792nd played so far
Genre: Fighting
Platform: Xbox 360
Year of Release: 2006
Developer: EA Chicago
Publisher: EA Sports
Oh man. I’ve never really gotten into fighting sports either, and while they’re okay games, the franchise based stuff doesn’t work as well for me – like sports, they can try to be too accurate, rely on previous knowledge and don’t really offer anything more fun. I’m expecting something like WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2010, where I don’t quite get it, especially as EA Sports other games don’t quite get me in the loop either.
Our Thoughts
Here’s one solution to the struggle with a tutorial system: there’s no real tutorial, so you get to figure it out as you go along. It’s probably just as well, the system starts to feel comfortable and natural quite quickly. I’m fairly sure there are a bunch of subtleties I missed, but it felt playable for the most part. I didn’t figure out the blocking as easier though – perhaps never quite did that, but I did well enough for a while to get some distance into career mode. It’s a steep learning curve throughout, but the game adjusts for that well enough.
I mean, I’m not into boxing, so my attention was limited when I started to struggle, but that took quite a bit longer than I expected and it felt good to get some results. It’s helped by some good graphics and animation – some of which also felt quite graphic, adding to the realism. It’s probably not to my long term taste, but it felt right.
Final Thoughts
Fight Night Round 3 does quite wel as a real life based fighter. It was accessible enough to get me in and provided enough to keep my attention for a while, realistic but not too much, which is what worked well enough. Will I get back to it? Probably not, but I’m glad I had the experience.