Fight Night Round 4

[Acert93]

They said the full version would have a variety of angles to play from, but I doubt they have a first person view.

That is too bad

The demo is ok, but without online play and no way to test button-based gameplay I am not too sure I will jump on this one. I wasn't so hip on using the stick... I kept trying to do a right jab and doing lefts... I am unsure how much practice it would take just to get the boxer to do what I want, let alone begin strategically doing combos to maximize such.

 

[Scott_Arm]

That is too bad

The demo is ok, but without online play and no way to test button-based gameplay I am not too sure I will jump on this one. I wasn't so hip on using the stick... I kept trying to do a right jab and doing lefts... I am unsure how much practice it would take just to get the boxer to do what I want, let alone begin strategically doing combos to maximize such.

There will not be any button controls for punching in the retail game. It don't think it took me long to learn the stick control, but to me learning was part of the fun of the game. It was a game where you had to master the controls to be really good at it.

 

[Tap In]

oddly, for ME, the one thng that I really liked about the demo was I like the stick controls.

I like how Ea has moved to stick control in several of its sports games and to me it's a good move.

Less button mashing less moving your hand off the stick. I like it a lot.

 

[wco81]

So EA showed a demo of FN4 at their E3 press conference.

Looked nice, 60 fps vs. 30 fps in FN3.

They talked about physics differentiating between glancing blows vs. square hits.

WHen they demo'd FN3 back in 2005, they showcased the next-gen Criterion engine, IIRC. They had recently acquired Criterion.

Any idea what they're using now? FN3, didn't seem very responsive to me but then I never got good at it so it might have been that I was getting pummeled too much to throw effective jabs.

Certainly the demo looked far more responsive than any other EA Sports game. Hard to imagine FN could use canned mocap animations like their other games and be as responsive as the demo appeared.

Seems like the rendering of the impact of the blows and the "skinning" or rippling of muscles on the boxers' bodies in response to their motions seem more real-time than mocap.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I haven't posted in this thread in a while!

http://blog.fightnight.easports.com/archive/2009/06/16/r-e-a-l-ai-in-fight-night-round-4.aspx

Check out this image of Mike Tyson's "AI Brain" ...

http://blog.fightnight.easports.com...mponents.UserFiles/00.00.00.21.08/pattern.jpg

I wanted to embed the image, but I don't know how to resize it using the tag.

I guess this is some kind of state machine representation where all of the states are on the outside of the circle? I'm not really sure, but it looks fancy so that must mean the AI is good, right?

I've been playing the crap out of the demo, if anyone on my friends list has noticed. Hopefully that means I'll actually be good at the game and can play on the "greatest of all time" difficulty level.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Oh, and legacy mode sounds good. There are 50 ranked fighters in each division. You schedule your own fights and your own training schedule on a calendar. You can pick which real boxers you want in your legacy mode. As you meat specific goals you move from "Bum" to "All-time great" or something. That's how you build your legacy. If you keep losing too much, you'll drop to "Bum" and your trainer may force you to retire. There are three titles in each weight division, and you can move up and down in the divisions, I think. Boxers are much more customizable than before.

 

[I.S.T.]

AI Brian?

 

[Scott_Arm]

AI Brian?

You know Brian, don't you?

 

[I.S.T.]

You know Brian, don't you?

I know the adventures of his life.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Ooooh, a Monty Python boxing game?

Regards,
SB

 

[Arwin]

Ooooh, a Monty Python boxing game?

Regards,
SB

I'm suddently thinking that a Monty Python game could make a great showcase for the PS3 new motion controller ... it has bow and arrow shooting, you could imitate horse hooves with coconut shells, throw rocks with some stoning, hack up wedding guests with a sword, etc.!

 

[Scott_Arm]

About half the achievements are EASY. My gamerscore was almost 500 after an hour of play.

The game photo face didn't work well for me. I was able to tweak the face and get it lookin' pretty close to me, but for some reason the face looks different in game. I started a career and my guy has a massive underbite, which he does not have if I edit the character in the boxer gallery.

Gameplay is good. I wish the counter windows had been shortened even more. The different fighting styles look great. Some of the new training modes are pretty good, but some are pretty hard. Legacy mode seems to be pretty well featured. I like the calendar.

I've done three online matches. Two were unranked with created fighters, and I won both. Then I did one of those world championship online fights. In that mode, you use created fighters only, but you all have the same stats. I couldn't tell if it equalized height and reach. Fighting styles seemed to make a difference in terms of hand speed and blocking etc. I think with such equal stats, speed will win out. You can't make a one-shot bruiser, really.

My experience in the online champ mode was so-so. The guy was a jab spammer, and at first I was dominating the fight, with my opponent landing the occasional stunning counter punch. The counter window is too big. He was good at timing the bob and weave moves, and would slip my punch leaving a huge window to land a haymaker. I adjusted and was able to keep the lead, and then he started the old "signature punch spamming" that everyone hated about Round 3. Basically, you walk the same speed going forwards as backwards, so I'd try to walk him down, but he'd just throw his leaping signature hook. I blocked some of them, but enough landed and they seemed to do insane damage. Not impressed. Anyway, he eventually scored a flash knockdown on me using one of those punches, and I think he got cocky. He came in and tried to finish me off, but I outboxed him and knocked him down three times that same round. If he'd stuck with the signature spam, he would have won.

 

[RobertR1]

I quite happy with the game and while I was protesting the lack of face buttons for punching for a while, after a few hours, I'm starting to feel a lot better with the analogue stick controls. This game is certainly a major step up from FNR3 in terms or gameplay and depth. The 60fps really smooths things out. The CPU is quite intellingent and adaptive this time around. I have to be honest. Nothing more scary than Tyson CPU on a G.O.A.T setting slipping your punches and getting inside.

It's not perfect by any means as it'd be very difficult to perfect the "sweet science" via a controller and game but the game certainly goes a long way to getting there from FNR3.

I haven't tried online but being what it is, people will find exploits and such over time and online will eventually degrade to a spam fest. I don't really care as I bought the game for offline mainly (only with people I know).

 

[Scott_Arm]

I'll probably play online only with people I know. I think I'll skip the online championship thing, except maybe to do it enough to get the few attainable achievements.

The fighting is definitely much much better than Round 3. If you play on the Champion difficulty, be prepared to get stunned a lot. I have no idea what kind of masochist wants to play on the G.O.A.T. setting ... Actually, I probably will once I've got things mastered a bit more.

I'm still wrestling with the fighting style for my guy. I'm trying to find what suits the way I play. I think I'm going to switch my guy back to fast punches, rather than balanced. There isn't enough detail about how the different stances change the way you fight other than the slight changes in stats. Maybe they don't change anything else?

 

[RobertR1]

With my heavyweight who was setup for speed, I noticed that I can pull off a jab or double jab, right hook to the body and right uppercut on the computer routinely. Then spet out jabbing. Seems to keep the computer off balance. I need to get better at throwing left hooks/uppercuts now. Got the right side stuff down pretty well. I'm not sadist enough to try GOAT difficulty for career!

Speed seems to be key in this game.

 

[Acert93]

Debating... I was dissappointed with my ability to use the punch stick as well as weaving, but it looks like it is the first boxing game that really captures the essense of style. 60fps and physics based on that. I guess it depends how big the crew will be.

 

[Delta9]

Debating... I was dissappointed with my ability to use the punch stick as well as weaving, but it looks like it is the first boxing game that really captures the essense of style. 60fps and physics based on that. I guess it depends how big the crew will be.

I would not get this game.The stick is so bad and I can't imagine the controller would last very long when thats the only thing used.

My score of this game is a 5-6
Just about every gameplay part is downright terrible IMHO.

 

[Teasy]

Its nothing short of amazing to me that they've removed the option of button punches. I mean I can understand they wanted to try to make the game more technical by making punches slightly harder to throw, however there are other ways to do that. For instance they could have removed the button repeat function that allowed the player to throw punch after punch by just holding down a button. Remove that function and set stick control as default and they would have gone a long way to their goal without removing the pick up and play element of the game. Instead they've alienated the majority of gamers out there, absolutely crazy decision IMO which guarentee's the game won't be the sales success it could have been.

I'll give the stick controls another go, but at the moment I fully expect that I'll end up returning it.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I wish they'd kept the buttons. I don't use them, and probably wouldn't even if they were an option, but there seem to be a lot of people that are very upset about the switch. The game is incredibly good, the best yet in the series. It should be a huge success, but the lack of buttons may hold it back. They did say on the forum that they're now looking into a button control scheme after months and months of saying they wouldn't.

 

[Arwin]

Pretty impressed with the demo of this game. I personally think that the stick controls are a very good idea, and I also think it's a very good idea to leave the button controls out. The stick controls work, and they make controlling your fighter more realistic. Mixing the control schemes could seriously mess-up the online play too - hopefully they also add an option that you can only fight people using the same control scheme.

I still really, really wish that on the PS3 you could do the weaving/upper body movement with the sixaxis. It's such a missed opportunity!