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Knockout

Customer Rating:
Great series just got better. They still need to even the odds a bit better but still very fun. Online can be organized better and should allow you to play with friends online easier. It's a pain to put a quick match and cancel until you find your friend.

I sent it back almost immediately! Love Fight Night Round 3 though!

Customer Rating:
There I was loving Fight Night Round 3 thinking I'd like to play the next game as well and compare it to this game. So, I bought Fight Night Round 4 for PS3. I already had Fight Night 2004, Fight Night Round 2, Knock Out Kings 2001 for PS2. I enjoy the genre over-all. But this comes down to configurations. You train your brain for one of the configs and if that one isn't available on the next generation game it makes no sense whatsoever. There were many aspects of this game that I didn't like. But over all, it was a clumsy very very slow learning curve of a game and I decided to send it back for a 50% credit with Amazon.com They deserve a 5 for their refund based on my previous assessment of the game. (As always) If you're thinking about Fight Night Round 4 you'd do better to rent it first and see what I learned in one evening myself. Some games just don't "click" and this is one of them. For me, Career Mode is one of the more fun aspects of FNR3. And FNR4's career mode was very confusing and left something to be desired. Goose egg!!

Broken Legacy

Customer Rating:
I really enjoyed playing this game in Legacy mode for about the first 40 fights. I was an undefeated Middleweight champion who moved up in weight class to Light Heavyweight and won the titles in that division as well. Life as a virtual boxer was candy and ninjas. But then everything became frustratingly tedious.

It's more than 30 fights later and I still haven't gotten the go ahead from my trainers to move up to heavyweight and face new opposition. I am 72-0 with 70 KOs. I am the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world. I have achieved the "The Greatest of All Time" label. And yet I am stuck beating down the same challengers at light heavy again and again. What's worse is that trouncing all the top monkeys multiple times by KO doesn't seem to have much effect on the rankings. I've KOd this poor bastard Cyril Gibson 9 times and inexplicably he has maintained the No. 1 rank in my division since I won the belts. How many Everlast sandwiches must I feed this guy before he drops to No. 2?

All this is just a long way of saying that this game is a bit broken in Legacy mode. Players should be given the choice to move up in rank whenever they chose and the computer ranking system really needs to be smarter and more realistic. Dudes with 16 losses will not be in the top 10 of any weight class. And when a ranked fighter gets knocked the @#$% out, he should not stay a top contender. I hope my fighter will be able to move up to the next weight class before he just collapses in the ring from old age, because there certainly isn't much of a legacy in administering beat down number 57 to Mr. Gibson.

Where is the Get in the Game Mode?

Customer Rating:
Lol, I threw over thousand punches in a game, this game is going backward. FNR3 is lot better. EA also took out 1st person view. Lazy developer. I am sticking with FNR3.

If it weren't for the world's GREATEST boxing sim, I would have give it a 1.

Customer Rating:
Extreme positives and extreme negatives made this review a fair one, right down the middle a 3. Let me start by saying that my official online ranked record (FLAWED to the extreme) is 647 Wins, 110 Loss, 0% DNF (DidNotFinish). I have been keeping track of how BAD EA Servers just cannot fix the constant plagueing bugs of online disconnects by opponents who is obviously loosing and disconnects and no loss assigned to them and no win attributed to me. I have over 200+ knockout wins that should have assigned to me but robbed. No worries. I never gave up, I keep fighting and now I have a great record ANYWAYS.

Online support is what gives this review a 3 instead of stellar 5. I love this game, I play it -- so addicting but Electronics Arts is just totally irresponsible to address their loyal customer's need -- online server that is able to detect disconnect by opponents and assign a loss to them. How hard can it be to implement some type of security certificate showing that your PS3 game is still in progress while your opponents has exited the game? EA won't even address this problem after 8 months this game has been out. One visit to the EA Sports forum, you'll see what I'm talking about. EA Online support is ZERO in my opinion but I'll be courteous for EA making this great game so a 1. 5 + 1 = 6 / 2 = 3 STARS.

IMPORTANT FACT: FNR4 heavily favors counters, so EA has made counters the #1 most powerful damage dealer and can seriously impair you. Even a haymaker is no where near damaging than a counter. To this end, there are hordes of people trying to exploit counter, using bizarre non-realistic repeating body spinning and blocking up-and-down as fast as they can. Quite the entertainment value watching these scary mouse doing these in front of me. Many new comers gave up because they don't know how to handle these predominant exploit players and get knocked out over and over. Making counter too powerful is one major "realism" flaw EA put in their design but because of the fun factor, they never got rid of it -- so I lived with it and adapted. AFTERALL, it IS a GAME - it has to have something NOT realistic but good for the replay reels. Don't give up because there are ways to fight these cheap bastards and I use a combination of body punches, jabs, haymakers and just use quick fist and feet (distance) to frustrate them. When you fight CPU, you can see the stamina & health bars. Learn what happens when you body hook and watch their stamina go down. Your key to these counter-exploiters is lower their stamina to NOTHING -- making their counters ineffective (minimal damage -- though still buggy as they can still flash knock-out you at a low percentage rate). Learn to increase your landing rate over 60%-70% or higher by using 1 quick jab and back up to avoid counters, you'll get tons of points in between rounds to keep your stamina and health up into the later rounds -- that will MAKE a huge difference in knocking your out of breath opponents. You can also get more points by faking coming to your opponent and just back off and watch him throw 5-6 jabs and body punches in mid-air... quite the entertainment. lowering their punch% and increase your % to avoid punches... you lower his repair points in between rounds and building yours will all add up to a great victory later.

Whether you should buy this game? I would say so if you can put up with online issues -- overall, I would say the PROs must have outweight the CONs as I keep finding myself playing this game almost daily. I have never found a boxing sim this addicting before! It has serious depth into boxing sim than any games that come before it. I used to play Chris Taylor's 4D Sports Boxing back in the early 1990's before he got famous. I have always love boxing SIM. 4 is definately smoother than 3 in terms of graphics frame rate, a GREAT improvement. I remember I love FNR3 but ever since 4 came out, I don't know why but I keep working at FNR4 until I get good at it. BUY it if you're serious about a boxing sim, it's rewarding despite all the downfalls. Don't buy it if you're casual gamer seeking online entertainment, because online is filled with land mines waiting to blow up your limbs and speed up your white hair growth. You gotta want PAIN in order to survive.