You up 4 it?

Released in 2006, Fight Night Round 3 was the first game that Xbox 360 owners could really use to show off their shiny new HD-ready consoles to their PS2-owning mates. For its time, it looked phenomenal – but it also had the gameplay to match, winning plaudits for an innovative analogue stick control system, top-notch online play and a roster boasting some of the best boxing talent of all time.

It's been a long wait, but still no-one has gotten close to EA's prize fighting game… until now. Because, after a lengthy hands-on playtest, we can safely say that the younger, hungrier challenger Fight Night Round 4 makes the once-untouchable champ look like a punch-drunk chump.

A bit of a looker

The first thing that Fight Night Round 4 smacks you in the face with are its frankly astonishing production values. The boxers each look startlingly lifelike; the arenas offer a true spectacle replete with flaring spotlights and a fully 3D, heavily excitable crowd; play-by-play commentary really sets a hyped-up tone; and it's not long before you're seeing bumps and bruises form on the fighter's faces in wince-inducing fashion, with cuts opening up and blood splattering liberally through the air and onto the mat.

Key to this realism is an all-new physics engine, which ensures Fight Night Round 4 gets closer than ever to real-life boxing. You can practically feel each hit connecting, be they glancing blows or full-on power punches – and every strike delivers different damage to each boxer's health, stamina and block bars.

This is where the first level of strategy emerges within Fight Night Round 4's fighting engine. Smother your foe with fists of fury and in no time at all their health will drop right down – but you also risk punching your slowly-recharging stamina bar to its limits, exposing yourself to a quick-fire knockout counter-punch. Likewise, play too defensively and your block and health bars will take a battering you may never recover from.

Coupled with this is a second, far more impressive layer of depth. Unlike its predecessor, Fight Night Round 4 recreates each of the key fighting styles of its famous roster – so the likes of Mohammed Ali and Lennox Lewis are at their best working the jab, keeping their opponent at a distance, while Iron Mike Tyson is at his most effective bob-weaving his way up close and bullying his opponent (ear biting has been omitted, sadly!). Manny Pacquiao meanwhile is lighting fast and especially well-suited to explosive in-out flurrying, while those picking Ricky Hatton will be trying earnestly to fight on the inside employing bruising body punches – without ending up flat out on their back, obviously!

The perfect opening

Put that all together and you have an enormously satisfying boxing engine that will see expert players tensely following their preferred pugilist's favoured style and looking for the perfect opening. It should make for some truly memorable matches, especially online, where the competition will be as fierce as ever.

Perhaps the most impressive thing though is how instantly playable Fight Night Round 4 feels. Despite punching being solely located on the right stick, there's a wealth of options on the rest of the pad, with L Tigger used for leaning, Left Bumper switching your stance, R Trigger blocking (in conjunction with moving the right stick up or down, for high and low defense), and Right Bumper being your punch modifier for fight-ending haymakers. The A button meanwhile is a fighter's signature punch, and if all else fails, you can always press B to do a quite comical headbutt – which takes a point off your score, but is guaranteed to get a laugh in post-pub multiplayer bouts.

If you do find yourself on the end of a beating, there's still hope. Recovering without being counted out now takes the form of a balance minigame, where you have to hold the left stick left or right and then hit the right stick up at the correct time to centre your balance. Recovery between the rounds has also been changed up, and now allows you to spend points earned by positive punching on healing yourself in your corner; things like drinks of water or patching up your cuts. Don't worry if that sounds daunting, however – you can always set it to Auto, which will take care of your recovery for you.

An all-time great?

Having talked so much about the general fighting experience, we've barely covered the modes in Fight Night Round 4 – and that's because EA are being quite coy on that at the moment. However, we can confirm the presence of a much-improved Legacy career mode, in which you can create your fighter (even mapping your face from photos via EA Gameface or a Xbox Live Vision / PlayStation Eye camera), and aim to become an all-time great – then take your fighter online to face players around the world.

Packing stylish presentation, many of the biggest names in boxing and gameplay with the potential to achieve 'legend' status, Fight Night Round 4's arrival on the world stage from 26th June looks like being one of the true main events of the summer gaming calendar.

Preview by: Mark 'Swing-And-Miss' Scott
Version Tested: Xbox 360
Preview Published: 20.05.09