emergency, Break Glass" move.

The already-tight defensive system has gotten a better boost due to what seems to be a throwback to FN 04’s emphasis on leaning instead of just countering. It feels easier and more possible for a capable player to pull off Ali’s Rope-a-Dope style or the Philly Shell maneuver than before. Countering still feels intuitive and right, too. Fight Night has always been a series that emphasized sticking and moving more than a mutual punching out of one another’s lights, and the tweaked leaning makes that even more possible within a fight than before.

Career mode, if not excellent, is at least solid. Players familiar to the franchise will breeze through the training minigames in their quest to take titles. New to the game is the trash-talking press conference brawl minigame, although it’s a bit more of a novelty than anything really badass. Again, it’s not awful, but it’s not going to steer anyone away from Fight Night’s incredible multiplayer experience outside of unlocking items, venues, and ESPN Classic grudge bouts. Plus, in order to get a real challenge, players are going to have to crank up the difficulty. Hard Mode, while concussion-inducing to play at first, gives players a real taste of the unleashed and unrestrained fighting styles of the boxers. A match with Roy Jones, Jr. reveals his trademark leans and jabbing style. A match with Marvelous Marvin Hagler left me with a sixty year old alcoholic’s liver after taking several hard shots.

PS2’s online multiplayer is completely unacceptable. Ridden with laggy games and the sort of cheapness in opponents that has plagued Sony’s laissez-faire approach to online gaming since the beginning of PS2 online, it’s fairly awful in comparison to Xbox Live’s only slightly flawed approach. An experience that can only be compared to watching a slideshow of sports highlights, the lag levels on the PS2 game were nonstop on every bout boxed.



From the time players get online through EA Nation and endure a lengthy ordeal of registrations, and the pay-to-play approach (or be forced to endure advertising offers from ESPN) that hurts all of their sports games, PS2’s Round 3 online game is a shadow of its console cousins, which is a shame considering that Fight Night 2004 on PS2 dominated the two versions in part thanks to online play. Throw in the same flaws that help prevent the Microsoft versions from nearing perfection and heap on more issues, and you’ve got a mess of an online game.

If you’ve got the choice between PS2 and Xbox and you want to go online, by all means, take this one to Xbox Live. Just because PS2 online is free doesn’t mean that you’re not being taxed in regard to your free time and sanity.

In conclusion, Fight Night Round 3 still reigns supreme as the best boxing game around. The gameplay is far more balanced than the previous two games, and the graphics are excellent for current-gen and have more detail than their predecessors. All is far from perfect, however. The career mode still leaves much to be desired, and the soundtrack, while good, could’ve used a little more genre diversity. Online multiplayer, the meat of the Fight Night experience, is a bit flawed on Xbox, which lacks more matchmaking options, such as controller configurations (Total Punch Control vs. Button Mashing is the new Pirates vs. Ninjas ’06), and is a little laggy. PS2 online has all of the aforementioned flaws and is an overall nightmarish experience to be avoided at all costs. Fight Night Round 3 might not look as good as the 360 on current gen, but it’s still an decent game regardless.