First Look: Fight Night Round 4 should KO the competition - GamePro Sports - Athletics' virtual news collides with reality's top headlines, rumors and gossip

With the cover announcement of EA Sports’ Fight Night Round 4 comes our first look at what this iteration of the franchise will be all about – and boy is it looking promising.

While graphically FNR4 isn’t as awe inspiring as Fight Night Round 3 was, one really can’t expect it to be. Artists and developers have come a long way in making games for the next-gen consoles. Games like Gears of War 2 now take the cake for jaw dropping graphics, just as FNR3 did back in 2006.

But while impressive graphics are wonderful to look at, the game is worth nothing if the mechanics and gameplay are terrible. FNR4 won’t disappoint when it comes to making the game feel as realistic as possible.

As the industry’s bar for aesthetics is raised, EA Sports developers have made sure to pay attention to the smallest details to try and gain the visual edge over its competition. For the first time in any sports game, the athletes’ muscles will flex and move as it would in real life when the character throws a punch or side steps around the ring. And all of this should happen at a smooth 60 frames per second – a great improvement from FNR3.

The real showstopper in FNR4 won’t be the graphics though, it will be the all new physics engine, followed closely by the revamped career mode, known as Legacy Mode.

Physics rules!

In previous boxing games including FNR3, gamers were restricted to four punching zones – left/right high, left/right low – but FNR4 shatters this outdated mechanic and introduces something entirely revolutionary. Now punches will fly in more directions than ever before, glancing off their opponents and tangling with one another in realistic fashion. Both the puncher’s arm and opponent’s impacted body part will react according to the speed, power and direction of the punch.

The new physics engine doesn’t just change the way you fight on offense, it also changes the way you defend yourself. Because blows can come from more than 4 distinct directions EA Sports has dumbed down the defense mechanics so that players only need to worry about high and low spots. EA has also done away with the sometimes annoying parry mechanic that good players would exploit online against fatigued opponents.

Just like a fatigue bar on offense, there’s a fatigue bar on defense now that dwindles as you cover up and take punches, eventually allowing them to do more damage the longer you don’t react by moving, clinching or fighting back.

FNR4 Gameplay Trailer

Legacies have to start somewhere

The new Legacy Mode, should help to complete the fairly fragmented Career Mode from FNR3. Just as before, players will create a boxer and take him through his long, and hopefully prosperous career. But this time around you will need to build up your boxer’s popularity which doesn’t just increase by winning fights; it’s now about how you win your fights. Quick knock outs and brutal bashings are sure to get the fans in your corner as opposed to Bernard Hopkins-like 12-round snoozers.

Rivalries take a much more realistic approach in FNR4. If you have an exciting fight you will be offered a rematch, enough exciting fights against one boxer and you ignite a rivalry that will help boost your popularity. It doesn’t just end there however, your rivalry will continue to develop over the years as you move up and down weight classes.

Training between fights is handled differently this time around as well. All of the tools you will learn in the ring fighting are factored into training and there are many new mini-games to help hone these. Picture more games like the one where you had to remember a certain number of combos, ones that served a higher purpose, not the ones like lifting weights (which has been removed).

You can see Tyon's shoulder muscles flexing as he sits in his corner between rounds

Back to the action!

In RNF4 players will be rewarded with a screen flash by ducking, weaving and going for an opponent’s open spot. If you land a devastating enough punch to an exposed part of the body your opponent will go into a stunned state. This can occur no matter what your health is, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you will be knocked out, but it does make you move slower and take more damage from punches. Once you recover from the stunned state your health will start to recharge as long as you aren’t still taking a beating.

Getting knocked down brings up a new mini game where you have to center blurring images using the right and left thumb sticks and then eventually have to use your right stick to raise your boxer’s body off the mat. Once in your corner you’ll experience a new cutman mechanic. Instead of rubbing your boxer’s face to stop swelling or sop up blood, you’ll assign points that you earn during the round to three categories: damage reduction, stamina replenishment and health recovery. The better you do during a round the more points you will earn.

Rosters are everything

FNR3 has been the pinnacle of boxing games since 2006, but its career mode and sometimes laggy frame rate left more to be desired. FNR4 seems to take all the great things from its predecessor and none of the bad, I look forward to learning more about this game as we approach its summer release.

Here are the confirmed boxers so far: